September – Let’s seal it with a kiss

“I don’t wanna say goodbye for the summer
Knowing the love we’ll miss
Oh let us make a pledge to meet in September
And seal it with a kiss”

–  Jason Donovan

I was invited to attend the International forum for Teachers held in Colombo on the theme of “Touching Hearts, Transforming Minds” and had the privilege of listening to amazing Educators on how teachers can touch the hearts of children to transform how they learn.

Professor David Shaw’s (David Shaw is a visiting professor at the Aberdeen Business School specializing in leadership, communication and well being.) session struck a code with me for two reasons. 1. He used a lot of Harry Potter Analogy (#diehardfan) 2. He spoke about giving new tools to disheartened teachers and this is something I work towards in giving the teachers of my school. I believe that these tools can be a new magic wand – the wand of digital technology in the classroom.

In my drive towards making my school a Microsoft Showcase School #MicrosoftEDU, I’m in the process of getting all my teachers on board using the amazing digital tools they offer for the classroom such as #Onenote and #MicrosoftTeams. These ‘magic wands’ help teachers to transform their lessons into enchanting experiences.

At the IFT I met Felicia Brown, Asia Pacific Senior Teacher Engagement Manager  #MicrosoftEDU, who my Chairman invited over to visit Gateway College Colombo the next day, as we are a #MicrosoftSchool. It was great to show her everything that we do in school along with the Computing Curriculum I have helped develop.

Encouraging Teachers to use Hour of Code

I constantly encourage the teachers of my department to conduct #HourofCode activities to improve their coding skills. I specially encourage them to do this when a teacher is absent and they are supposed to sit in that lesson as a ‘relief’ teacher.  The student’s love it and it’s no problem getting the girl’s to love coding either. There’s a lot of communictio and collaboration taking place as well when the students help each other when they hit a snag. I think a picture speaks a thousand words so here’s 6 thousand of it.

I wish I dedicated separate blog posts for each of these but it was a crazy busy month. But I do pledge to keep this blog more active from October. My September’s been wonderful and I’ll seal it with a kiss.