This is the eighth in a
series of ten posts about my experience last week at the 2009 Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum in
Vienna.
As far as I’m concerned
everyone who was invited to last week’s event was a winner – after all that’s
the reason they were at the event in the first place. ts still very difficult
for me to work out how the judges were able to assess innovation across the 30+
countries particularly with such large socio-economic differences across Europe.
However, the judges did
come up with some winner and I’ve written about them below.
Category A: Innovation in ICT Usage
First place: Serbia, Slavica Juric, The story
about bread
This Serbian project involved a whole week
learning about bread. The children were in upper primary and as well as making
movies and taking photographs the project included a visit to the local bread museum
and even the local ‘grandmothers’
were invited into the school canteen to help with the bread production!
Second place: Bulgaria, Krasimira Dimitrova, Journey
through Bulgaria.
In this project teachers and their students
from a number of different towns and villages in Bulgaria presented their home area
in an original way.
It was up to the individual school what they
decided to research, for example some chose landscape, some chose accents and
some chose local heroes. The only real requirement was that the schools had to
use technology, the research had to be ‘local’ and projects had to develop social
as well as technological skills.
The final product was a rich collection of
electronic content including presentations, video files, web sites, photo
stories and paintings. The collection were burnt onto DVD disk and further results
from this collaborative project can be seen in www.itlearning-bg.net
Third place: Slovakia, Pallo
Peter, Nature Explorers
This project aimed at 9-10 years olds set
out to develop a positive relationship between children, their local environment
and nature. The whole project is based on idea of using new media to revive first pages of a
Science textbook.
Category B: Innovation in Community
First place:UK, Ollie Bray, Thinking out of the XBOX
This was are Musselburgh Cluster Guitar Hero
Transition Project – more details here, if I’ve not board you with it already!
Second place: Sweden, Anna Ljunqvist, The Paperless Classroom
I spent a long time chatting to Anna on the
last day of the Forum. I was really interested in her project that involved the
use of Tablet PC in the schools and extensive use of onenote. One of the
reasons I was so interested in it was that I felt that Anna’s school were at a similar
stage in developing the use of tablet technology as my good friends Ian and
Andy on Islay High School. I’m hoping that the two schools might be
able to link up in some way. Particularly as both Andy (from Islay)
and Anna (from Sweeden) are English teachers.
Third place: UK, Mandeep
Atwal, Young Voices
Again I’ve already written about this, more
details about Mandeep’s
project here.
Category C: Innovation in Content
First place: Belgium, Isabel Schapdryver, Secondhandshop
In this project pupils with server learning
and physical disabilities worked together to run a virtual second hand shop.
Second place: Northern Ireland, David Stinson,
Pupil E-portfolio
I had dinner with David one of the nights
that we were away and he really has got a great project and an even better
imagination! During his project David’s students developed ePortfolios using onenote.
The ePortfolio topic that they developed the tasks around was the construction of
a mini rock band stage! (I could see some instant links with our Guitar Hero
Project).
As well as teaching some core skills including
construction and electronics I was really impressed how individual and unique
each of the student projects were – despite following the same design
specification. Great work and further proof that OneNote is a fantastic bit of
kit!
Third place: Greece, Diplaris Dimitriou, From
Newton to CERN
This project uses a variety of software and
web-based resources including Microsoft World Wide
Telescope to teach 15 – 17 years olds about particle physics, electromagnetism
and astronomy.
Special Award
First place: The Netherlands, Andrea Brauns, Sound Lottery
This project used the Interactive whiteboard to teacher very young children about the sounds that animals made.
All of these projects can be viewed in more detail within the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum - free to join. But you have to sign up.
Comments