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!

"Growing roots and wings to children"

Saunalahti is one of the newest apartment building districts in Espoo, Finland, located by the Kummelivuori hill between Kivenlahti and Kurttila, west of the Kauklahdenväylä road, on the coast of the Espoonlahti bay. The houses in Saunalahti are built to preserve the original nature as much as possible. The houses are built at different heights, so that most have a view to the Gulf of Finland. All houses fit in with each other despite not looking exactly alike. Saunalahti School was opened in 2012. It began in 2008, when 13 architects at Verstas started designing the school. Construction commenced in 2010 and was completed in 2012. The building also houses the Saunalahti library. (excerpts from Wikipedia).

It's been a while that I was welcomed to Saunalahti School with a group of teachers on a study trip (or workaction) to have a closer look at education in Finland in September 2013. This school in particular and it's community was perhaps the best part of the trip and definitely worth a visit whenever you're in the neighborhood. The building fits perfectly in the rough surroundings with lots of wood and rocks. The school is very special and I could feel and see that each and every child was very welcome at this school. It felt like a second home to the students that attended. This was not only a school, but a multifunctional meeting place for the entire community and was open from 6 AM till 10 PM. All stakeholders such as parents were really involved and this school did a great job in being the center of this community. At tis school it is mandatory for parents to come to school at least twice a year to talk about their child. And those sessions are during the day instead of evenings which is common in my country. Both the school and the parents find it very important to do so apparently.
Parents are also involved in the parent council, which has a certain influence on the curriculum of the school, which is created by the team of teachers at the beginning of each school year. In Finland schools do not have to follow the standardized curriculum (if there is any at all?). Students do get a lot of space and are free and able to join lots of different learning activities to develop themselves.

"The inclusive Saunalahti school is a learning and expert community that enables growing roots and wings to children."

The school was very student centered for what I have seen. When we were taken on a tour by the head mistress she would pause the tour for each student that looked if it might need assistance and she would give that assistance. The fact that we - a large group of teachers - were there as well didn't matter at all. Also was pointed out that a very important value at this school is that teachers will point out (little) successes by students, in order to enable more (better?) learning by students.

The school has six values and the first one - of course - is 'focused on the child', while we in the Netherlands either focus too much on the curriculum (standards) or on the teachers and their professional development ... This is one of the main things that I will take home.

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."

#ThrowbackThursday: How SMART changed my teaching

Since the first moment that I got in touch with the SMART Notebook software at a resellers store somewhere in the Netherlands I was immediately touched by it's simplicity which could be of great use in my classroom. This platform came across my path and I knew immediatly that this was I was looking for. I needed SMART Notebook. All the content that I had collected in the past years such as websites, newspaper cut outs, video and animation, photo's and pictires could now be in just on lesson created in SMART Notebook. This. Was. Epic.
It was SMART Notebook 9.7 at the time and there was no Lesson Activity Toolkit, no page grouping and none of the powerful features that it has now and still I thought it was amazing! I got a laptop computer from school to create Notebook lessons and a few months later Notebook 10 was released and I was invited to join the SMART International User Forum (precursor of the SEE Summit) in Sweden in 2008. A trip that I will never forget and where I met some great SMARTians and great educators whom I still consider as my friends today. I got hooked and from that moment on I was even more amazed by the innovative technology solutions for the classroom designed by SMART. During the SMART International User Forum we received a full license for SMART Ideas and I could only dream of having a SMART Senteo set in my classroom or full license of Synchron Eyes running in school. And now we have it all and many more in SMART Notebook 14. Heading to SMART Notebook 15? I'm game!

Digitale voetafdruk!

Q: 'Ligt het echt alleen aan docenten als studenten ongemotiveerd en gedesinteresseerd zijn?'

A: 'Nee, het ligt ook aan ons onderwijssysteem. Het systeem van standaardpakketjes is achterhaald. Daarnaast worden lage cijfers hier als normaal geaccepteerd is zoals onderwijssocioloog Jaap Donkers, mijn leermeester, zegt: "Middelmaat krijgt hier een Michelinster." We willen of mogen onze kop niet boven het maaiveld uitsteken. Dat zorgt voor niet-gemotiveerde studenten.' Aldus Gerda Schapers in Schooljournaal Nr. 11 - juni 2014

Als de zesjes-cultuur een gevolg is van het systeem van standaardpakketjes, dan kan het volgens mij helpen het om het werk van leerlingen veel meer te koppelen aan de echte wereld en juist daar te publiceren. Veel werk wat mijn leerlingen moeten maken, moet niet alleen goed genoeg zijn voor mij (of om een voldoende (=6) te halen), maar juist ook goed genoeg zijn om gedeeld te worden met de rest van de wereld. Als een leerling zijn of haar werk alleen maar doet om een voldoende te krijgen van mij voor de gemaakte opdracht, is dat voor mij niet genoeg. Ik wil leerlingen graag de vrijheid geven (soms meer, soms wat minder) en hun creativiteit niet in de weg te zitten en hen zelf de invulling van de opdracht te vervullen, maar ... hun werk moet(!) veelal online te vinden zijn of gedeeld worden met anderen anderzijds. Voor presentaties moeten ze dus altijd een online presentatieprogramma gebruiken (Prezi, Google Presentation etc.) en als het even kan hun presentatie via social media delen. De leukste, beste, mooiste presentaties kan ik weer delen met de klas of anderzijds gebruiken als voorbeeld voor andere leerlingen. Omdat ze hun werk online staat (Instagram, Twitter, Prezi etc.) en zichtbaar is voor de rest van de wereld, zal veelal automatisch de kwaliteit ook toenemen, omdat ze hun eigen niveau omhoog tillen omdat ze weten dat ik niet de enige ben die meekijkt.
Graag zou ik als aanvulling zgn. 'peer-assessment'-tools gebruiken, zodat leerlingen ook elkaars werk kunnen bekijken en beoordelen. Dit kan bijvoorbeeld met Peer-Scolar of Google Classroom. Dit staat op mijn roadmap om dat dit schooljaar nog eens te proberen.

n.b. En als een leerling of ouder zich druk maakt om de digitale voetafdruk, dan kun je die beter zelf proberen in de hand te houden en zoveel mogelijk mooie, goede en positieve zaken over jou vindbaar te maken, voordat een ander de weg vindt om zaken van/over jou te plaatsen die minder positief zijn en waar je minder blij mee bent. "Think again and be prepared!".