Best practices: New wave teachers set trend

Teachers drew inspiration for their lesson plans from field trips to different parts of Hanoi.

The Fourth Microsoft Partners in Learning Regional Innovative Teachers’ Conference 2008 recently held in Hanoi, Vietnam, is a showcase for the benefits of information technology-integrated learning, writes SUZIEANA UDA NAGU.

Woodman says challenges were similar across Asia Pacific.

Schools have the capacity to be the smallest units of innovation, says Quah.

Maznah is Malaysia's Innovative Teacher of the Year.

ARM teachers with training and resources to incorporate information technology (IT) in the classroom and they will transform education.

This is what some 150 innovative teachers from 21 countries around Asia Pacific and North America had proven at the Fourth Microsoft Partners in Learning (PIL) Regional Innovative Teachers’ Conference 2008 held recently in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Organised under the Microsoft’s flagship PIL programme, the conference was co-hosted by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Asia Pacific).

PIL is a global initiative to empower schools to enhance student learning through teacher development and leadership.
At the four-day conference, teachers — many of whom are award winners in their respective countries — exhibited innovative teaching and learning tools as well as project-based lesson plans they use in their classrooms.

These ranged from interactive reading intervention software for slow readers to podcasts of biology lessons which had benefited thousands of students all over the world.

A podcast is a series of digital-media files distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players, such as an MP3 player, and computers.

Microsoft Asia Pacific public sector programmes director Vincent Quah says: “The event was a showcase for the benefits of IT-integrated learning. It also underscored (Microsoft’s) notion that schools have the capacity to be the best and smallest units of innovation.

“This is something which Microsoft discovered since it organised the first conference five years ago in Singapore,” adds Quah.

Aimed at sharing best practices in the innovative use of technology in education and recognising teachers’ creativity, innovation and dedication to their work, the inaugural conference brought together more than 120 teachers from 16 Asia Pacific countries as well as top Asian education leaders and policy makers.

Subsequent conferences were held in South Korea and Cambodia.

The quality of teaching tools exhibited by the primary and secondary school teachers have improved year by year — so much so that the Asia Pacific conference was regarded as the “gold standard against which Microsoft measures its innovative teachers’ conferences held in other parts of the world”.

The conference has gained the attention of educationists from countries outside of Asia Pacific over the years.

Delegates from Canada and the United States as well as two new Asia Pacific countries — Republic of Nauru and Republic of Vanuatu — joined the recent conference.

One of the highlights of the Hanoi seminar was the poster competition for the Innovative Teachers of the Year awards conferred on a teacher with the best project from each country. Countries which had fewer than three participants were not eligible for the contest.

Maznah Zaini from SK Sungai Rawang, Sungai Pelek, Selangor, was picked as Malaysia’s Innovative Teacher of the Year for her early reading intervention software. Maznah was among eight teachers who represented Malaysia at the conference.

Another focal point of the convention was the special collaborative project where teachers of different nationalities worked in groups to develop specific teaching and learning materials for education in sustainable development.

Teachers drew inspiration for their lesson plans — on topics such as ethnicity, water conservation, impact of urbanisation and values and beliefs — from field trips to different parts of Hanoi.

The recent convention also marked the end of the first stage of Microsoft’s five-year commitment to the Innovative Schools programme under the PIL initiative.

The challenges faced in the five-year period were similar across Asia Pacific, says Microsoft Government and Education Team senior director Lauren Woodman.

“One was to establish the right partnerships. We made sure that our engagement was done through ministries of education, non-governmental organisations, multilateral institutions and teacher communities, so that we could really listen to local needs,” she adds.

In addition, the experience of one country is not easily replicated elsewhere.

Microsoft also announced the extension of the Innovative Schools initiative at the conference. The programme will continue to assist over 2,000 schools by providing intellectual property, technology expertise, experiential knowledge and community support within the next five years.

The next step, says Quah, is to think about “the form and format of the second wave of five years of engagement with governments”.

Woodman says: “We are looking at the key driver for innovation as a way for us to scale this programme up.”