Would you call yourself an Innovative Teacher?

Keep an eye out on Tuesday for a feed on twitter #ITF09. This is the feed from Microsoft’s UK Innovative Teachers Forum in Birmingham. It will have many innovative teachers locked in a room twittering and bickering about the latest things in education.

You can see what is going on by reading the official blog here: http://bit.ly/8h4GbU

You may have read about a recent blog of mine about the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum held in Brazil a few weeks ago. At this worldwide awards Mandeep Atwal and Ollie Bray won awards representing the UK. I was also an award winner at the Worldwide event in Hong Kong in 2008, I am sure Mandeep and Ollie will echo what I say that they are fantastic professional development experiences. The UK is the first phase of a big year of potential for the ten finalists selected for this UK final, the next phase if they are lucky to progress is to the European Innovative Teachers Forum in Berlin in March and then who knows where next.

I am extremely proud that four of our teachers from my school (saltash.net www.saltash.net) have made it to the final ten which is a fantastic achievement. They have some brilliant and innovative projects developing:

Dave Garland – Deputy Headteacher is working on a great idea called learnovids where students create their own videos in a standardised format including their own little ‘learnovid’ jingle on different subjects in Science.

Amy Lewis – who is a Teacher of History and RE and is only in her second year of teaching is working on a fantastic global collaborative project called Heroes which looks at children picking local people (heroes) who have dared to make a difference and sharing the attributes they admire in them with children from Nigeria, Indonesia, Canada and Ireland. The students have created photo stories and songs using songsmith to share their ideas and opinions.

Georgie Carey – who is a Teacher of Science and is also in her second year of teaching, is working on a amazing concept of students who have created their own learning resource of hard to teach Science topics. The students have created a really professional video as a resource and will become lead learners and to help support their own revision will teach other students using their resources and get students to create their own based on their ideas.

And finally last but not least is James Edwards who is a Teacher of ICT and is in his third year of teaching. James is doing a project based around e-safety and getting older students more involved in e-safety so that they create resources mainly videos to raise awareness and educate younger students and parents in the school community.

I feel extremely honoured and privileged to work with such innovative teachers on a daily basis have a look at the feed and take part in any collaboration that develops on Tuesday 1^st December. Remember #ITF09!

Are you considering entering in future ITF’s? Please do it is one of the best forms of CPD you can do! If you haven’t already joined then also sign up to the Partners in Learning Network @ http://uk.partnersinlearningnetwork.com/Pages/default.aspx