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. 

Day 2 in Barcelona

We wanted to experience more of Barcelona, so we took a big walk on Monday once we were better rested. We saw many beautiful buildings, historical places and went on a food tour.  Our favorite area was the Gothic Quarter. We got lots of exercise and had a lovely day! 

 The Gothic Quarter - beautiful narrow streets with lovely buildings!

Placa Reial

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The first stop on our food tour.  

 We were really brave and tried several new foods!

The yuckiest thing we ate was cold anchovies flavored with vinegar and oil

We enjoyed a variety of meats, cheeses and breads.

We walked around the Gothic Quarter during our food tour and got to see many more sights in this interesting area!

The most delicious part was eating gelato for dessert!  It was very creamy and delicious!

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.