The man the myth the legend!
You can read more about him on Merlin John Online here: http://bit.ly/glGDEU
I first encountered John a few years ago when we were fortunate to get him down for some whole school training residential conference – he was superb! He really helped inspire many of our teachers in the way they could use new technologies and ‘new tools’ as his website is named!
You can check out his site here:
Apart from always being an entertaining speaker – he always gets you working collaboratively on a task using the Learning Activity Generator – if you haven’t heard of this before then check out this complete wiki with lots of ideas and resources on how to use them in your lessons from teachers all over the world and it is free!
http://legwork.pbworks.com/w/page/16185296/FrontPage
I love the Learning Activity Generator and many of our teachers have used in school and I have too, I haven’t used it for a while and will certainly be going back in and using it again. At one point John described it as a ‘new tool’ to use if you end up walking down the school corridor towards your classroom and you realise you forgot to plan your lesson then this tool is for you… now I am not endorsing this and neither I am sure is John it was delivered very much tongue in cheek however it is a great creative tool that does the work for you.
We were put into groups and our group activity generator was to produce a 20 second video exploring the concept of Christmas shopping using whatever technology or ‘new tools’ we had in our pocket. We had a very short time to do this but we managed to pull it off and you can see the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPyO37_E1D8
I loved this session as is what every workshop/seminar should be – hands on, active and helpful CPD.
Lovely post I am lucky enough to know and have worked with John . Apart from being incredibly good company he has always challenged the way I think and how maybe we should all think differently and think collectively. He’s definitely in my top 3 key note and possibly number 1 in the person I would love to run a workshop . So in my opinion worth following John and his work.