At the BETT12 exhibition in London in January members of the MirandaNet Fellowship  joined up with their colleagues in other countries to talk about the design of professional development programmes for teachers in the use of  digital  technologies.  John Galloway wrote an account of the proceedings. Designing effective continuing professional development programmes

Using MindMeister
The interactions in the MirandaMod and the FlashMeeting are further augmented by the use of MindMeister, a collaborative mapping tool being used to create and store knowledge created in real time. During the sessions at BETT12 – and after – contributors from across the country built this concept map.
During the sessions people followed the proceedings on Twitter, using the hashtag #MMAfA.

Eva Dakich and her colleagues from the University of Melbourne used FlashMeeting to join the meeting, and uploaded a presentation to support their session. You can view it here: Dakich- Varghese- Champness Presentation.

Notes on the use of FlashMeeting

The MirandaNet team uses a FlashMeeting Stream to include all the virtual participants in the discussion for reflective workshop sessions that augment the face-to-face ones.
Now FlashMeeting is traditionally a serial video conferencing application where everyone’s stream is visible in miniature and people take turns to broadcast out.
One person talks at a time and is streamed – other remote viewers observe or queue – and one person can mediate.
It has a range of features built in, like voting and polling, and a text chat channel. But that “serial” model of video transmission or streaming can also be wasteful if you wish to amplify live streaming socially. All that is needed – and it is what people hit upon in the MirandaMod sessions – is to add a Digital Video camera on a tripod to a computer where a group of people are meeting and then show the FlashMeeting on a whiteboard in that room as well. You then immediately magnify the social interactions and make them highly dynamic.
For the FlashMeeting one of the participants will be identified as #MMAfA. One of the technologies of the MirandaMod involves using a link to the FlashMeeting though a computer and camera in the face-to-face session. This enables participants who are unable to be present to view the meeting, to comment and to ask questions of the speakers. This extends the liminal space for learning.

You can view the meeting or download a PDF file am Flashmeeting of the minutes.
MirandaNet would like to thank the students from the University of Bedfordshire, who provided invaluable technical support for the team throughout the sessions. Their details can be found here.