Day 4 at the Microsoft Global Forum

Friday, our Learn-a-thon groups presented our learning activities to a panel of judges and audience of fellow conference attendees.  We had 8 minutes to share our vision for Challenge to Change.  Despite presenting regularly, I felt very nervous!  I was so excited to stand on stage with fellow expert educators from three other countries and share the idea we are so excited about!



Our closing session included messages from:

Jon Fallon - Pearson CEO
Maria Garana Corces - President of Microsoft Spain
Felipe  - Prince of Asturias
 

There was also a panel discussion, with panelists:
Alexa Joyce: Corporate Development Manager for European Schoolnet
Julio Fontan: President of Learning 1 to 1 Foundation
Mette Hauch: Educator at Hellerup School in Denmark
Steven Ronsjin: School Director at Sint-Lievenscollege Gent in Belgium

Some key points from our panelists included:

• Technology + good pedagogy make for good teaching and learning.
• The connections we've made at this Forum need to be preserved - let's keep in touch, work together and collaborate to change education in positive ways!
• Letting go of some control & letting your students direct their learning will help transform education.
• Teachers need freedom & trust from school leaders in order to deliver quality teaching.
• We can empower children - the work showcased at the Global Forum is evidence that it is possible!
• Connecting with educators around the world gives us new perspective and inspiration - we often face the same challenges despite our varied locations, cultures and backgrounds.  

After the conference had closed, Mrs. Caldwell and I got ready for the evening gala and awards night.  We were very excited to dress up in our fancy gowns, since it`s not something we get to do very often!  We met up with Team Canada for some photos and then went to the conference center for dinner, dessert and the awards ceremony.  Team Canada member Jessie Mann and her group won a Learn-a-thon award in the Sustainability category.  Then, Team Canada hit the stage again when  Mrs. Devon Caldwell and her group won the Gender Equality category of the Learn-a-thon.  It was  exciting to celebrate their successes!  The evening went by so quickly and it was over all too soon; before we knew it we were saying goodbye to friends and acquaintances.  It was an inspiring and motivating conference and we are returning to our classrooms with new enthusiasm!

 

Microsoft Global Forum: Day 3

Day 3 was a unique day of the Microsoft Global Forum.  Educators from around the world were put into international teams of 4-6 people to work together.  Our goal was to create a learning activity that we could do with our classes after the forum.  I was thrilled to work with some excellent educators, including Jennifer Bevill of the United States, Gerard Duffy from Ireland and Mohammad BaniYounes of Jordan.  After many hours, we had created an exciting learning activity Challenge to Change.  I'm so proud of our collaborative work and I'm really looking forward to launching the activity in the future.  Our plan is:

Using ICT, students from four countries will work together to address sustainability issues. 

Driving Questions:

·         What are the environmental sustainability issues in your area?

·         What can you do to make a difference? 

·         How can you encourage others to take action on sustainability issues?

Phase 1: Acting Locally, Collaborating Globally

• Making Connections:  Students will meet each other via video conference

• Knowledge Construction: Students in each classroom will research to identify sustainability issues in their community.  Working in collaborative teams, students will create a presentation to share their findings with the other 3 classrooms

• Sustainability Conferences:  Classrooms connect a second time to conduct presentations to share the sustainability issues they have identified in their communities.   

• Creating Action Plans:  Teams of students will work together to develop an action plan that address their sustainability problem.   Final action plans will be shared with all four classrooms.

• Taking Action:  Students will collaborate to implement their action plans to make a difference in their community.  Actions, progress, results with international team members to ensure accountability.

• Follow up:  Each classroom will share their results with all classrooms.  This may include successes, difficulties and the impact that their local action plan had. 

Phase 2: Scaling Up the Impact
Once students have taken action locally, they will shift to a global focus.  For this phase, students will be grouped in cross-classroom, international teams.

• International Team Meetings:  Students will work in international teams to identify a global environmental sustainability issue to address.  

• Challenge to Change:  Each international team will identify one action that people could take to impact the global environment.  This will become part of  the “Challenge to Change” – a global challenge to encourage others to take action.  Students will design the challenge and promote it publicly to empower others to take action.  Our hope is that the challenge will involve our wider communities, state/province or even our whole countries making a contribution to environmental sustainability!

After another busy day, we had our Team Canada dinner last night.  We went out for supper and a Flamenco performance.  It was a great outing, but I was so exhausted that I almost couldn't stay awake!  It was straight to bed for me after the show! 

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!