Microsoft Global Forum: Day 2 Reflections

Day 2 of the forum began early Wednesday morning with Team Canada breakfast, followed by opening remarks and a keynote presentation. Anthony Salcito delivered an engaging keynote, which we really enjoyed and we heard many points that resonated with us. Two of these points were:


The value of service based learning - Anthony made this point in his presentation and we really have experienced the power of service learning in action.  We know from the Little Hands Extended project that having students make a difference in their communities is an opportunity for authentic, engaging learning.  Our students have learned from activities such as organizing Farmer Appreciation Day, working with seniors in the community, fundraising to help at-risk frog species and hosting a garage sale to raise money for people in need.  These service projects have been positive experiences for students and teachers alike.

Tools are just tools, it's the learning and teaching that are important - This was another strong message that really aligns with our teaching practice.  An important shift in our approach to teaching has been a change in our perspective on technology tools.  We really strongly believe that we should set learning and teaching goals first, then find the "best tools for the job".  Tools are there to support learning and they are very important, but they are just that - tools.  The learning and the teaching need to be at the forefront.  However, we also need to be good at identifying educational uses for the tools that we have available (or that students have available).

Next, we were presenting and sharing the Little Hands Extended project at our exhibit booth for a few hours.  We also had the opportunity to connect with others and hear about the learning projects in their classrooms. It's very inspiring to hear about the impressive things students and teachers are doing in other schools, classrooms and counties.  We are planning to have a collection of project summaries to share later this week thanks to Eric Patnoudes (he is collecting the information for all projects featured here!).

 
Next up on our busy schedule were panel sessions.   Some big questions for our panel Engaging in 21st Century Thinking and Learning were: To promote 21st century learning, what skills do teachers need? what professional development is helpful and necessary?

Our final conference agenda item was a focus group discussion that we were invited to participate in to give feedback on collaboration tools such as Skype and Lync.  Since we use Skype often to connect our classrooms, it was nice to be asked to give our input.

We finished working around 7:00 last night and we were definitely ready for some supper.  We went back to the Gothic Quarter since it has been our favorite area so far.  We walked a similar path to our food tour and stopped at 3 different places.  We enjoyed tapas and had to find the gelato shop for more creamy, delicious gelato for dessert.  It was a relaxing evening after a busy day of work!

Microsoft Global Forum: Day 1

On Tuesday, our day started with 7AM Team Canada breakfast, followed by conference registration and team pictures!

 

 Photo credit: Kate Taylor

Next, we set up our Little Hands Extended display. Our brand new Microsoft Surfaces were waiting for us at our booth!

We attended the team building session with Tracy Immel.  This was an opportunity to meet our "Learn-a-Thon" teams and work with them on a group activity.  We then had professional development sessions that helped us learn to use our Surfaces and gave us some ideas for using them in the classroom.

Our Little Hands Extended exhibit was open from 2:45-6:30 and one of our judges visited our booth to find out more about our project and evaluate it based on the 21st century learning rubrics.  It was a very busy afternoon of meeting and reconnecting with teachers, principals, Microsoft staff, sponsors and judges.  We really enjoyed sharing our students' great work and we received lots of positive feedback on their great action plans - way to go Kindergartens and Grade 1s!  A big highlight was when Microsoft's Vice President for Education,  Anthony Salcito, stopped by our display!

After exhibits closed, we had a short break and then returned to the conference center for the welcome reception.  We met up with many people we'd met at previous forums and also made some great new connections.  One of the best parts of this event is meeting people from around the world who are passionate about improving and changing education.  We had some great conversations and learned a lot! We even got to chat with one of our favorite keynote speakers from the 2012 Forum, Simon Breakspear and behavioral scientist Matt Wallaert, who works for Bing. 

We've Arrived!

Mrs. Devon Caldwell and I were selected to be a part of Team Canada at this year's Microsoft Global Forum.  We are in Barcelona, Spain for the week for this special event, which focuses on recognizing innovative teachers and schools, providing relevant professional development and improving learning for students around the globe.  We will be working with educators from many different countries and we are so excited to share the Little Hands Extended project - we are very proud of our students' work and we always enjoy showing their learning to others! 

 Although we love to have coordinating outfits, we did NOT plan our matching black and purple traveling outfits.  Starbucks at the Winnipeg Airport was a must, since we are both big fans of their lattes. 

It was a long journey to get here.  We traveled 2.5 hours from Winnipeg to Toronto, then boarded a very long 7.5 hour flight from Toronto to Frankfurt.  Next, we had to wait about 3 hours in Frankfurt, which was really hard since we were so sleepy (Mrs. Caldwell even had to have a nap).  Finally, we boarded our last flight to Barcelona, which was about another 2 hours long.  We were so exhausted that we slept soundly for our last flight and were ready to see the sights when we got to Barcelona!

We checked in at our hotel and were excited to have a view of the sea from our tenth floor room. 

Next, we went to explore Barcelona.  We walked around and then decided to take a bus tour.  We got to sit on the top floor of the double decker bus, which was really fun.  We got to see lots of the city from the bus.  We decided to get off the bus and go for a walk at Park Guell. It is a lovely, green park and we were excited to enjoy warmer weather here (16C).  You can climb up the hills in the park to get a great view of the city.