Congratulations Innovative Teachers

So not long after the new worldwide winner Jan Webb (@janwebb21) returned home from the Microsoft’s Worldwide Innovative Education Forum in South Africa then hot off the press the new kids on the block have been selected as UK winners for 2010 and any of these ten could find themselves at next year’s worldwide event in Washington DC.

Microsoft announced this week who the UK award winners were – you can see a full list on the Microsoft blog, congratulations to them all: http://bit.ly/bh80PH

All ten will get to present their projects at the UK Innovative Education Forum in Manchester in a few weeks time. You can read more about the conference here: http://bit.ly/bvd1qw I still believe that there are still places available at the conference where you can get to hear about these exciting projects but also attend several workshops and keynote speeches.

I do want to congratulate one teacher specifically for their fantastic work and it one I know a bit more than all the others. It is the living legend that is Paul Horrell AKA @Hozmeister, regular readers of this blog will have come across him before on an earlier guest post on my blog: http://bit.ly/d7adCZ

The Hoz’s VCT (Virtual Classroom Tour) aim is to create independent learners who use innovative and collaborative technologies to enhance their progress and increase their enjoyment of learning.

To allow students to:
1. Give and receive constructive feedback in order to aid them in becoming independent learners.
2. Take responsibility for their own learning and appreciate the responsibility they have to other learners and the school community.
3. Use collaborative technology to make significant progress

Every student that the Deputy Leader for ICT works with has their own OneNote notebook which acts as an electronic portfolio within which all of their work is saved, documented and annotated. Students also have access to a teacher exemplar (what good looks like and each other’s work. An individual feedback page allows constructive advice from their teacher and other students either in text form or audio recordings.

This is a fantastic project that is making a difference to the lives of all the students and to the teachers across the school. Paul says “The confidence of students has grown since their involvement in this project. Using OneNote as a portfolio has allowed students to see a body of work growing as they progress. The feedback pages allow students to know exactly what is required to improve their grade. This is especially so when feedback has either been by another student (younger, older or of the same age) as this often is very positive in nature, whereas teachers often focus on what is missing in order to improve. Leaving feedback themselves also improves confidence and also cements the learning of their own work.”

Keep following the feed on twitter for the #UKIEF10 and book a place there before they all go and failing that there should be some live streaming from the event too. So where next for Paul and the nine other UK finalists well after Manchester around four or more will be heading to the European Innovative Education Forum in Moscow and then who knows where next? Are you using Onenote in your school? We would love to hear from you.