#TMOxfail - teachers learning from things that didn't work

TeachMeet, a UK-based meetup organization focused on education, announced #TMOxfail, a gathering on July 11 in Oxford, England:

Having run a couple of conventional 'sharing best practice' TeachMeets, we'd like to add a different twist to this one. You are invited to come along to present and share experiences of, rather than what that worked well, activities, lessons, approaches or strategies which you tried, but which didn't work out so well! Why would anyone want to do that? Well, #TMOxfail is offered in the belief that:

- we learn as much, probably more, from reflecting on failure as we do by focusing on success
- sharing best practice can be useful and inspiring; so can the honesty and openness which comes from talking about when things go wrong
- as teachers, we can be too quick to feel bad when things go wrong - by discussing these things openly, we can develop a 'growth mindset' culture in which it's OK to fail, as long as we reflect, renew and build again

We are looking for either 2 minute (nano) presentations, or 7 minute (micro) presentations in which you might talk about:
- An activity, lesson, approach or strategy that you tried and what you were hoping for
- What happened in reality and what you think went wrong
- What you learnt from the experience, and how you would / did do it differently next time

[Note the reference to Carol Dweck's work on the "growth mindset."]

I wish the #TMOxfail folks all success in their venture. I wonder if they might be willing to post some of their presentations and share their stories here?

Quick change of subject: let me take this opportunity to point out a new feature. Now that there are nearly 500 posts on the site, navigation for new readers is an issue. So, I've created a handful of key categories (listed on the right-hand column), which collect posts that relate to that category. If you are interested in learning more about the role of failure and mistakes in startups, click that link. You will be presented with a much smaller set of posts, all of which are related to startups.

Not coincidentally, one of these key categories is Education :)

[Hat tip Tim Harford]