2017 Microsoft Education Exchange

I was thrilled to be selected to attend the 2017 Microsoft Education Exchange (E2) as a Microsoft Expert Educator Fellow.  The conference was hosted in Canada for the first time, with the venue being the classy Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Ontario.  240 educators representing 83 different countries were in attendance.  It was a whirlwind of learning, sharing and networking.  

One of the highlights of this event was getting to know other educators. Team Canada included many talented and passionate teachers.  I really enjoyed working with all of them.  It was especially exciting to connect with some educators I have "known virtually" through social media, webinars and the Microsoft Educator Community.  Jim Pedrech and Ian Fogarty are two Canadian teachers who do great work with their students.  I've been hearing about their work for years and I finally got to meet them at E2!  I also had the chance to meet #WHOtoYOU leader Kaylyn Dorland, who I've connected with virtually in the last two years.  It was great to meet her face-to-face and I enjoyed touring her school, Queen of Heaven Elementary School, in Milton, ON.  There are many other educators from around the world that I was excited to meet and work with, but I'll refrain from writing a long list here...

Top: with Ian Fogarty, Middle: with Jim Pedrech, Bottom: with Kaylyn Dorland & Lia DeCicco-Remu

I coached an awesome collaborative group of ladies that were recognized for their work in the educator challenge.  This group was challenged to pitch an idea that would delocalize learning.  They were awarded second runner up in their category at the awards ceremony.  

Group 1: Susana (Costa Rica), Mary Catherine (USA), Meg (Canada), Jeanne (USA, Peta (Australia)

Engaging keynote speakers shared messages about education and Expert Educator Fellows shared breakout sessions on each day of the conference.   Hearing about the awesome work going on in classrooms around the world is so incredibly inspiring.  At the same time, this experience also makes me think about how much more we can do to transform education, inspire teachers and empower students!

Team Canada arriving at the awards gala.  Photo courtesy of Microsoft in Education. 

A Polar Bear Project: Writing about Polar Bears

As part of our polar bear project, our class did a lot of research about polar bears.  Using what they learned, students each wrote a page for a class book about polar bears.  They also narrated their work to create an "audiobook". 

Polar Bear Project: Is this a polar bear?

A massive blizzard hit southwestern Manitoba this week, closing our school for two days and leaving behind massive amounts of snow.  Today our school reopened, but the buses were not running so we had a smaller group of students than usual.  We were working on wrapping up a few jobs from our polar bear project when one student suggested we write a book "Is this a polar bear?" based on a model text Is this a moose? which we had studied earlier in the year.  I was happy to hear that my students wanted to write and were generating ideas for their writing, so we went with this idea as our writing project for today.  Each student chose an animal and selected the image for their page, then wrote their part.  Our final product looks great and the students were excited to do a shared reading of their new book this afternoon! They were eager to share the book online, so I've scanned a copy and made it available online using OneDrive. 

Check out our latest class book, Is This a Polar Bear? with images by pixabay.com  Click on the title page, then scroll to view additional pages. 

A Polar Bear Project: Guest Speakers help us learn

We continue our polar bear project with much enthusiasm!  In addition to building our knowledge of polar bears through research and shared note-taking, we also had the chance to learn from a couple of awesome guest speakers this month!  A guide from the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody, Wyoming took us on a Skype virtual field trip around the center to teach us all about animal adaptations.  A teacher from Winnipeg, Mr. Andy McKiel, also joined us via video call this month to tell us all about his adventures with polar bears when he traveled to Churchill, Manitoba.  We learned a lot from these special guests and we are very grateful that they shared their knowledge with us.  Using video calling in our classroom has allowed us to connect with guest speakers and experts that would not otherwise be available to us.  Check out the Skype in the Classroom page to learn more about how you can use Skype to enhance teaching and learning!