TT anniversary coming up

At this time back in 2004 I was busy with last minute preparations for the first Teachers Talking (TT) course at Fantsuam Foundation (FF). The planning details are in the archives of the TT online support group.

Things have moved on a lot since then:

• Each time I have presented a course, I have further developed the content and the delivery methods,
• We have used various different tools - especially yahoo groups, emails, blogs, photo-sharing, video, CDs, audiograhic conferencing, wikis, Moodle, VOIP, instant messaging, text conferencing and chat rooms.
• John Dada (director of FF) and I now work together much more closely, under the name of Dadamac.
  
• John has extended my training work at Fanstuam Foundation (FF) to include staff and volunteers working at FF.
• The Dadamac Learning Group at Fantsuam has a "home" in the FF Knowledge Resource Centre - the KRC. (TT met at various locations, out in the open, in a school, and in some of the FF classrooms)
• Roles are emerging within the Dadamac Learning Group - such as learners, learning leaders, know-its, newbies.
• Our skills and strategies for sharing information at a distance have developed.
• We are learning together, as a team, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes at a distance.
• We are learning more about how we learn - and exploring the various stumbling blocks that we have to work around as we are learning together.
• The list could go on.....
  

On November 29th we plan to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Teachers Talking and the wider Dadamac Learning Group. We are still deciding exactly what link up we will do as part of the celebration. Usually it is a yahoo chat connecting the participants gathered at Fantsuam with me in the UK, and perhaps some other online guests.

We are still deciding what is best for this year. We will probably do a skype link-up (as skype seems more stable than yahoo at present ) and we might experiment with the video link as well, so we can smile, and wave, and laugh together - and generally greet more warmly even though we can't touch. On the other hand it would be great to include people from the TT course in Kenya, and they might well have to use a cyber cafe that only offers yahoo. We still have a week and a bit to decide. It will depending on who might be able to attend.