Stories

Innovative Teachers’ Forums are part of the Innovative Teachers Programme, a global community of educators sponsored by Microsoft. The Microsoft Partners in Learning European Forum was held in Moscow from 22 to 24 March 2011. The forum celebrates work of innovative teachers and gives them an opportunity for fantastic networking and learning experiences.

The most innovative teachers were selected to participate in the forum for their country. Finally, the teachers who demonstrate the greatest innovation at the countrywide forum were selected to attend the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum. Those who win Teacher submission will get:

• Round trip flights from teacher’s country to Moscow, Russia
• Accommodation
• Opportunity to represent their school and their country at the annual European Forum

The ASEF ClassNet Online Collaboration “Where Music Lives” (Author and Online Collaboration Co-ordinator Svetlana Dõtsenko) was the winner in Estonia. There were 5 countries-participants in the Online Collaboration: Estonia, India, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand. The main idea of the Online Collaboration is intercultural exchange, teaching and learning of ICT on musical background. The global aim of Online Collaboration is to improve communication and understanding between Europe and Asia. The Online Collaboration lasted 2 years with different groups of students. In total, 180 students and teachers participated in the Online Collaboration.

The part of European Forum is project’s exhibition and project’s competition. All teachers, who have the projects, worked very hard. During the 1st day, all teachers-participants described and explained their projects to judges and fellow teachers. The atmosphere in the room, where projects were displayed, was very noisy. The process of collaboration and professional learning was a very intensive. A great variety of ideas and innovations were presented.

The 2nd day was a day of keynote speakers and seminars. It was all about brain stretching, thought-challenging, and ideas-sharing. Teachers participated in workshops. Active learning with new tools, creativity and innovation using Microsoft Technologies and others. Microsoft has a lot of free software for educators. The 3rd day was an open door exhibition of projects – teachers from Moscow visited the exhibition.

According to the words of judges 40 out of 86 projects were very strong. The ASEF ClassNet Online Collaboration “Where Music Lives” was amongst them. The list of winners was announced on the last day during the Closing dinner.

Although “Where Music Lives” is not on the list of winners (it was my very first experience of participating at MS Forum) I received very positive feedback from my colleagues from different countries regarding my project.

Some of them (Spain, Denmark and many others) were interested in participating in the project, if it continues next year. The press and the Director of portal of innovative teachers from Russia also paid a lot of interest to this ASEF ClassNet Online Collaboration. I know that the representative of Slovakia voted for my project. This event was a fantastic opportunity for networking and meeting of supporters, sharing new ideas and new ICT tools, exchanging experience.

Only one ASEF ClassNet Online Collaboration was presented at European Forum and I hope that in the future there will be more….. A big thank to the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) and all participants of “Where Music Lives” for their co-operation and support.