Learning and Sharing in Spain and Canada

Repost from my contribution to Mindshare Learning Report, May 2014 edition:

In the past two months I’ve had access to some amazing professional learning. Here are some highlights from my travels around Canada and the world!

March started off with a bang when I flew to Barcelona, Spain, with my colleague and best friend Leah Obach, to attend Microsoft in Education Global Forum. This 4-day event brought together 1100 teachers, school leaders, and education leaders from 75 countries. Leah and I were there to share our collaborative project, Little Hands Extended. We attended fantastic keynote sessions, participated in a 24 hour Learn-a-thon where we developed innovative projects with teachers from all over the world, and celebrated at a gala evening. To learn more, view my video and check out the Microsoft Educator Network! 

 I was home for two weeks, then it was off to National Congress on Rural Education in Saskatoon, SK. My school principal, Brenda Masson, and I presented on our Smart Start Kindergarten program, and took in some terrific professional learning sessions. Highlights included: Jade Ballek and Terry Epp’s session on 21st century learning competencies clearly detailed how their school division is putting pedagogy first. They shared some terrific resources on 21st learning and innovation, connecting through Skype in the Classroom, and using infographics in education.

Kimberly Schonert Reichl’s keynote presentation on educating the heart and mind to develop emotional intelligence shared important connections to academic and interpersonal success. She encouraged teachers to access video resources from the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education, teach mindfulness with the Mind Up! Program from the Hawn Foundation, and infuse social-emotional learning throughout curricula with resources from CASEL.

April brought a fantastic ed tech conference in my home province of Manitoba. Manitoba Teachers’ Society’s Awakening Possibilities gave Leah Obach and I the opportunity to share about project-based learning and the tech tools that support it, while taking in some inspiring sessions. Steve Dembo set the tone for the conference with his keynote message that encouraged teachers and schools to take pride in being first. Dembo stated that cutting edge, innovative teachers and schools are often regarded as crazy but we should wear that crazy label like a badge of honour—the rest will come around soon enough! Dembo also shared some fun and useful tech tools, such as 1 Second Everyday app.

Attending Kathy Cassidy’s session Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades was an excellent reminder of how ICT tools coupled with strong pedagogy create and support digital learners. Blogs, Twitter, and Skype are Kathy’s go-to tools, and digital citizenship is interwoven throughout learning experiences. Mystery Number Skype, blogging to create digital portfolios, movie-making, and shared reading of blog comments/tweets develop important numeracy and literacy skills in Kathy’s Grade 1 classroom. Kathy suggested Edublogs and Kidblog as two great tools for early years teachers interested in blogging with their students.

Other great takeaways from Awakening Possibilities:
* Nadia Nevieri explained how her school has revitalized morning announcements with engaging video announcements. Learn more here!
* Erin Clarke presented on the many uses of Instagram in early years classrooms 
* Raman Job shared iPhone photo tips and tools: Haiku Deck for presentations, Snapseed and Tangled FX for editing pics, Touch Blur to protect student privacy, and Quipio and Phonto for creating and sharing text over images (memes/quotations).

Chris Lehmann, founding principal of the Scientific Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, ended two incredible days of learning with a riveting closing keynote. His most important points that I felt compelled to tweet:
* Collaboration means doing things differently because we are doing them together.
* Technology should be like oxygen. Ubiquitous, invisible, and everywhere.
* A vision without a plan is nothing more than a hallucination.

And now comes the challenging part—sifting through all these wonderful ideas and tools and deciding how I will use them to affect change in my classroom and school community! Off to Riding the Wave of Change in Gimli, Manitoba, this week, so stay tuned as I tweet from that conference.

A look back at a life-changing experience....Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum 2012

As we start a new year, we want to take time to reflect on our incredible teaching and learning journey in 2012.  We also wanted to collate some samples documenting our experience of sharing the Little Hands, Big World project at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum.  The PiLGF in Prague, Czech Republic proved to be an exciting close to 2012, and it continues to provide momentum as we return to our classrooms after the holidays.

After connecting with teachers and seeing evidence of the powerful learning that students are engaged in around the world, it is evident that changes in education are underway.  Many learners are being challenged and engaged with interdisciplinary, personalized, student-directed learning experiences.  More than ever before, students are taking charge of their learning as they create solutions to real-world problems and function as agents of change in their homes and communities. The richness and diversity of the projects at the forum was inspiring, yet in the diversity there was an even greater commonality–innovative teachers and students working together as part of a greater whole! The sense of community we experienced with our fellow educators at the forum proved to be a wave that we are still riding–communicating with new Facebook friends and still sending out the odd #PILGF tweet to prove that we’re still connected! It was an experience of a lifetime that is impossible to convey to someone unless they have participated in a global forum, and the bonds that form are very strong!

Our school facilities are slower to respond to the needs of 21st century learners and educators. But we were energized to peek through a window to see the schools that are being redesigned to better promote these rich learning experiences. In turn, as they make use of new classrooms, schools, and tech tools, teachers are encouraged to rethink their approaches to teaching.

We enjoyed sharing our students’ work at the forum and we were delighted to be awarded First Runners Up in Extended Learning Beyond the Classroom.



We look forward to 2013 being another challenging and engaging year for us and for our students.

New Dehli TV Video of Forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw9ZhsWv9Ng
Microsoft PiL Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Pj4Qjic4DcA
Awards Gala Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6vIelcr1fg
Flickr Stream from Global Forum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/90351558@N06/