Microsoft E2 Education Exchange
Conference
On
Wednesday I "attended" a webcast of the opening session of Day 2 of
the E2 conference in Toronto, Canada. I had heard of this
conference through Facebook of all places. I was happily surprised to see
that it was happening while I was on spring break so I thought "why not,
don't have anything else to do" (of course, that's not really true but we
will go with it!). The agenda looked interesting for someone who is interested
in integrating more technology into curriculum. This post is a summary of
what was on topic for this opening session.
Opening
The
session opened with Anthony Salcito the Vice President of Microsoft Education.
He led us through the progression of technology integration in education
through the years. He discussed four basic eras in this recent
progression;
1.
Innovators- the pioneer teachers that first implemented technology into
the classroom and through the startup of computer labs in schools.
2. Broader
Scope- where all students became digital with the increase of smartphones,
tablets and many schools going to the 1-1 concept.
3.
Scale-back- a time when we realized we were teaching a lot of tech
separate from other content and realize the two were not meshing well.
Time to take a step back and figure out how to get both aligned together.
and now we are in
4: using technology to drive learning outcomes, change of mindset to outcome
based.
Salcito used a great analogy to explain how we have envisioned education.
He compared education to the railroad. Everyone moving in the same
direction, at the same pace. But where have railroads gone? At one
time the railroad was a huge industry. But now they aren't as prominent.
Salcito pointed out that railroads were too focused on railroads and not
on transportation. Then along came planes, automobiles, ships, etc.
Other modes of transportation took the railroads thunder. His point
was we should look at education like transportation. All modes are
important and achieve the goal they just do it in different ways. For
education to be successful we need to move from a one mode fits all to allowing
for different modes to achieve the same goal. In my opinion that was a
great analogy. Using technology will allow these different modes to be
explored and used successfully.
Salcito
also showed a quote, "Your students learn without you." He
pointed out that some teachers may take offense to that. But he pointed
out that today's students have so much access available at their fingertips
they can learn anywhere at any time. It will be our job to focus and
direct students so they can use the technology in a constructive manner.
He concluded his
opening by stating we should “Empower Every Student on the Planet to Achieve
More."
Engaging Students in Service
Learning
The
next session was led by Craig Kielburger of We.org. He started this
student service oriented program back when he was still in school. The
program is now available in many countries and have adopted the theme WE ARE
ONE. Schools and students engaged in this program identify and search to
solve real world problems such as bullying, lack of drinking water in
underdeveloped countries, global warming and other projects where students can
do service for others. They follow up every year with a WE ARE ONE
convention where students who have participated in the service projects are
invited to this celebration. Representatives from Queen of Heaven School
presented a brief explanation of projects they had worked on in the year.
Empowering Students Through
Minecraft
The
third session was about Empowering Students Through Minecraft hosted by Meenoo
Rami who leads the team at Microsoft in charge of Minecraft Education.
This group has prepared lesson plans that go along with different content
areas using the Minecraft application. Students solve real world problems
as they progress through the Minecraft game.
Transforming Learning Using Emotion-Aware
Devices
The
next session was hosted by Daniel McDuff as the spoke of using Emotion Aware
Devices to assess whether students are understanding or struggling with
information. He gave an overview of facial recognition software that
reads facial expressions and gestures and then analyzes the emotions detected.
The tests showed students who had enabled web cams that were fed into the
system that read these nonverbal cues. Teachers could then assess, by
facial expression or gesture, whether the students were struggling with the
information. This would allow for reviewing the material or allowing the
student to move on. He did point out that this program would be great for
students who are learning through distance learning where the teacher does not
have as much one on one contact with the student.
The Best of OneNote
My
favorite session was next. The use of OneNote. I know that is on my
computer but we have not been trained in how to use it so basically it just
sits there waiting for me to have time to play and find out what is available.
Mike Tholfsen hosted this session by giving us his 10 favorite new things
about One Note
1. Stickers-
Microsoft has added stickers that teachers can attach to student work.
They are even customizable!
2. Class
Notebooks work with most LMS's (including CANVAS which my school has
purchased). They can be integrated so information is easily transferred
between the notebook and LMS.
3. Items such as
videos, quizzes, SWAY, and SoundCloud can now be embedded into notebooks.
4. Wiki
tables are now customization and create auto-links to student pages so the
teacher does not have to create links themselves to each page.
5. Staff
Notebooks are now available for meetings, PLC's, etc. They can be created
by administration and team leaders.
6. Class
Notebooks can be exported so students can have work that is in their
portfolios.
7. Learning
tools on the web have been created to link subject to research. The
example he used for this was if a student was doing research on the Bay of Pigs
and he had started a paper. He could highlight the word "pigs"
and take it to Bing and paste it in the search and Bing would know to only pull
of info on the Bay of Pigs and not the animal. Personally, I thought that
was cool!
8. Fun with
Ink Application: this app is available in the store that give students
and teachers more ink choices when creating projects. He featured rainbow
ink that wrote words in a variety of colors.
9.
Reversible Ink: this application would reverse what was written.
It is like rewinding a video. He showcased this with math problems
that if a student didn't understand the process, the teacher could back up and
show again without having to erase and rewrite.
10. Ink to Math; this
app is awesome for math teachers and students. This allows a problem to
be written down. If needed it can be copied and pasted into the tutorial
and the tutorial would show the steps in completing the problem. It also
has a graphing option.
A
bonus app Tholsfen gave was called Write Ideas. This app is still in the
testing phase but when it is unveiled it will help students organize thoughts
for writing. It asks them questions about what they want the plot to be,
etc. Then after questions are answered it generates an outline to help
the student get started writing.
Tholsfen concluded by sharing how OneNote can pair co-teachers with
students. This is especially helpful with special education students that
may not want a special ed teacher hovering over them in front of other
students. This application allows the teacher to see the students screen
from a remote location and they can give prompts to help a struggling student
through the OneNote application.
Salcito
returned to close out the session. At this point they were a bit behind
so he started going through his final thoughts very quickly. I had a
little trouble keeping up with what he was saying. Most of the people in
the conference were veteran users of the Microsoft applications so he was
breezing over the topics. Here are a few things I could get.
1. The
"Surface" device will now have something called Mental Canvas where a
2D drawing can be created and it will turn it into a 3D.
2.
PowerPoint now has a quick start presentation available for many topics.
You can search a topic such as space exploration and a PPT presentation
will be created with pictures and outline to help get students or teachers
started. It doesn't put in information but it comes formatted with
appropriate background and gives suggestions on what type of information should
be included.
3. Educator
Community for those teachers who want to learn more about how Microsoft has
created apps and programs specifically for educators.
4. Video
Breakdown. There is a new program that breaks down aspects of video.
You could do a search through your video file for a person and it will
find the video and show you where it’s located within the video. He
pointed out that this would be great for review for students if they are trying
to review a video that had been played in class but they didn't know the name
of the video.
So,
there you have it. A rundown on the E2 conference. I believe Mr.
Salcito mentioned that the video would be archived on their site for about 90
after the conference if you are interested in watching it yourself.
