Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute #7: Reflections

Any teacher interested in integrating technology with the curriculum would jump at a chance to visit Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond to attend their Partners in Learning Institute, wouldn’t they? Well I consider myself in that category and from 24th – 31st July I had the privilege of such a visit! This PIL Institute is a new part of Microsoft's vision for teachers, and you could be one of the next attendees! Microsoft is planning many more of these training events…

Who attended this training?
Microsoft’s educational wing known as Partners in Learning shortlisted 50 innovative teachers from 31 countries to attend the inaugural training in Redmond. Three South African teachers were selected - Cheryl Douglas, Ngaka Ralekoala and myself.

Where did we stay?

We lodged at the incredibly luxurious Hyatt-Bellevue Hotel in an area between Seattle and Redmond known as Bellevue. The hotel had magnificent views from the rooms. The conference staff organised a very busy week right down to the last detail late at night – but I must say that every second was well worth it.

A room with a view at the Hyatt-Bellevue in Bellevue

What was the purpose of the PIL Institute? 

The purpose of the Microsoft Partners in learning Institute is to grow innovative teaching and learning practices around the world through a cadre of teacher trainers who will take what they have learned to their communities to coach and train other educators.

Baldev Singh from www.imagineeducation.net

What did we do each day?

During the day we had training, workshops, discussions, field trips, work sessions and some learning excursions around which we created a project. I also enjoyed the TeachMeet  where we got the chance to give two minute presentations on something successful we have done in technology integration. I would LOVE to introduce this TeachMeet idea in South Africa. It would really enhance technology integration, I think. We also learned at length about 21^st century skills and how to create and assess activities using 21^st century skills. (We have homework to do on this due for the 15^th August). It was marvelous to get to talk to teachers from all the different countries and find out how education happens in their country. Another treat was to be able to view the 102 USA finalist entries for the Microsoft Innovative competition. I always love to see what teachers come up with.

One of the USA PIL Innovative Teacher entries

Here is a slideshow of some of the USA PIL Innovative teacher entries:

Here is a summary of the USA projects:
http://bit.ly/qfUTvX

The winners of the USA IEF have now been announced:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/aug11/08-01IEF11PR.mspx

One of the highlights was to visit the Microsoft Home of the Future at Their Headquarters in Redmond.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/mshome/VideoGallery.aspx

Who were our presenters?

The Institute was run under the Directorship of Maureen Cain. Our presenters were of the highest quality and everyone benefitted from their professional input as well as from the warm friendship and enthusiasm of the fifty teacher participants. One of the conference presenters was a Technology Integration specialist, Sonja Delafosse, from the Lake Washington school district. Now that is a job I would enjoy – helping teachers integrate technology into their lessons, because then both the students and the teachers benefit. What do you think?  Their classes seem to have netbooks at their disposal.  Sonja explained how technology integration in schools is very important to the parents of that area, since Seattle houses Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon.com, and Google also has offices there. In fact while we were participating in our Partners in Learning Institute, Google was holding one of its Google certified teacher courses at the same time.  

Did we do a lot of sight seeing? 

The 50 of us were transported everywhere by luxury coach.  Seattle is a great city. It is very green with beautiful trees and fresh clean air. Some call it the Emerald City. We didn’t have time for much sight-seeing in our busy schedule, but as mentioned, Microsoft cleverly arranged learning excursions in groups, with each group visiting a tourist site, and creating and completing a project about it. We stored these in our Partners in Learning Network shared folder, and shared them with one another. 

Our group visited the Seattle Underground

With so many great Microsoft tools tools at our disposal everyone felt as though they had been everywhere...

The Seattle Underground via a photosynth made by Wichai...
http://bit.ly/rntjow 

The Space Needle via a photosynth made by their group...
http://bit.ly/pkSuZD

The Pike Place Market via a video made by Jugoslava...
http://bit.ly/ogWCcU

Seattle using a flashcard application made by Birgy...
http://flashcards.educationlabs.com/#/Play/?deckid=4721

The Seattle Art Museum via photosynth made by their group...
http://bit.ly/nvcofi 

A video to sum it all up made by Bram...

Honestly I can’t believe Microsoft’s commitment to teachers – it is awesome! The company is playing such an active role in education. We saw previews of how Partners in Learning wants to facilitate change through educators. They are launching a completely new Partners in Learning Network in November, which we saw a preview of, and I think this will facilitate a powerful network of teachers world-wide. I loved this sign at Microsoft. After eventually working out that it stood for ‘Pedestrian crossing’, for me it still seemed to say… ‘Xing into pedagogical change’.  I have come back with a renewed vision for professional development. Thank you to Microsoft. 

THE END

Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute #6: Great videos about 21st century teaching and learning

In one of our pre-assignments before attending PIL Institute in Redmond, we were asked to discuss our views on 21st century teaching and learning, and also add artefacts, and place all of this in our teacher learning community. Many of the attendees added video links as their artefacts, so I have listed them here for quick access. These videos capture what, I believe, best describes teaching and learning in the 21st Century. These videos focus on the skills that students need or what teachers see as vital skills for both teachers and learners. I could tell from these pre-assignments that we were going to focus quite heavily on 21st century skills.

1. A vision of K-12 today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8&feature=player_embedded


2. A vision of 21st century teachers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4g5M06YyVw&feature=player_embedded


3. What teachers make by Taylor Mali
http://youtu.be/RxsOVK4syxU


4. Three steps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPQlu5Vxm28&feature=related


5. Learning to change, changing to learnhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tahTKdEUAPk&feature=player_embedded


Can you recommend any others?

Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute #5: Have you heard of About.me.com?

One of the PIL Institute attendees from the UK, Dan Roberts, had this grand idea to visually collate information about each person attending the Institute before we arrived, and linking it to Bing maps, so that we could get to know something about each other. He suggested we use a website called About.me.com to write a bit about ourselves. I thought this was a great idea. You can sign up to this free website (About.me.com) and write something about yourself and how to contact you, and you can add a photo background. It literally takes 5 minutes. So, we were asked to create one and put the link in our teacher learning community website. The person who suggested this, Dan, has a really interesting profile. http://about.me/chickensaltash. Well, I tried it out and signed up http://about.me/fionabeal What was interesting, I thought, was the way Dan linked these profiles to a Bing map so that we could see the spread of teachers and where they come from. You can view this on http://binged.it/mVOYKh. Once you click on the person’s name you can click on 'more info' and you’ll be taken to their about.me page. Dan is still adding details of everyone, but as he says, it is a great way to visually connect and possibly even collaborate in the future. Oh gosh, I love innovative approaches to things…

Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute #4: What is a TeachMeet?

Our third pre-assignment has been to find out about and prepare for a TeachMeet. When I was preparing for a 'PD in your PJs' talk recently I came upon this concept of TeachMeets and EdCamps which are apparently taking off in the USA, and now I will be involved in one! It is an explosive way of sharing integration-with-Technology practices, teachers teaching teachers about ideas that have worked for them. In Britain it often happens from - 7 informally in a pub! The time is set - ours is to be 3 minutes and we will be presenting these ideas to the 100 United States innovative Teacher competition finalists in Redmond. (The finals takes place while we are in Redmond).

Here is the video we have been asked to view before we gt to Redmond:

Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute #3: 21st century learning and teaching

A second pre-assignment for Partners in Learning is to research and write about our views on 21st century learning and 21st century teaching, and to submit an artefact that demonstrates this. Well, I am very aware that we are living in a digital age where our students are incredibly digitally-minded, and of course education will have to start incorporating this more and more if it wishes to impact this generation. I am going to put an artefact here in the form of a You Tube video. This is the type of learner we will be dealing with in schools soon ultimately.


When I think of 21st century skills I think of core curriculum expressed in collaborative learning, project-based learning, with connections to the community, research-driven, using technology and multimedia. higher order thinking skills, interdisciplinary... I think ISTE's NETS STANDARDS sums up the required skills so well. http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx

To me 21st century teaching is about being relevant in the age in which we live. It is the social networking age, the age of collective intelligence that takes us so much further than we can go on our own, the age of giving, sharing and collaborating. Thus our education system needs to integrate these values and technologies with the curriculum and prepare our digitally-minded students for their future in a rapidly changing world. I have used this Ted video in another post previousy, but to me it just sums up our age so well, that I am adding it again!
http://www.ted.com/talks/gel_gotta_share.html) .


These twenty pointers from SimpleK12 come from one of their articles entitled ‘Are you a 21st century teacher? Find out”. I think this is a very thought provoking summary:
http://blog.simplek12.com/education/21-signs-youre-a-21st-century-teacher/

We are really living in exciting times!

Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute #2: I am off to the inaugural Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute in Seattle

The fifty teachers from around the globe who have been selected to attend the inaugural Partners in Learning Institute at Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle have been announced, and I am one of them! Whoopee!!!! What can be more exciting than that to a Cape Town teacher! There are THREE of us from South Africa which is even more exciting, as I know the other two teachers, and we will be spending the last week of July in Redmond, Washington. The fifty of us have been communicating and getting to know each other on the Partners in Learning Network, and we have also have four pre-assignments to complete. Mine are done fortunately and I am going to write posts about them. (That is the beauty of blogging – you can post things here and have them at your fingertips). So, USA, here I come!!!!! For the next while I will be writing posts under PIL institute #1-? to record my experiences.

Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute, Seattle #1: Invited

In May I received an email from Microsoft in the US  inviting me to join their inaugural Innovative Teacher network in the Partners-in-Learning interface.  This invitation was given to 500 teachers world-wide whom they recognise as being 'top tier' teachers.  Once you joined the network you would be given an application form to apply for the first ever Global Partners in Learning Institute Professional Development training in Redmond, USA, for a week at the end of July. 50 teachers would be selected from the 500. Well, I have applied!!! Can you imagine anything more exciting than that! Part of the application was that you had to make a two-and-a-half minute movie about yourself and put it on You Tube for the selectors to view. That part was a bit daunting, I must say. Well, that movie has been there for about a month, but this morning I though I should keep a record of it in my blog. So here goes. We should hear about the success of our application towards the end of June.