Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Forum (2 of 5): The Teachers

I’m a big believer in the social web as a way to communicate and to collaborate. But I also like face to face contact as well - I'm very much a people's person. The Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Forum in Reading was a good opportunity to meet some really enthusiastic teachers from other parts of the UK and also to meet the Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Team.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the award winning projects from the notes that I made on Friday. If you want to find out more information you can view the completed Virtual Classroom Tours within the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Community.

Asian Tsunami by James Kent (Croseceliog Comprehensive School, Wales)

James’s project was about the Asian Tsunami (but you could use any theme if you wanted to). It involved training up older children who would then introduce and coach younger children to the topic and new software. James’s classes used Microsoft OneNote to collaborate around the production of newspaper article.

James also described how he had introduced the Tsunami topic by using Deep Zoom. Where he started zoomed right into an Indonesian Beach and asked the class what they thought was happening. As he zoomed out of the image in stages the class’s perception of the image and what was happening changed. The final completed imaged showed the chaos caused by the Boxing Day wave.

How we see by Grainne McGuigan (Bowring Community College)

Bowing Community College is one of the UK’s Schools of the Future and moves to its new campus after the summer holidays. Its also one of 12 schools worldwide which are part of the Microsoft Innovative Schools Network (website) - their video tells the story better and is worth a look.

Grainne’s project was about discovery time where the whole school participates in a project at the same time. In the case of Grainne’s VCT it was to do with a project that she had led on ‘how we see’. I was really interested in this idea – particular as all staff were required to lead pupils at the same level of learning. For example English teachers were also required to complete the eye dissection exercise.

I think I’d like to visit Bowring Community College when they re-open as a school of the future after the summer. 

Young Voices by Mandeep Atwal (Shirelands College)

Mandeep’s project used a sharepoint online virtual learning platform to increase religious, cultural awareness and sensitivity within the school and local community. The websites that the students created were available to be access by parents at home.

This strikes me as project that could be replicated within GLOW – so I’m looking forward to speaking to Mandeep about her project in more detail.

 

Interactive Revision by Chris Henderson (Saltash.net)

Chris had a nice project where he had used Photosynth to create a 3D replica of his room. He had also used a number of other web two tools (including bubbl.us) to help students revise for their examinations. This included making up revision songs and getting students to listen to them on their mobile phones.

 

The History of the School by Simon Downing (Saltash.net)

This project involved working with a selection of Gifted and Talented pupils to research the history of the school. The students then produced podcasts and photostories that became available of the school website. You can view them here.

House of the Future by James Allen (West Monmouth Comprehensive, Wales)

James’ project looked at building a sustainable house of the future out of a cardboard box. The class then used photostory and photosynth to present their houses to the rest of the class.

 

Natural World by Sarah Richardson, Medi James and Alex Edwards (Pontnewydd Primary Schoo, Wales)

Sarah, Medi and Alex all ran a similar project within the school but with different age groups of children. Which is a really interesting idea and it will be fascinating to see how the project evolves if they continue to repeat the project each year. The main aim of the project is to show pupils the importance of taking care of the environment, how it feels when something important is lost and how they can help to sustain the environment.

The children research the environment and a build a mini environmental model over a number of days. They record their findings as they go by taking photographs and audio using photostory. On the sixth day the teacher replaces their environment with buildings (lego) and rubbish. This is then used as a context for learning and the children talk about how they feel about this.

 

Japan by Suzie Allen (Saltash.net)

Suzie’s project was rich task activity based around Japan. It looked really fun to do and children used a variety of applications including Movie Maker and Photostory to record their experiences.

I must look into paper sumo wrestling in more detail!

 

Other Points

• You will notice that three of the above projects come from Saltash.net. Saltash.net is the new name for the Saltash Community College. They changed the name to saltash.net least year to reflect the schools specialism in ICT. The school has also embedded the use of Microsoft VCT’s within is model for continuing professional development. A nice idea to encourage collaboration between departments.

• One of the other things that you might notice about the UK Innovative Teacher finalists is that three of the VCT’s comes from Wales (well done Wales) and only one comes from Scotland (come on Scotland!)

• Finally, and this isn’t as obvious, out of the nine secondary VCT’s submitted. Three of them were submitted by Geography Teachers! (Nice one geographers!)

Comments

[Alan Parkinson]

Thanks for the update Ollie. As we know, geographers are the best, and well done once again for winning the trip to Vienna.