The Fantastic 4 at the Innovative Education Forum 2010

It was a great privilege to be at the Innovative Education Forum at the beginning of this week. It all began with a very inspiring Innovative Teachers Meeting. A very informal gathering for all who wanted to be inspired and make new links, talk about Education with great Educators and indeed join the craved Chicken Karaoke organised by the legendary @chickensaltash (more on this later on). It was nice and rather daunting to open the meeting with my Yr 10 students’ EM Spectrum TV Show and in 10 minutes it was quite difficult to explain the extent of the project, but at least after that I only had to sit back, relax be inspired by so many other great presentations. I was particularly inspired Dawn Hallybone (@dawnhallybone) talking about her Games Based Learning and the nice examples she showed. Really good was also David Mitchell’s presentation (@Deputymitchell) who showed the importance of leaving comments on children’s blog posts! And I have to confess my favourite was Daniel Stucke’s presentation (@mrstucke) on the great work his kids are doing as Digital Leaders. Very inspiring and it reminds me of the Pupils’ Voice project I began in Torfaen a while ago now. There were other great presentations and the evening was really enjoyable and it ended with big cheers and nods of approval when @chickensaltash clucked that he would have led us to a traditional Chinese Karaoke. He said it would take only ten minutes, but it was more like twenty. So, you can imagine our great disappointment when we arrived exhausted at the door and discovered that the place was shut. I could only forgive that Chicken because he eventually took us to an excellent Kebabs take away! But lets move on to the main event, the U.K. Innovative Education Forum 2010.

It started off with an inspirational talk by Michael Furdyk and the launch of the project Shout which invites educators and students to take an active role in global environmental issues. Connect online with experts in the field, share ideas, and collaborate with people around the world committed to solving environmental challenges. This is a really nice opportunity for Educators and Learners to get involved in real and meaningful research and appreciate the importance of collaboration. You can watch Michael Furdyk’s talk on demand on the NGfL Cymru Live Channel.

We then went to our first workshop, which for me was Building games in the Classroom with Kodu. I was particularly interested in this one from the viewpoint of an Institute of Physics Network Coordinator, because I would like to explore the possibility to get children to create virtual worlds to discover the effect of changing physical laws and, therefore, better appreciate the role these laws play in our everyday life! But I have just ideas at this stage and a lot of testing to do before I can build a workshop on it.

My second workshop was with @chickensaltash, by only few known as Dan Roberts, who showed great Web 2.0 tools that can be used in Education. Really nice to see real examples of pupils’ work and I particularly enjoyed the Saltash’s take on mobile devices and social networking. The bottom line is that if we just ban children from using these tools, they will use them  in inappropriate, and potentially dangerous ways, in other environments, but if we educate our pupils in the acceptable and responsible use of these technologies, they will respond and become more mature users of these tools. So, is Saltash.net just making it up and risking their children’s protection? Well, the awards they win for their policies in the use of mobile devices and social networking would suggest the opposite! You can watch this workshop too from the NGfL Cymru Live channel on demand.

My last workshop was with Stuart Ball (@innovativeteach) on Office 2010 and some great features to facilitate learning activities. Of particular value was the demonstration of how OneNote 2010 integrates so beautifully with PowerPoint 2010, with real time polling, collaborative note taking and sharing, etc. Finally, we were shown how Mouse Mischief works and I got to PLAY This is a fantastic plug-in for PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 that allows you to connect up to 25 mice to your computer and use PowerPoint as a voting system, multiple choice question generator, and collaborative games and with the ability given to each mouse to draw on some slides!

It was then time for the second Keynote Speaker Prof Sugata Mitra. I had watched his talk on TED, but I have to admit that seeing his passion for Learning and his research live was even more inspiring. I also had the privilege of broadcasting his talk and presentation live and you can see it on demand on the NGfL Cymru Live channel (just after the Q&A session on the video). One of the most intriguing aspects of his talk is his hypothesis that “Education is a self organising system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon”. Prof Mitra will continue his research and actively seek to find hard evidence for this speculation. The data he has already gathered are really encouraging and point to that statement!

And last but not least, the moment that ten people in the conference room were all waiting for. After their hard work and commitment to their children, four of the ten finalists at the UK IEF 2010 were invited to represent Britain’s finest Education at the European Innovative Education Forum that will take place in Moscow in March 2011. And the fantastic 4 are:

Gareth Ritter

Jennifer Blum

Jo Debens

Louise Dorrian

I was overjoyed when I heard that Gareth (@ritzertech) because he is a Welshman and works in Willows High in Cardiff. I first came across him when I did a presentation about NGfL Cymru resources in his school. At the end of the presentation he comes up to me and says: “The stuff you do is really cool! How can I get involved in all this?” I only had to tell him “try the UK IEF 2010!” and in a week he put together an award winning VCT. What will he do in the time he has between now and March? Great job Gareth. Read about his awesome project on his blog http://garethritter.wordpress.com/

Office Web Apps are here!

A couple of days ago Microsoft has launched Office Web Apps and this is great news for Educators. In fact, this is a great tool to enhance collaboration in the classroom, at home for collaborative projects that go beyond teaching time and even to collaborate with other classes worldwide!

Not only you can create and edit Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote files directly from the browser, but you can also edit in your desktop where you can use the full functionality of your installed Office packages! And what about those pupils who haven’t got Office 2007 or 2010? It is no longer a problem, because they can edit from the cloud, directly from their skydrive. Basically all they need is to link their existing email (which could be their school email) to a Live ID.

If you thought this was great, keep reading (and watch the video below)  because Office Web Apps also allow you to share your files with whoever you want and multiple users can contribute to the files simultaneously, e.g. edit the same spreadsheet the whole class is using!

I can’t wait to use this great tool with my pupils, but to be more effective with it I have created an Online OneNote Notebook (that anyone with the link can see) to share ideas on how we can use these fantastic tools in Education. However, to make your contribution I have to invite you, so please get involved an ask for an invitation by sending me an email at: aso.ber@ntlworld.com

Don’t miss the chance to share, as it is by sharing that you get a better understanding of how to maximize your effectiveness as a teacher and learner!

Please, share this blog with as many people as possible!

Innovative Teachers in Torfaen, Wales

Hi,

It’s nearly been a year of Innovative Teachers in Torfaen and I though it’s just the right time to blog about our past experiences and successes.

How and Why we started!

It all began when Torfaen LEA in collaboration with Microsoft ITN asked me to put together a community of Innovative Teachers from the Secondary Schools in Torfaen in November 2008, as if that were an easy task. While I was driving back from the Innovative Teachers Network Specialists meeting, a vision came to me! I was determined to get our learners in Torfaen to have a say and a major input in the work of our community. I had to start somewhere, so I surveyed all pupils in my school (Croesyceiliog School, Cwmbran) and asked them what makes a good lesson and how they use technology in their learning. Then, I invited one to two teachers from each school in Torfaen and two of their pupils to attend our first Torfaen Innovative Teachers training day. The day opened with the video survey of our pupils and that formed the foundation of our work. In fact, the pupils invited from schools around Torfaen would become our Software  Experts.

Pupils’ Voice

I wanted to ensure the learners’ views, expectations and interests would shape the work we set out to complete. So, after watching the video, I demonstrated some new technologies that can be used in the classroom. Software like Photo Story 3, Deep Zoom, Photosynth and OneNote (which would become a great asset for two of our projects). Then, each teacher worked with the pupils they brought along to plan and implement a series of lessons that would exploit the potentials of such technologies in education. As teachers, we all agreed that the input of our pupils exceeded our expectations and that many great ideas they came up with we would have not thought about ourselves.

Software Experts

As I mentioned above, the pupils that helped us planning our series of lessons also delivered the lessons and became our Software Experts. The idea was that these pupils would have been able to assist their peers during the series of lessons and potentially other less ICT literate teachers who wanted to use the same software we explored. And it worked very well, because it was a great opportunity for our pupils to develop their ICT skills, their confidence and interdependence. They also had great fun in developing and delivering their work!

Our Virtual Classroom Tours

All the projects run with the help of our pupils where developed into VCTs and submitted to the U.K. Innovative Teachers Forum 2009. We were hoping to get at least one in the top ten, but we were thrilled to hear we had two. James Allan from West Monmouth School (Pontypool) submitted a great VCT on the “House of the Future” where his pupils created cardboard houses to describe the energy saving features of the house of the future. Then, they used Photo Story and Photosynth to present their work to their peers.

Photosynth and the House of the Future

Another excellent project was submitted by James Kent, Croesyceiliog School (Cwmbran). His pupils used OneNote 2007 to create a revision booklet on the effects of the Asian Tsunami. The innovation in this project was the collaborative nature of the booklet. In fact, the class was divided into different groups that would focus on different aspects of the Tsunami. As they all worked on the same OneNote notebook, the final product was a revision guide made with the contribution of the whole class.

Projects like this really maximise the power of amazing software like OneNote 2007 and provide a great example of how such tools can be used to enhance the Teaching and Learning experience of our learners and educators! I was not surprised when I heard James was also invited to the European Innovative Teachers Forum 2009 in Vienna.Unfortunately, his journey ended there (but very close to the finalists, I’m sure), but the Judges complimented Torfaen on our Pupils’ Voice approach and the idea of using Software Experts to team plan and deliver lessons in the classroom.Our ImpactAfter the ITFs, we showed our work and the potential of our approach to our colleagues. Quite a few began to use similar approaches in their lessons and that encouraged us to continue to promote the Torfaen Innovative Teachers Community. With the new academic year beginning this Thursday, we are excited and motivated to begin a new round of VCTs for this year’s ITF and we are even more thrilled as I will begin a Peer Coaching Programme that will hopefully encourage more teachers in Torfaen to join the community, try new and innovative approaches and reap the benefits of their efforts.Alessio.