Cultural Diversity - Global Collaboration

Inspired by friend, SMART Exemplary Educator & Google Certified Innovator Danesa Menge from California, USA and her class last year about cultural diversity, where they need a hand from my students with information about Anne Frank I was wanted to do more with this particular topic. With my global citizenship class I decided that they would create a SMART amp workspace for classes from abroad sharing information about our cultural diversity and cultural heritage. On the Global Collaboration G+ Group I made a call for teachers that would like to collaborate with my students. Within a day teachers from South-Korea, Czech Republic, Chile and several parts from the USA responded. Very powerful.
At the time that I'm creating this blog, classes from different parts of the world are adding content about their cultural diversity to the SMART amp workspace and are learning from others. To be continued ...

Seoul, South Korea

Oakdale, CA

Post-modern kolonialisme?

Mijn bezoek in Suriname heeft soms een vreemde nasmaak of een gevoel van hedendaags kolonialisme, waarbij ik (de alwetende blanke) een vorm van ontwikkelingssamenwerking opstart, maar er nog weinig sprake is van SAMENwerking, omdat ik het niet afmaak. Via de president van SMART Technologies - Greg Estell - heb ik voor de lerarenopleiding in Suriname en in het bijzonder de faculteit geografie een interactive flatpanel van SMART Technologies geregeld (zie deze blogpost). Ik moet dan denken aan een geografisch begrip: dualisme, waarbij het gevoel meespeelt dat in een ontwikkelingsland als Suriname het onderwijs nooit de kwaliteit zou kunnen hebben als dat van Nederland, terwijl ze tegelijkertijd een mooi nieuw stukje technologie hebben. Uit ervaring weet ik al dat dit onzin is en het onderwijs net zo goed is (who am I to judge), maar het gaat om de beeldvorming. Die wil en moet ik bijstellen. Voor mezelf, maar vooral ook voor mijn eigen leerlingen. En ik snap ook dat ze er bijzonder blij mee zijn, maar het voelt ook een beetje als post-modern kolonialisme of betutteling. Dat gevoel krijg ik moeilijk weg.
Misschien moest ik maar snel weer teruggaan om het ook af te maken en de mensen er daar mee te leren werken en de kracht van een touch panel en SMART Notebook te laten ervaren en de toekomstige docenten een meer gevulde gereedschapskist mee te geven. Al was het maar om de buitenwereld makkelijker naar binnen te krijgen ... creating global learners. But then again, mag ik verwachten en ervan uit gaan dat daar behoefte aan is?

Het Instituut voor de Opleiding van Leraren op het Anton de Kom Universiteit-complex.

[28 februari 2016] Afstemming over de verzending van het interactive flatpanel tussen SMART Technologies en het IOL is spoedig verlopen en was binnen een week of twee afgehandeld in Calgary, Canada. Maar, zoals verwacht gaat de inklaring op z'n Surinaams. En dat is geen oordeel, maar een feit. Gebaseerd op ervaringen van m'n schoonouders, die er bijna drie jaar hebben gewoond, en van mezelf tijdens mijn eigen korte verblijf aldaar.
[30 maart 2016] Van het SMART Board is in Suriname nog niks vernomen, maar het vertrouwen is er bij het IOL iig wel dat het goed zal komen. :)
[29 april 2016] Het SMART Board is inmiddels in Suriname, maar nog niet gearriveerd bij het IOL. Het SMART Board was eerder aangeboden op naam van de Anton de Kom Universiteit ipv het instituut voor de Opleiding van Leraren en momenteel is de douane op zoek naar een import-export nummer van het IOL.
[7 mei 2016] Het SMART Board is gearriveerd op lokatie. Nu moet worden bepaald welk lokaal voor de faculteit geografie is en waar het nieuwe SMART Board dus komt te hangen. En moet men op zoek naar een deskundige om het interactive flat panel op te hangen. En is er ook nog geen stroomvoorziening in de lokalen. ;)

Wordt vervolgd ...

Colaboración global

I was invited to do a sessions about setting up a global collaboration project at the teacher training university in Madrid. The university that friend and SMART Exemplary Educator Sergio Cabezas teaches educational and instructional technology to ( new) teachers. Each weekend the Universuty organizes voluntary periodic training sessions for students and I was asked to do such a session. Amazing.
The day before the actual session we were at the office of Lab Possible, where I should share my presentation with a few emplyees and especially with the interpretor that was about to translate everything that I was going to say during my 8-hour session the day after, due to the fact that some Spanish students had a difficulty to follow a session in English. Fair enough. So, she needed to know what my session was about in order to translate in real time as quickly as she could.

I started with good practices from my own experience from the past few years that Ie done global collaboration projects with classes from around the globe and after that I shared on how to set up a collaboration project with the use of SMART amp: either within your domain, cross domain or - if the partner school doesn have a Google Apps for Education account - how you can still add them to your domain in order to use SMART amp.

Students contributions to the SMART Notebook lesson using 'shout it out'

The main thing is of course the pedagogic value that you as a teacher are aiming for and want your students to gain from such a project. When collaborating together, make sure that you as a teacher remark the students with the basic principle that collaborating with each other is based on equality. Especially when collaborating with students from other countries make sure that students have these two things in mind:

1. reciprocity 

and

2. equivalence 

In order to gain global awareness and actually learn something from the project, students need to have an open mind and shoudn't be judging the other team or school they are working on.


These students have worked very hard and it was the best group of teachers to work with ever. They were very engaged en they knew so much education technology and did use it during their presentations without my help! Amazing. Sergio and his team did a great job! These future teachers will undoubtly make a difference for their future students. Good for you Spain! Take a look at a few results created by the students:

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And my presentation that I used with students' contributions:

Collaboracionglobal from Boris Berlijn

Rewind 2015

This past year was - professional wise - a very good year. At the beginning of 2015 I was invited to do a talk for new students (6th graders) and their parents about future education and at my school was selected to speak at BETT (London, UK) with friend and SMART Exemplary Educator Emil Waldhauser about the Global Collaboration projects we did with our classes. Throughout the year I did some other presentations during the 'week van de mediawijsheid' (digital footprint week) at two schools in our community and a presentation about SMART Notebook and interactive whiteboards at at a geography teachers conference. And at last but not least I made it to the European part of the EdTech team ... How about that?

I also was selected to attend SMART amp Champs (Madrid, Spain) and the global SEE Summit (Calgary, Canada) with friend and colleague Henk-Jan van Mierlo amongst many others whom I got to meet again at these SMART professional development conferences which were amazing and gained me a lot. I even got the chance to speak at a staff meeting at SMART HQ which gained me SMART kapp iQ for my SMART Collaborative Classroom. Very happy with that!

Besides the use of education technology in my classroom such as the multiple SMART Boards, the new kapp iQ, 1:1 iPads, SMART amp and Google Classroom I did a few field trips with my classes. The trips to SEE Cédric Mainil in Belgium and to Emil Waldhauser in the Czech Republic were the best. I introduced LEGO in my classroom, and am just getting started with that ... al this passes by in this short video that I created. Enjoy.

KNAGdag 2015

Afgelopen vrijdag de 13e m'n interactieve presentatie gedaan over de didactische meerwaarde en inzet van het digitale schoolbord bij het aardrijkskundeonderwijs op de KNAGdag, welke als thema 'Toekomst' had. De onderwijsdag voor leraren aardrijkskunde werd gehouden in theater Cinemec in Ede. Samen met twee collega's aardrijkskunde van het Ashram College ben ik afgereisd naar Ede om m'n presentatie te houden. Er waren ruim 800 aardrijkundedocenten, waaronder een aantal oude bekenden en zelfs m'n eigen oud-leraar van de lerarenopleiding: Jaap van Eekeren.

Aan het werkbord: De SMART kapp iQ.

Vanwege de grote hoeveelheid aanmeldingen, mocht ik in de grote zaal m'n ding doen. Ik had zelf gezorgd via Techdata dat er een SMART Board 6065 (kapp iQ) in de zaal aanwezig was, want als ik wilde laten zien wat ik didactisch doe met dat digitale schoolbord in mijn SMART Collaborative Classroom, dan moet ik natuurlijk wel de touchgevoeligheid van het scherm kunnen laten zien. M'n focus lag op drie zaken. Het digitale schoolbord als:

1. Teachershub, waar ik allerlei content van de leerlingen kan verzamelen en laten zien aan de klas. Niet per sé digibord software voor nodig, omdat een verzameling van tweets of Instagram posts ook met een beamer kan, maar zodra SMART Notebook LAB aan bod kwam werd het interessanter en leuker. Leerlingen kunnen hun bijdrage (tekst en/of afbeeldingen) dan in de SMART Notebookles plaatsen. Echt gaaf. De creativiteit van de docent bepaalt ook hier weer hoe dat didactisch weg te zetten ...
2. Een SMART Board (of ander gerenommeerd merk digibord) is in principe een werkbord. Voor leerlingen en veel minder bedoelt als presentatiescherm. (Wat dus wel vaak de praktijk is). Dat kan dus m.b.v. de aanraakgevoeligheid - de beperking is dat niet de gehele klas dat tegelijkertijd kan doen of in een BYOD omgeving kan elke smartphone, tablet of laptop een bijdrage leveren.
3. Omdat het een aardrijkskundeconferentie is heb ik ook een pleidooi gehouden voor Global Collaboration en laten zien hoe ik dat in mijn lessen doe. Enthousiasme. Leuk.

Na wat over de onderwijsmarkt te hebben gelopen (en bij de BuiteNLand-stand een Google Cardboard gescoord en wist je dat Greenpeace heel leuk en gratis lesmateriaal aanbiedt?) heb ik zelf ook nog een workshop gevolgd over het gebruik van Lego in de aardrijkskundeles door Falco Zwinkels. En dat was superleuk! Werken met Lego is een superleuke manier om leerlingen te leren goed te kijken om vervolgens zelf bijvoorbeeld een geografisch begrip of proces uit te beelden m.b.v. Lego blokjes. Ga ik ook een keer oefenen.

Deze KNAGdag was zeer geslaagd en met een koffer vol nieuwe ideeën en contacten ging ik weer naar huis.

Knagdag 2015 from Boris Berlijn

SMART Exchange: database van digibordlessen voor het SMART Board.
Google+ community voor Global Collaboration.
Lego Education over het gebruik van Lego in het onderwijs.

Naturally Celebrate

This day was at prior summits the last day, but fortunately we have one more day to go! I had the honor to do the ice-breaker activity and did prepare a SMART Response quiz and a Kahoot. The SMART Response Quiz was an app logo quiz with edtech apps and the Kahoot was flags of countries from people that were at this summit. I brought a few prizes with me such as pins, flash drives, a mug etc.

With Yahir

Today we needed to think about the start of a new global collaboration project with another SEE and of course the use of SMART amp, especially now we can share workspaces with others outside the domain. I hooked up with Yahir from Mexico who is teaching computer science to 7th graders and I want them to collaborate with my 7th or 8th graders. More to follow.

During the fireside chat we got the chance to ask Greg Estell and Warren Barkley questions concerning education, SMART Technologies, the roadmap etc. That was nice and one quote I can recall from Greg was "How old is the technology in your pocket compared to the technology you use in the class room?" and this sums up the gap between teachers reluctant to use that technology that is already in their students' pocket.

Then we had to head to SMART Technologies HQ again for something special. And of course the peer mentors already what that was about! The White Hat ceremony!! Yes! The entire staff of SMART cheered for us and the head of the board gave us a big thank you, whilst we needed to reach under our seat to grap a coupon with a little surprise! The Oprah Winfrey moment. LOL. Three special big prices were a SMART kapp, a SMART kapp iQ and a SMART Board. How cool is that! The small video shows the moment all SEEs entered the building and were cheered by SMART Technologies. Honorary Calgarian again! :)

SEE of white hats cheered at SMART Technologies HQ

Naturally Connect

Today started with a presentation about the brand SMART Technologies and branding. Branding is all about the perception of a product or service. SMART Technologies struggles with the fact that it’s not just an interactive white board company (anymore), but has much more to share and has shifted their core business to different kind of solutions for the classroom.

Of course SMART wants to get rid of the old SMART Boards, just as Apple wants all the old iPhones gone and exchanged for the newer versions, but Stephen Yao had a good story to tell. Although interactive flat panels are a more expensive than interactive white boards, you'll retrieve that with the far less energy costs. I was really surprised by the fact that (especially on a larger scale) moving from the interactive white board to the interactive flat panel could safe that amount of energy. Take a look at this document.

Did a presentation today with Kristin Straumann at the headquarters of SMART Technologies. We were asked to do so and share the things that we do in our school and classroom in front the entire SMART staff. Greg Estell was so nice to have us over and introduced us before we could share our story. I’m not nervous to speak in front of a large audience, especially not about this topic. But today I needed to share this with the company that provides me with the technology that I use and I needed to do my very best … and it all needed to be in English. We both Kristin and myself did a great job and presentation went very well. I also stated out that the classroom solutions are great, but being with all the SEEs and SMARTians feels like home and is epic! We got a very nice applause and staff members told us that we did a great job. Now that’s what I’ll be taking home with me … Oh wait, there’s more. Greg asked us about the one thing that we are missing at this moment in our classroom for our kids … we both were stunned and couldn’t directly come up with anything. And sort of asking for let’s say a SMART Board seems so greedy, wouldn’t you agree? Greg assured us that we could think about it whilst the offer would last throughout the week. Will keep you posted on this ...

After lunch I was up for the unconference about Changing School Culture with SEEs Rebecca, Holger and Lori. My question or discussion point was about How to deal with teachers that are reluctant in the use of technology'. And it was my first time that I did an unconference. We've shared a Google document which all teachers can use a resource.

And at the end I did a co-presentation with Lise Galuga and Charity Harbeck about Google Certifications and Google events, where we can share our experience with SMART amp.

Oh, and we even were very close to a tornado. How about that? Check this short time-lapse movie.

Naturally Innovate

This second day of the summit we spend all day at SMART Technologies HQ for three different activities and we started with the most awesome thing: the Hackathon. All SEEs were divided in smaller groups of 5-6 people with that same amount of software developers to start brainstorming on the next best thing for SMART Notebook, SMART LAB, SMART kapp, SMART kapp iQ and of course SMART amp. Brainstorming helped us getting further to an awesome plan within SMART LAB (activity builder), but is total NDA, due to avoid spoilers for new users. I really do hope that our idea will eventually really be added to SMART Notebook (LAB). We will find out more about that next Friday.

After spending a few hours with developers we were split into three large groups for a guided tour around SMART HQ:

• software testing lab: real nice visit and we could all share our complaints. Did you know that in this testing lab they have all different kinds of computers with minimal settings and operating systems to test every release of soft- and firmware on all kinds of SMART Boards and interactive flat panels. Nice!
• briefing center: Have been there before and was nothing new. Although the SMART Collaborative Classroom (showroom) is nice to be in.
• hardware testing lab: this was the best. So many cool things were shared with us, but most of that is of course total NDA. The camera-testing was cool. Did you know that each camera is unique and has to cover and correct the errors from the other three cameras from the SMARt Board. This makes every board unique! How about that!

At last we all went to a reflection group, that we've signed up for. I was in the SMART Response VE group and could speak with the developers and we could share our wishes and the way we all use SMART Response VE in the classroom. There will be a new version coming soon, so nothing can be shared ahead of that. All I can say is that it will be very good! And it was nice to see that some of my earlier comments through a feedback session by phone were already in there.

Broken Toyz is on the plan for tonight!

Naturally Inquire

After two days spending on the campus and downtown Calgary with Allen Brooks and others the Global SEE Summit was finally going to start and this day was going to be a very busy day full of new stuff. The opening keynote on Sunday night by Marc Prensky was nice and gave us the right mind set for the next couple of days (and hopefully the next couple of years whilst practising teaching in our classrooms). At first we were welcomed by Greg Estell - president SMART Technologies - sharing with us how great is was to have us around and that we could definitely learn from each other. Really? I think that I speak for all the 77 attendees from the 23 countries when saying that it was merely our honor to be there and that we were more than happy to share every thought we have about SMART Technologies and their soft- and hardware. The ones that attended the Global See summit last year were the mentors of this summit and did have special tasks like leading conversations, organizing ice breakers, timekeepers, social media experts and (technical) support for the day.

Sessions as the road ahead lead by SMARTians showed the roadmap of SMART Technologies of which a lot is not for sharing. What I can share is that SMART is well known for the SMART Board of course, but there's more that meets the eye. The brand name wants to get rid of the perspective that it's only known for the interactive white boards, but wants to be known as the company with mainly software solutions for education such as SMART Notebook, SMART amp™ and SMART kapp. Nowadays it shouldn't really matter which hardware one uses, yet the software that one uses does. Of course all the SEEs are already aware of that and it's like preaching to the choir, so we could join in on the how to discussion. We've shared our points of view on this matter via gold star challenges. Good.

Naturally SMART

And at last all three software solutions (Notebook, amp and kapp) passed by through the day and their role and possibilities in education and of course we all could give feedback. Very long day to start with ... Tomorrow heading to SMART Technologies HQ.

The one thing that I can share about a feature the new release of SMART Notebook 15.1 is that the popular add-on XC Collaboration will no longer be available, however its functionality will be available in the form of a new activity called “Shout it Out!” Shout it Out! will be a part of the Lesson Activity Builder in the SMART Notebook software, and will offer similar functions to XC Collaboration and more. We've used this one a couple of times and it's awesome! At first I was dissapointed with the fact that XC wasn't to be supported anymore, but this one is way cooler and better! Good job!

And the quote of the day was from Kristin Straumann, during the SMARTamp best practices session, she mentioned "I knew HOW to use it, I just didn't WHY to use it. UNTIL … I put my kids into a workspace" ... I LIKE THAT!

Global SEE Summit preparations

This week we all received the summit guide and the program looks just fantastic and I'm really looking forward. Instead of the regular four days, we will now have five full days of learning and professional development at the SEE Summit in Calgary, Alberta.

As a summit peer mentor there will be some sessions that I will do. On Tuesday I'm one of the reflection group leaders to point out what we've gained on that day. On Wednesday I will be leading with three other SEEs the unconference about Changing School Culture. A great topic and really where my school is at now. And I will do a session with Lise and Charity on presenting about SMARTamp at Google Apps for Education summits. And throughout this day I am the social media specialist with Sergio, so keep an eye on the #smartee hashtag on Twitter and Instagram. On Thursday I will do the ice braker activity and I've prepared a education apps logo quiz with SMART Response and also a secret quiz ... and I will bring some prices as well! Looking forward. Will keep you posted. Whoohoo! 

SMART amp Champs: Global Collaboration

The promised follow up about my Global Collaboration project that was started in March, when I invited nine schools from different parts from the US. Each school was linked to a group of three students in my class and the topic was the US and together all my students gained loads of information in order to have a good geographical view on the US.

In order to collaborate I needed to create and share accounts within my domain. Within SMART amp the students could chat with each other and share the content in the workspace. Language wasn’t really an obstacle, due the fact that the English language is mandatory in the Netherlands and they could always use Google Translate. ;) The Time difference (from 5 to 9 hours) wasn’t an issue either, due to the fact that this assignment wasn’t real-time-based.

But now … I’ve learned a new cool feature in SMART amp. Workspaces could be shared with others outside the domain, but …. they will need to have a SMART amp license as well in order to open and work in the workspace-file and make it work. How about that! I really like this feature and saves me a lot of work whilst collaborating throughout the world.

Global SEE Summit 2015

Yes!!!!!!!! I'm going to the best PD Summit that I know of ... again. This. Is. Epic.

A month ago I applied to be a peer-mentor at the next Global SEE Summit at head office of SMART Technologies in Calgary - Alberta, Canada. Yesterday the SEEs that applied were notified through a webinar, organized by the Global Advocacy Team of SMART Technologies, if they were invited to attend the Global SEE Summit during the summer 2015. And yes, I'm in and I am very happy!

I'm also very honored to be with a large group of teachers and learn with and from them in order to redefine the way the world (well, at least in my school) learns. I'm very excited and am going to the Summit with my colleague Henk-Jan van Mierlo from the SMART Showcase School - Ashram College we both teach.

SMART amp Champ!

I recently submitted a session about SMART amp to the Netherlands Google Apps for Education Summit, because I really wanted to attend this summit and I even liked the fact more that I could share my experience about this new platform, which engages students to really collaborate with each other. I've been using this for the past half year or so in a few of my classes in a self created domain, to gain access to Google Apps for Education. My students have gained a new e-mail address and access to SMART amp. In- and outside the classroom I can really see the power of SMART amp and I have even shared logins with schools from abroad to give them access to the workspaces my students are working in.

Workspace of my students and students from Orland Park Junior High (IL)

Now I have the privilege to share the how to and my best practices with SMART amp tomorrow at the gafe-summit. I'm really looking forward to it. My presentation is for sharing, the workspace the attendees will be working in tomorrow not.

And it's getting better, because next month I will be joining 12 other SMART Exemplary Educators from Europe to attend an exciting new program for SEEs called Amp Champs! As a member of this elite group, we will receive a two day advanced SMART amp training in Madrid, Spain and support. This is really awesome! I will meet and learn with and from the best SEEs from Europe such as Emil Waldhauser (Czech Republic) , Gonzalo Garcia (Spain), Serigio Cabezas (Spain), Tapani Raitanen (Finland) and our teacher and mentor Heather Lamb (Texas, US). Looking forward and will share my experience in Madrid on this blog ... 

BETT 2015

The fourth time that I visited the British Education Training and Technology show, better known as BETT. This time I was invited to come over and do a session about global collaboration in the Secondary Education Learn Live arena. I travelled with my dad (SMART Exemplary Educator as well) and joined other SEEs in the SMART Platinum Suite or and the main floor of the BETT show.

With Maria and Chris in the Platinum Suite

On day one I was just browsing on the main floor until my presentation was due. While walking and visiting a few stands it occurred to me that nothing new and/or innovative was there to see. A few things I really like is LearnPad and I do hope that working with iPads in my school will be quite successful instead of the warnings that Chris Klein (exhibitor LearnPad) gave me. I also liked the furniture of Space Oasis on which was comfortable, looked really nice and on which you could write with a dry eraser marker. And of course I liked the new solution by SMART Technologies: The SMARTkapp, the reinvented version of the dry-erase board AND the flip-over which is due to it's simplicity amazing. No nonsense, yet super hight-tech information sharing system which could be used in the classroom as well. I would really like to have won one at the BETT contest during the BETT days. I attended and even contributed to the session of the official release of SMARTkapp at BETT in the Platinum Suite by CTO Warren Barkley. And in the evening SMARTamp wins the BETT Award, which I can relate to for sure. SMARTamp is becoming more and more my favorite solution in (and outside) the classroom.

On day two I met my buddy SEE from Madrid, Spain: Sergio! Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend his presentation about Augmented Reality, because it was due on Saturday. Although I was able to attend to the presentation of Chris and Maria about their global collaboration project and the presentation about SOLE. Both in the Platinum Suite. After collecting a lot of pens and other goodies for my kids and students I returned home with a lot of new input that still needs processing ...

After the two days of attending BETT it became very clear to me that it's still the teacher that is key in developing education and his students, regardless of the use of technology (both hardware and software) furniture, books or whatever. As Chris Klein pointed out to me: "... a good teacher could use only a loaf of bread to provide a good lesson." 

With my dad in the SMART Platinum Suite

Creating Global Learners at #BETT2015

I applied to do a session at the BETT show again about Global Collaboration, which was turned down at first. Later I received an e-mail from the organization that my application was accepted and was due on Wednesday the 21st in the Learn Live Session arena for secondary education. Yes!

I talked to my friend and global collaboration partner and SMART Exemplary Educator Emil Waldhauser that I would like to have him as co-presenter, since he was attending the BETT anyway. He accepted my invite and we created the presentation in Google Drive, in order that we could both contribute to the presentation. Online collaboration indeed. Whilst I'm writing this now, perhaps we should've created our presentation in SMARTamp. Especially since we mentioned that in our presentation a few times and to the fact that our students collaborate online crossing borders in that same online platform SMARTamp.

The presentation was visited by a few people we know, such as my dad, Ainhoa (from SMART Technologies) and a lot of others that showed a lot of interest afterwards and did ask questions to us. I haven't heard any British accent and it's great to have them in the Google+ group for Global Collaboration. The presentation is for sharing and to be viewed by everybody that's interested. Stay in touch!


Video shot by my father and SMART Exemplary Educator Ad Berlijn:

#rewind2014

This past year was a very good year for me from a professional point of view. In January I spend a whole week presenting in the SMART Collaborative Classroom at BETT, London-UK, the largest education and technology trade show in Europe. In July I attended and presented at the Global SMART Exemplary Educators Summit in Calgary, Canada. And this was most amazing and met a lot of new friends and partners to work with. In October I was present at a Google Apps for Education Summit (#gafesummit) in London, UK and I was selected to attend the Google Teacher Academy in Amsterdam, Netherlands in November. A few new certificates and rewards were added to my professional development roadmap ... Let's continue to do so in 2015!

Generosity of SMART Technologies

A shout-out to SMART Technologies for their generous act by handing out a full license of SMART Notebook 14 to one of my students. This particular student is one of my exam students and is handicapped and has very limited motor skills and he's not able to write and/or use his arms and legs properly. He is able to use a laptop computer during his exams and by law it is permitted that he uses a few software programs such as MS Word, Excel and a snapping tool to copy the things he created in one program to another. Now both his math teacher and the student himself dropped the idea of using SMART Notebook, because of the drawing functionality and the GeoGebra add-on. I send an email to Deena and Ainhoa and responded with a positive reply. How about that! Besides the fact that it's very nice that SMART granted my student with the software, I particularly like the fact that this student benefits from using Notebook and the GeoGebra add-on with his disability of writing and drawing.

Fred van Dijke - math teacher of my student: "Lesley has diplegia spastic infantile and has fewer features, among others in his left arm and shoulder. His entire coordination and fine motor skills are in such a state that it is very difficult for him to write and draw. In mathematics, the exam requires to make drawings. When he works in SMART Notebook can he simply put the drawings from the exam in SMART Notebook (Snapping Tool) as add other things as well."

Reply of Ainhoa Marcos (SMART Technologies) to my request: "I´ll be happy to provide you with the license, I´ll just ask you to write an EdCompass blog, video, or any other content about the experience, as I think is an amazing one. I´ll come back to you soon with the license ..." 

As Lesley responds to working with SMART Notebook 14: "I am very happy with the program SMART Notebook. It was intended for my math drawings, but I also can use it with other subjects to draw and create schedules. It takes me a little longer to create drawings because it's such a large and comprehensive program, but in this case it is a good thing because I need less different programs. At the beginning I needed to discover how everything works, but once I knew how it worked, it is working very good for me. All that I used is now in just one program. If I have I do not have the copy-paste to other software anymore. I could not draw in depth, but with the pre-created pages in Notebook I can now also draw in a three-dimensional coordinate system. Very often I had to tell my teacher that I couldn't do such things, but now I can. Until now I haven't come across anything that I miss in the program. With SMART Notebook I can improve my skills."

And SMART Exemplary Educator Gonzalo Garcia responded to our story: "One of the best features of SMART solutions is the ability they have to help attention to diversity inside and outside the classroom. And this is another example of the commitment of SMART with Education in capital letters."

Global SEE Summit #smartee Twitter Chat

While at the Global SEE Summit in Calgary, Alberta two weeks ago Rafranz hosted a Twitter Chat. It was the first one that most of the attendants were in the same room while tweeting and sharing their thoughts on the questions. Last week the NA SMART Exemplary Educators did a Twitter chat and the topic was the Global SEE Summit. And this was really helping us SEEs from #SummitWithdrawals ... We all miss the summit a lot and weren't finished at all.

Rafranz created the question to review the Global summit and shared the questions with me afterwards, in order to do the same in our time zone. The North American Twitter chat was at 3 AM CEST and there weren't that many EMEA SEEs attending. So Bryony (SEE from Schotland) and I thought that we might give it a go this week with the same questions.

• Q1 We all accomplished quite a bit last week both personally and professionally. What was your greatest #smartee accomplishment?
• Q2 What one new thing did you learn about SMART NB or Amp that you can share? (nothing under NDA) #smartee
• Q3 We all made global classroom connections last week. How will you realistically get and keep your classrooms globally connected? #smartee
• Q4 What is your one big thing that you will implement right away because of the Summit? #smartee
• Q5 Share one thing that you learned from an international friend! #smartee
• Q6 If you could change or improve one thing last week, what would it be? #smartee
• Q7 What would you like to say to someone who made a great impact on your life last week? #smartee

And before we started the Twitter chat, we did some housekeeping. Nothing NDA should be shared, because we signed that agreement for the Summit and when answering a question, people should respond using the number of the question in their tweet. The questions will start with a Q followed by the number. Answers should begin with A followed by the number of question you’re answering.
The twitter chat was from 7 till 8 PM CEST, but it took at least 15 minutes more. People were enthusiastic. And before we even could start with question number 1, the chat was already running on another topic: world citizenship, digital citizenship, digital footprint, digital tattoo and what should or could be taught in that curriculum. Very nice topic and would like to do a tweet chat about that topic.

The tweets are captured in this Storify. And tweeting from tweetchat.com is very useful during a Twitter Chat, because it automatically adds the hashtag that's been used.

P.S. I would like to thank Rafranz for sharing the questions and Bryony for doing a great job hosting the Twitter chat with me! Thanks.

SMART Exemplary Educators Summit Tiger

The past few years I've had the honor and the pleasure to attend three different SMART Exemplary Educator Summits and if you count the precursor The International SMART Board forum along, than I've attended in total four professional development training camps organized by SMART Technologies in a foreign country.

My first official summit was in the summer of 2011 at the headquarters in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) and I was invited to come over and have a look at how the North-Americans did run a show like that, because together with 5 other SEEs from Europe we were going to be the peer mentors at the EMEA SEE Summit in Hamburg (or Paris) the next year. At this summit there were also about 50 SEEs from Canada and the US. This Summit was (perhaps due to the fact that it was way out of my time zone in the beautiful country of Canada) epic to me. I've learned so much and gained so many friends. My love for SMART gained a boost and was ready to adopt more technology in my classroom. This was also the start of my first global collaboration project with teachers from abroad.

Class of 2011

My second summit that I attended was in Hamburg at the local SMART office during the summer of 2012. There we're about 30 SEEs from EMEA and four from North-America (3 from the US and one from Canada) to learn from and share with each other. This Summit took only three days of professional development and I did two presentations. New friends were made and old friends were reunited again. New global collaboration projects started from here.

Class of 2012

My third summit was in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) again. The summit was a global one, therefore there were about 76 SEEs present. SEEs from Canada, the US, EMEA and Panama, Chile and Mexico. This was the one that was most epic. Different from the other ones, and I've made even more new friends and was (at last?) reunited with old friends as well. Whilst putting this words down, I'm still suffering from summit withdrawals. I'm missing my fellow SEEs and want to work even more with them. Global collaboration will be taken to a next level ...

Class of 2014

Besides the locations, amount of SEEs that attended and the latest software releases at the moment of the summits, there were some differences between them. I'll try to share my opinion on that. 

At first in my opinion we did less sharing at the latest summit, compared to the other two that I attended. All SEEs needed to prepare and bring their best lesson to the 2011 and 2012 summit and needed to show and share in smaller groups. That is definitely something I've missed during the global summit. The amount of technical details was merely the same, although was the focus on this summit of course on amp and less on Notebook. New were the hackathons and the sessions we did with the developers. That is a great benefit from the other summits I've attended. We could share our feature requests etc. directly with the developers and could actually see that a lot things were put right into action. We all loved that! Watch out for the new releases of amp and Notebook! This was also the first year that the Global SEE platform was a great part of it, which made people do and share things on that platform. As I already stated before ... after the last summit I'm suffering more from summit withdrawals, so I guess it's addictive and I need to be with my fellow SEEs more and more again. There!

EMEA and Global Summit compared

What have we gained? - Moving mountains for students

Today we went to do some sightseeing in the Canadian Rockies. We planned to visit Banff National Park, Lake Louise, Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and we got to do some souvenir shopping in the town Banff.

Panorama shot at Lake Louise.

This was indeed very nice. I've been to Banff National Park before, but never to Lake Louise and it is a very beautiful site. Even when it's a little cold and rainy. The water in Lake Louise has this typical color of water that just came from a glacier. I've taken so many pictures, but as always one cannot capture the atmosphere in a picture. I tried anyway. I also took the time to create a Time Lapse movie with the iMotion app for iPhone. How many SEEs can you spot? 

Time Lapse movie from the walk around Lake Louise.

Walking around and chatting with new friends (for life) was a very nice ending of this summit. Besides this beautiful sightseeing tour, the past four days at SMART Technologies HQ was topic of the chatting in the morning. We talked what we most liked, what we thought could be better and talked about what we'd gained and will take home or school with us.

Personally I would have loved that we shared more (lesson) ideas, worked and collaborated more with each other, rather than the in my opinion technical issues regarding SMART amp. Don't get me wrong, I really like SMART amp and am looking forward to working with this in my SMART Collaborative Classroom. I do hope that all the comments we made to improve working with amp (and Notebook) will soon be available to make it even beter to work with. Back home I will do a presentation about this trip at school and share all that I've learned and gained from this summit. Mainly it will be things that we've shared in between, such as the outcome of the twitter chat and during the Global Collaboration workshop. We all made new friends and contacts this summit and those I will take with me and either me or one of my colleagues is willing to do a global collaboration project with SEEs from abroad. I also like the Kermit style video's, and that another thing I will take home. I can do that with students within a certain topic I teach or even in my mentor group. And I'm also thinking of Johan and me sharing what we've learned with other Dutch SEEs at the SMART office in the Netherlands ... Lots of ideas and work. Still processing.

Panorama shot taken from the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel

After Lake Louise we ate the best lunch ever at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and went for some shopping in the picturesque town Banff. I bought some stickers, pins, pencils and t-shirts. This was good and I want to be back! Canada. Is. Epic. Thank you SMART Technologies for taking good care and having me and the other SEEs around the past week!

At Lake Louise with Lise, Kristin and Amanda.