We had a fantastic three hours at Collabor8 4 Change at Havering on the 17th November. Variety is the spice of life, so with 56 topics to choose from in total, everyone was catered for. To give you a flavour of the event, here is a selection of the talks and discussions featured. (To avoid any accusation of bias, I have simply taken the talks and discussions from the very first session).

• Steph Homeward: Digital Leaders - ICT in pupils' hands.
• Mike Lane: Reading with interactive reading books.
• Drew Buddie: Programming, is this the new dawn.
• David Kempster: Primary ICT Suites vs Mobile:  Why are we still gathering in a room full of clunky machines when we can really integrate ICT?
• Bev Evans: Dyslexia and inclusion.
• Leon Cych: Social Media for Schools.
• Gary Trotter: PC-less technology. The way forward?
• Danny Nicholson: Digital storytelling tools in science findings. Do students always have to "go write it up"? Alternative ways to present their findings.
• Myles Pilling: Pocket technology anytime and anywhere and Special Educational Needs
• Dawn Hallybone: Getting into games: why teachers should explore the use of games in the classroom and the tools to enable you to do this.

Collaboration comes in all different formsNow, if you are feeling really devastated that you were not able to be there, we have two bits of good news. First, parts of the evening were recorded, and that will be available on Tuesday. Look out for an announcement about that on the ICT in Education website  and also the new Collabor8 4 Change website – and that’s the second piece of good news. We are running the event at the BETT show in January, so if you’re going to that make sure you come to Collabor8 4 Change on the Thursday, ie 12th January 2011, from 6pm to 9pm. Russell Prue will be our keynote and Master of Ceremonies, and we already have several people attending and two people running table discussions. Bev Evans  will be running a discussion on the theme of Digital Literacy Tools & reluctant writers, whilst Russell will be addressing the issue of how to start a live school radio station from scratch for free.

OK, here is the bad news: we’re limited to a total number of attendees of 150, so you will need to order a ticket quickly if last year’s “sales” are anything to go by. I haven’t promoted this beyond emailing the list of attendees at the recent one, so you have the opportunity of booking up before it becomes too widely publicised (just one of the many immeasurable benefits you enjoy by subscribing to this esteemed publication).

Also, if you would like to run a table discussion – which I highly recommend: everyone enjoys doing so – we will need to have the final details by 9th December (or even sooner if you need any special arrangements to be considered). That’s only about three weeks!

To register as a delegate and, hopefully, put yourself down for a talk, go to the BETT C84C website now! Please tweet about this marvellous event: use the hashtag #C84C

A variation of this article was first published in Computers in Cassrooms, the free e-newsletter for those with a professional interest in educational ICT. Why not subscribe now? Just click on the link above and scroll down for the form.