The Microsoft E2 Global Educator Exchange 2015 is a three-day educational technology event held to recognise and celebrate the achievements of educators around the world. This year’s event, which took place from 28 April to 1 May in Redmond, USA, marked one of the most diversely-represented editions of E2, bringing together 300 of the world’s most innovative educators to collaborate, create and share experiences on how technology and pedagogy can be integrated effectively to achieve 21st century learning outcomes.
In this post, Microsoft Singapore features two of the local educators selected to represent Singapore at E2, who will share their first-hand experiences at E2, and how it has empowered them to continue pushing boundaries in their quest to drive better learning outcomes.
Matt Harris, Ed.D.
Head of Learning Resources, German European School Singapore and Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert 2015
Dr Matt Harris currently leads the Learning Resources department in the German European School Singapore (GESS), where he specialises in ICT and mathematics. In addition to his teaching and administrative duties at GESS, Dr Harris works as an educational consultant for schools and ministries of education in the Middle East, Africa, North America, and Asia, and is a conference speaker and author focusing on educational topics ranging from educational technology integration and information literacy to professional development and change management. His research interests lie in the design and implementation of staff development, educational leadership, and instructional programmes that focus on improving student learning through resource allocation and usage. He is also on the Board of Directors for the International Society for Technology in Education.
Andy Ng
Teacher at St Hilda’s Primary School and Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert 2015
Andy Ng currently teaches Social Studies, Affective Education and Research Skills for the Gifted Education Programme at St Hilda’s Primary Schools (SHPS). His interests lie in the liberal arts fields of history and philosophy, critical thinking and in how technology and dialectic approaches can accentuate deeper humanities learning. Andy’s project submission for the Microsoft E2 Global Educator Exchange 2015 – Project Courage – won his team the Project Excellence Award for Building Educator Capacity.
How did you feel when you were selected to represent Singapore at the Microsoft E2 Global Educator Exchange 2015?
Matt: I felt appreciative and honoured. To be recognised as an influential educator in the field of EdTech by a company like Microsoft is pretty special, and to be honoured with a trip to the US to share experiences with such an amazing group of people was simple amazing for me. In addition, I was also really excited to be able to participate in E2, representing Singapore and the international schools here.
Andy: I had always envisioned that such conferences would be a congregation of experienced education experts with decades of experience, sharing their pearls of wisdom in a melting pot of educational excellence. As a relatively new teacher with just two years of experience, this doesn’t really put me into that ‘expert’ category. But Microsoft took a chance on me and selected me, along with two other Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts – Jenny, an experienced ICT subject head, and Dr Matt Harris, a well-known leader in the educational technology space. I felt honoured and proud to be representing Singapore on the global stage.
Tell us about the highlights of your experience at the Microsoft E2 Global Educator Exchange 2015.
Matt: The highlight for me was the opportunity to connect with educators from around the world – all of whom shared the same passion for education – and to look at some of the incredible things that they were doing globally. I’ve attended education technology conferences before and E2 succeeded in putting together one of the most diverse conferences I’ve been to with a good representative mix of people worldwide.
I also enjoyed the discussions with the Microsoft leadership team – we had many talks centered upon creating deeper connections between Microsoft products with a focus on education, and the people using it on the ground, which were invaluable for me.
It was also a joy to present at the conference. I presented from a leadership perspective, on using Minecraft, a construction based application, as a powerful learning tool to teach students to talk about issues such as social development. The eventual impact that the conference had on the 300 people that went was pretty significant as it gave people the access to resources that they did not have before. Plus, the great exchange of ideas and extent of interaction during the conference impressed me, and I hope that Microsoft continues with that in future editions.
Matt Harris (top left presenter) presenting on using Minecraft to teach students to talk about issues such as social development
Andy: I was jet-lagged for 3 days! But the experience has been a life-changing one for me, as I met like-minded people who identified with the educational goals I was striving for.
One of my conference teammates and now close friend, Lidija Kralj from Croatia, told me that she felt comforted there in the presence of like-minded educational professionals, because she knows that she’s not the only crazy one out there striving for excellence. I also found that same comfort in belonging to a fraternity of diverse educators, spurred by a common goal – to challenge the boundaries of educational possibilities. It was an uplifting experience for me and I felt blessed to be part of it.
How has technology empowered you to drive better teaching and learning outcomes?
Matt: Technology has enabled us, as a school, to reach students that don’t have the same access to quality education as we do here in Singapore. Currently, the German European School of Singapore (GESS) is engaged in a distance learning project to connect our school with the Christian German School (CDSC) in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
German secondary education in the final grades requires that students be taught by teachers who are certified in that level of teaching by German educational authorities. However, for small German schools in Southeast Asia like CDSC, it is often difficult to hire and fund enough teachers to run a full upper secondary programme. Thus, by offering the distance learning option, we helped a handful of students from CDSC join our GESS classes via Skype video conferencing. This was greatly facilitated by technology such as a real time VPN connection that can connect interactive whiteboards, video feeds and printers that are synced in real time on both ends. The technology framework facilitated group work, direct connections between students on both ends, one-to-one tutoring and academic feedback between students and teachers. The cloud-based Office 365 was also used extensively for collaboration work.
Immersing technology in the classroom setting also helps to prepare students for experiences they might get in the workforce, such as communicating across geographical boundaries via video conferencing technology. The feedback that I generally get for this is that even though this is difficult for students to pick up at the start, the students eventually get better at work because of it.
Andy: Technology enables the educator to reach not just a single student, or a single class, it empowers the educator to reach an entire generation of students, and our project at E2 – Project Courage – which won the Project Excellence Award for Building Educator Capacity, fully exemplified this.
Mooted by the desire to find out what would be the full potential of the current human race, we started Project Courage by asking students to identify and acknowledge their deepest fears and then search for ways to overcome it. The project culminated in a Skype sharing session that involved four countries, three educational levels – with students sharing their thoughts on fear and courage, before ultimately seeing that fear, and the propensity to overcome it – courage, as universal traits that binds the human race. And this empowered the educator to be a change-maker across geographical and age boundaries, expanding the influence across a whole generation of students, enabling the educator to nurture the students across space and time.
To find out more about the winners at the Microsoft E2 Global Educator Exchange 2015, head over to the Microsoft in Education blog.