Lean on me. That’s what the CEduAD team is all about: we lean on each other, not because any of us are in need but because we want to make each other stronger.

 

Read the rest at Connected Educator Appreciation Day’s latest blog post. We are hosting our annual event on Saturday the 19th. Check us out and maybe drop by!

When I first received my invite to join a TweetMeet with #MSFTEduChat and @MicrosoftEdu, I was excited. The excitement only seemed to grow as time passed and I engaged with the other co-hosts and learned how to best organise and run an event like this.

The images below are a good outline of what was organised for us. The team at #MSFTEduChat really know their stuff and if you ever have an opportunity to work with them, they will help you be your best self for the event.

The goal of the event was engagement, not self-promotion, not corporate promotion, but engagement: get educators sharing; highlight wonderful ideas; encourage conversations; follow people who are interesting, to encourage their PLN to grow! Our job was not to say how great Microsoft is (though it’s pretty good for teachers and learners) or to wax lyrical about any one product that is offered by a company (though plenty of that occurred naturally too: I am still partial to OneNote), our job was to get others to talk, and talk they did.

By the tallies we received, there were over 2 600 comments that featured in the TweetMeet and over 300 participants, both are increases on last month! What an amazing crowd to bring together and nurture. I can’t wait to see and hear about what some of the participants get up to, in the coming school year.

Follow @MicrosoftEdu; search for #MSFTEduChat on Twitter so you can stay up to date on what is coming for connected educators, like you, and connect with others; have a look at the Wakelet that was made of all the links from the event, it might take you a while to get through that one; or you can check out the Wakelet that the co-hosts helped populate; and last, but not least, is the Super Sway outlining everything about this event!

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you at the next TweetMeet.

Holidays can be a godsend after a long year of work. Escaping the routine of coffee, breakfast, work, coffee, home, coffee, sleep can be an invigorating and sometimes necessary event. But when the holidays are complete, where do you start?

• Your classroom is empty;
• the walls are bare;
• you have your class list and details from last year;
• you have the curriculum guidance and a list of texts;
• the staff room is stocked with coffee, never forget the coffee.

Do you start with the physical environment: make it engaging and bright, friendly and exciting? Do you start with the organisation of the learners: who is in what group; who will sit where; which books do you want? Do you start with the planning, ensuring that the first days back are full of engaging activities? Do you plan with another teacher? Do you plan with classroom assistants or visiting specialists? Do you reach out to parents before planning? Do you wait until the learners arrive and begin the year together?

So many questions, so little time?

On the 20th of August, I have the distinct pleasure of sharing ideas about the transition between break-time, the holiday, and learning. I will be co-hosting Microsoft Edu’s TweetMeet, with 15 other international educators. We look forward to discussing, with you, ideas about what we do when preparing for this new beginning with a new group of learners.

The format will be a question and answer session that you can follow on Twitter, with the hashtag #MSFTEduChat or #backtoshool. Drop by at 6pm BST, click the link to convert to your time zone, and jump in. The goal is to have a cooperative session where all answers can be read, shared and explored.

For more information, check out our Super Sway! For links about the resources some of the co-hosts use, check out our Super Wakelet. For other information from Microsoft, about this event, check out their Super Education Blog.

We would all love to have you because if you don’t show up and share, we won’t be able to learn from you. I know one of my favourite things to do in all the world is learn.

I have had the pleasure of working with Tim McDonald for some time now, and we have explored many ideas with regard to connections. Lately, Tim has begun writing about fear and is developing a book, “Creating a Healthy Relationship with Fear”.

Tim has taken an interesting approach to this by reaching out to his contacts, and asking for their input, in order to build a grand idea of what fear means to different people and how we each deal with or relate to our fears. 

I had the pleasure to talk with Tim on this point and shared my experience of living in fear as a child growing up in the school system. I continued with this, to discuss how I broke the bonds that held me in place, when I was a young adult. 

In addition to this opportunity to share, Tim co-hosted, with Ayelet Baron, a thought-provoking conversation on fear on a platform called Connectle. The focus of the talk was about how the participants had positively engaged with fear and how they support others to do so. It was interesting in the way that it clearly highlighted fear as a fabcrication of the mind and that it is something that the mind can engage with and relate to. A key take away was that fear can be a roadblock to progress or a boost to fire our actions. Click here to check out Connectle and view the conversation when it is shared, on the 9th of August.  

One perspective that was not discussed by the panel was that of a child. All of the participants had the adult perspective locked and confidently shared what, as adults, we can do to come to terms with fears that are part of our lives, but children do not have some of the luxuries or tools at their disposal that adults do. I offered some ideas to think about, in the text chat, and was invited to appear on camera.

I asked about the following situations:

• the child who is forced to go to a place of fear 5 days a week for 7 hours a day;
• the child who lives in that fear and does not change or challenge it because of the possibility of it worsening should they speak out;
• the child who knows things will get worse if they challenge the current circumstance
• the child who does not have a voice because of physical or mental limitations, so the adults and peers do not know their thoughts and feelings.

These situations are harrowing, and adults have the responsibility to step in and support. This responsibility does not fall only to adults who work regularly with children but could be something as innocuous as a smile to a child as they get on the bus; a question of support when a child walks with head down and shoulders slumped, or another acknowledgement of some kind. Children have not had the range of experiences adults have and therefore have, generally, not been able to develop the skills and experiences adults have to relate to fear. So, help them to develop.

Be a positive influence to othetrs around you by being open to change; show that change need not be such a major source of fear. Be the person who listens to enable and encourage others, who are stuck, to find their path rather than being the one who has all the answers and will solve all the problems. Model relating to fear, model it in your day to day life and in your interactions with others, regardless of status or age.

I enjoyed talking with Tim and the others on the panel and look forward to opportunities to talk and share ideas, in the future.

Connections, they are probably one of the strongest forces for change in a community or career: knowing someone who does something differently and has had great success with it is a strong catalyst for you to try it. Word of mouth from a friend or colleague can resonate more strongly that research alone, when referring to new strategies, practices or resources.

I have had the great pleasure of being an organiser of the first annual connected educator appreciation day. The day has been a few years old as a concept and finally took form and gained momentum this past summer time with a team of 4 exceptional leaders of change:

• Tim MacDonald, a community manager extraordinaire (hailing from the USA) @tamcdonald;
• Cassie Reeder, former teacher turned education consultant and co-organiser of EdChange Global (also from the USA) @cassiereederedu;
• Vlatka Butkovic, school director and web designer (from Croatia) @Butkovicedu;
• and me, Michael Sinclair, also a former educator turned education consultant (from Scotland).

We are the team who took an idea of connecting educators, much like a community manager would, and sharing experiences and skill sets with anyone wanting to learn. The initial idea came from William Jenkins and Andrea Tolley, who sadly were not able to join us on the breakneck speed process of planning a global professional development event; one that was by, for and about educators.

The topics that were discussed were:

• Encouraging Change in the Classroom: Planning and Practice
• Using Technology to Connect Outside the Classroom
• The Role of a Technology Ambassador
• Gamification in the Classroom
• Promoting your Skill Set
• Using New Technology Effectively in the Classroom
• STEAM for the Classroom
• Training Teachers in Schools

Each session lasted about 55 minutes and had hosts, panellists and attendees engaged with a range of relevant questions for teachers, now, in the classroom. The educators who were present were a diverse group from locations around the world: India, United States, Argentina, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sweden, Croatia, Kuwait, Romania, United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, Yemen, Tunisia, Spain, Nigeria, Jordan, Germany, Colombia. I cannot truly express the wonder and excitement I felt when I could see and hear of the experiences and ideas that were expressed about the important of relationships for learners and educators; the importance of mutual trust when building the relationships and the importance of using technology as a tool to support learning not the focus of the learning.

We are slowly polishing the videos from the event and will release them weekly with the end goal of hosting shorter, hour, sessions once a month to maintain connections and build new ones. You can check them out on our YouTube Channel. If you were a participant or attendee, we would love you thoughts on our blog, if you aren’t a member of the site yet, sign up and we’ll give you access. Search for our tweets at #CEduAD on Twitter, or follow us at @ConEduAD. Additionally, you can like our Facebook page.

I hope you will join us again, or for the first time, for one of our future events.

For the past few months, I have found myself part of an amazing team that has brought together educators from 6 of the 7 continents in the world, unfortunately everyone in Antarctica was busy.

Tomorrow the 20th of October, is when we, Tim McDonald, Vlatka Butkovic, Cassie Reeder and myself will see the fruits of our labour. Connected Educator Appreciation Day sees its first annual event launched tomorrow, starting at 10am EST (with a 30 minute warm-up at 9:30).

We have designed 8 sessions, each with 2 hosts, all around the theme of connected educators and learning. The goal of this 8 hour event is to learn and share:

• what have we done to connect that has been successful, what did we do to nurture and grow that success, how we encouraged others to experience their own success or share in ours;
• what challenges have we faced, if we overcame them and how, if we didn’t, what steps did we take;
• who have we met, what impact they had, what they shared, how they shared it – to encourage us to experience something similar to them;
• what’s next?

There are no salespeople talking, though we might share what we have used and there are no experts professing to have all the answers despite a few people having a wealth of success and experience. We are all learners and we, the connected ones, have no desire to stop learning.

Come join us at Connected Educator Awareness Day, you just might have the experience or knowledge to share, which someone else is looking for to take the next step on their learning journey. Come listen, because someone else might have exactly what you need. Come experience, to help the learners under your care engage in the 21st century learning they need for our current fast paced, high tech world.

Have a look at this image. 

It’s a pretty standard worksheet, no bells or whistles, just practice of arithmetic*. What I would like you to think about is what you do with it. Of course, you mark it as it has been marked, or something similar, and probably record the results. Maybe you don’t mark them wrong the same way, make your ticks are different. The question is, then what? Does it go back to the learner to correct? Does it get filed into a binder or glued into a notebook? Do you take a digital image of it and store it on the cloud? Do you file it away in a folder for reports or consultation evenings / afternoons? Maybe you think this is a starting point and they will get better with more exposure to teaching or practice in your class.

But maybe, you could use it to inform the learner’s next steps and yours!

Come again? You may say, this is one sheet in a two week plan that I have. This is only one of many pieces of practice that I have planned for addition within 20. How on earth do you expect me to change my plan now? I have deadlines, and targets, and 29 other learners in the class.

Let’s look at the page again, with some annotations this time. 

The annotations, when brought together, might inform you of the following:

• Addition up to 10 seems OK.
• Doubles seem to be known but perhaps not understood.
• ’10’ does not seem to be counted for sums more than 10.
• I need to talk with the learner about 10 and beyond

Would this be cause to begin your plan again? Well, no, but I hope it would encourage you to look at your next steps to see how you can incorporate a way of showcasing misconceptions like the ones on the worksheet in future lessons. You might miss your deadline, you might, but think about the positive benefits for the learners in your care; think about the positive benefits for you, when you go on to explore subtraction, or other ideas, and you needn’t worry (as much) about similar misconceptions occurring again? Is that worth an extra day or two? I hope so. And, who knows, you might even be able to incorporate exploring the misconceptions within your initial plan without missing a beat.

By approaching practice as more than an exercise in displaying understanding but also a way to gather information for future learning, you can improve both your experience in the classroom, as a guide, and that of the learners with whom you work.

A wise lecturer in math once asked my first year class a great question: what is mathematics? After a number of attempts, the response that came closest, in her mind, was, the study of patterns. As an educator, I feel it is my job to find patterns in learning, which often come from patterns in mistakes. As an educator in math, I feel it is one of my main goals to encourage an awareness of patterns in a) the larger world and b) in the abstract world of forms and figures.

Take the time to do more than mark correct or incorrect! Look for the patterns! Be a mathematician!

*The worksheet was made and shared on OneNote so as to not waste paper and allow me to keep all learner efforts organised and shareable with the home. All feedback here is available to learners and their families wherever they have an internet connection.