Hong Kong Teaches Students with Remote Learning

Last spring, the global pandemic forced schools around the world to experiment with online learning. Schools that leverage technology to elevate education are finding the most success with this transition. Microsoft Hong Kong’s #FutureReady Limitless Learning Program supported over 50,000 teachers and 800,000 students from all 1,000 primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. Read this blog to see how they did it.

Remote learning tips playlist

This series includes just over 50 short “how to” video tutorials that tackle specific remote learning tasks and tips, such as how to create a class Team, how to create an attendance report in Teams, how to add a quiz or poll and more. Great reference videos—you’ll want to bookmark these!

Remote learning tips playlist

We are turning 5!

We can’t thank you enough for supporting us in our endeavours towards nurturing education and building such a vibrant learning community.

In 2015, De Pedagogics started with a passion of nurturing education with 3 key people as founder evangelist. Now, five years later, we have very successfully built a thriving community of people who are equally passionate about nurturing education and value our proposition. We are flying strong with thousands of people who engage with us via face to face, virtually and on social media for professional learning sessions, mindshare, and contribute wonderfully partnering with our team of 15 members. We owe much to our partners like Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Cambridge University Press, numerous K-12 schools and higher education institutes within India and those in UAE and China for placing their trust in us to drive learning into classrooms. We are happy to celebrate your enthusiastic support combined with our bold vision through 5-day Learning Festival!

Join us as we celebrate our 5th Anniversary this week!

We take pride in bringing to you Learning Festival aimed at mind-share and thought exchange around the ways we have and should continue nurturing education. Through these 5 days we plan to engage with you in 5 different ways –

14^th February’20 #ShowYourLove @DePedagogics

To mark this day of love we urge you to walk down the memory lane and share your special moment of you and us together. Post across social media, an image/ video/ artifact showcasing your #DPLearningMoment with De Pedagogics adding a few words to tell us your story using #YouKeepMeGoing @DePedagogics #ShowYourLove

We’d love to hear and amplify your story and relive the moment with you!

15^th February’20 Nurturing Education WEBYTES

This day of learning is aimed towards sharing educator expertise in using edtech tools which have helped in creating effective teaching learning environments in your teaching learning journey. Each WEBYTE will have 2 Speakers and will run for 40 minutes each.

Agenda:

Welcome- 5 minutes,

talk & present- 20 minutes

Q & A- 10 minutes

wrap-up- 5 minutes

Please feel free to register here to attend the WEBYTES – http://bit.ly/NEWREG20

16^th February’20 Live Panel Discussion

We take great pleasure of hosting in Live Panel Discussion and Twitter Chat on “Education 4.0 – how ready are we?” hosted on Teams on 16th February’20; 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm.

We request your virtual presence for the discussion on Teams and/or Twitter Chat at the same time and share your thoughts around the same. The aim of this mind-share session is to exchange thoughts around the way education is transforming in Indian classrooms and inspire many more educationists to be increasingly aware, informed and motivated towards embracing this change. Participants will get a chance to interact with esteemed speakers and professionals from the education sector and voice their thoughts, queries and worries. Additionally, Twitter Talk will run parallelly to complement this discussion which shall be moderated by our team members thus making this a platform to both hear and share your thoughts.

17^th February’20 The Look Back

We believe in looking into the rear-view mirror to look back at the great experiences from the years gone by to build stronger and richer experiences in the years to come. Join us in reflecting on the learning experiences that you’ve had over the past years and share your plan for creating a better future. We shall work towards building this future education experience with you. Be a part of our strategic planning as a valued partner and share your thoughts with us on our thinking wall on Twitter using #LookBack2MoveAhead @DePedagogics

18^th February’20 Pedagogy Potluck

The day has come for us to mark the birth of De Pedagogics!

What better way to mark the day by engaging in Pedagogy Potluck! Record a 1-minute video on Flipgrid here (https://flipgrid.com/d4f05ffc) sharing your hack as #TechQuickTip @DePedagogics that has worked for you in your class.

Please share the good news of De Pedagogics anniversary with others because each person’s contribution makes us a stronger and more vibrant community keeping our story alive and drive our collective vision of nurturing education.

Windows 7-End of Life!

Support for Windows 7 is ending. Become a MASP school and upgrade to Windows 10

After January 14, 2020, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or support for PCs running Windows 7. Now is the time to upgrade to Windows 10.

What does end of support mean?

If you continue to use Windows 7 after support has ended, your PC will still work, but it may become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses. Microsoft will no longer provide the following support for your school.

No technical support

No software updates

No security updates

We would like to take the opportunity and present to you the Microsoft Aspire School Program (MASP) Suite which has been specially launched for schools to improve the education experience for students and teachers at an affordable cost. The MASP suite provides access to an integrated set of technologies, innovative learning solutions, Windows 10 upgrade and enhances student engagement to help them develop 21^st century workplace skills.

Visit Microsoft School Aspire Program for more details

Please do let us know if you would want to upgrade to Windows 10 and take the discussion forward to embark on the journey to transform your school with Microsoft programs

Write to us at masp@depedagogics.com

Adobe Creative Experience

Adobe Creative Experience on 10th July’19 will mark selection of 1st cohort of Adobe Creative Educators who shall receive Creative Learning Immersion Workshop with Ben Forta towards digital and visual literacy, and understand the role that Adobe services and tools play in the future of communication and storytelling.

Team De Pedagogics shall play mentors towards creating collaborative projects with focus on Creativity & Innovation, Creativity & Collaboration, Creativity & Diversity and Creativity & Communication.

The ACEs will then be showcasing ways in which Adobe tools and technology to augment, enrich and support creativity in teaching and learning experiences to an eminent jury who shall then select top 50 educators to be awarded the status of Adobe Creative Ambassador on 11th July’19 during ADOBE SCHOOL LEADERS SUMMIT & AWARDS 2019.

Themed as Celebrating Culture of Creativity, Adobe School Leaders Summit & Awards, 2019 aims to bring together India’s most revered school directors, principals, policy makers and educators to deliberate and discuss new age skills for future success of students. Innovative pedagogical reforms for better learning outcomes and professional development of educators on digital tools is crucial for quality education.

Looking forward to a great day –Adobe Creative Experience!

TECH TALK TUESDAY 2019

Tech Tuesday Talk with Team De Pedagogics

We understand the challenges that schools and educators face in keeping abreast with the breadth and depth of latest in technology and use the same to make teaching and learning experiences more effective.

To address these challenges, we at De Pedagogics are happy to bring to you ‘TECH TUESDAY’; a weekly dose of 30-minute webinar/online meeting to keep you updated with what’s happening in the world of education.

Every Tuesday between 4:30 pm – 5:00 pm IST, we will bring to you Microsoft Experts from who’ll share important insights, Quick-bytes and opportunities and updates – All in 30 minutes!

Register here: http://bit.ly/DPTTT2019

Here’s the schedule:

Do Join us and bring along as many educators as possible. These sessions are free of cost so join us if you want to learn about what’s happening with technology in education.

We look forward to learning with you!

Personalized Creative Expressions

Can creativity be taught or learnt?

I don’t have a perfect answer for this but what I know is that given the right platform to think and learn students can create original content to demonstrate their understanding in a very creative manner.

One of our unique experiences with creating such learning environment for students was at Global Indian International School, Noida. The students were engaged in a week-long project based learning experience about UN Sustainable Development Goals where they were expected to choose one of the 17 global goals to work on in pairs, find out information about the same and define the problem statement they’d like to work on and offer solution for the same.

We introduced UN Sustainable Goals using Adobe Spark and using the same interface we worked with students giving them a self-learning path. In this Spark, we used the blended learning model where we had one hour of face to face interaction in which we introduced the project that the students were to engage in over a week. Learning expectations and outcomes were defined and shared with the students for them to work on. Spark made by the mentor teacher included the learning tasks right from introduction to UNSDG to search questions, resources using Pinterest board that could be used during their search for problem statements and offering solutions.

The students worked in pairs towards a chosen SDG and were expected to complete the tasks within a week in a self-paced manner. This gave them the freedom to work in their own space and at their own pace yet being monitored by their mentor teachers. As a result of this newfound freedom, students took upon themselves to divide task and work collaboratively with their partners to complete the project in a timely manner. Adobe Spark gave them the power to create their own images, web pages and videos. Having understood the problem and ways to find solution towards the same students conveyed their understanding by creating original pictures, info graphics and videos rather than lifting them straight from the web. In this journey, they learnt how to accept other’s ideas and build on them thinking critically and analyzing what best suited the context. Each group created their individual Spark to convey they learning journey creatively. All the work done towards this project was collated in one Spark (view it here by clicking on link) and was showcased to the larger audience including some members from Adobe Global leadership team – rare opportunity for students to be appreciated and encouraged by such dignitaries.

Adobe Spark provides a platform for personalized creative expression and enables demonstrating understanding using various media by creating post, web page and video. Using spark the students are more engaged and are co-constructing knowledge by brainstorming ideas, accepting other’s point of view and creating original piece of work, This helps fostering 21st century skills amongst students and make them life-ready which resonates with our vision of creating lifelong learners.

All this was possible as the school was very supportive of Adobe Digital Disha program which their school has adopted to foster creativity in the classroom. This program gives all students and teachers access to Adobe Spark premium version free of cost to all educational institutions in India. This is an endeavour to bring creativity in classrooms by creating stunning visual stories that reflect your concept, cause, or personal thoughts in the easiest and quickest way.

To learn more about Adobe Digital Disha program for your educational institution please leave a message and we’ll connect with you.

ADOBE DIGITAL DISHA

It gives us immense pleasure to introduce free access to Adobe Digital Disha that allows educators to think, create and implement their ideas for better student learning outcome will make it easier for educators to prepare their classes and adopt innovative techniques and methodologies.

Adobe Digital Disha is an India-specific program conceptualized in sync with Digital India and Skill India mission. It aims to empower educators to provide digital experiences to students to become future ready at no cost. Adobe Digital Disha program with its 4E (engage-execute-experience-evaluate) Strategy has undertaken the task to digitally revolutionize today’s education needs by providing Adobe Spark – a tool to transform teaching and learning in response to the needs of the Experience Era.

By integrating Adobe Spark in the school curriculum Adobe Digital Disha program aims to

Orient teachers and students to emerging technologies in the Digital Era
Introduce vistas for experiential and accelerated learning
Empower educators to teach new age skills, create and share impactful lesson plans
Enhance learning outcome
Create professional communities of enthusiastic educators to learn, share, collaborate, participate and develop their professional expertise with the help of Adobe Education Exchange

Program Benefits: As a part of this free Adobe Digital Disha Program, the school gets,

Capacity Building Workshops
Access to Adobe Spark with Premium features
Content and sample lesson plans
Adobe Education Exchange

Adobe Digital Disha program offers workshops with practical hands on training using Adobe Spark for educators. This one-day training program aims at helping teachers enhance their creativity and bring a change in the learning process thus build life-long learning and enabling creativity and digital proficiency of the students. The programme has been designed to provide students with tools for life-long learning, i.e. learn how to learn and to gather knowledge. The programme was created keeping in mind the rapid growth of new knowledge. It focusses on enhancing creative skills of the students and make them future ready to step into the corporate world. Adobe Digital Disha is a free of cost training program for educators and students of schools and Higher Education.

Please let us know if you’d like to know any further details about the program and we’ll be happy to be of help

MINECRAFT MENTOR MEETUP – GAMES FOR CHANGE, NYC

I had the great fortune of attending Minecraft Mentor Meetup during the Games for Change Event in NYC this June.

Enthusiastic Minecraft Mentor cohort included educational training companies, STEM instructional facilitators, and school digital leaders from across various countries/continents – Australia, Israel, UK, India and US.

The purpose of the meetup was to foster connections between mentors, learn from peers, promote creativity, collaboration and project design by putting the mentor minds at work. True to typical Minecraft session formats, the session began with ‘Get-to-know’ followed by ‘Learn & Play’; ‘Prepare to Craft’ and then Design to make a difference.

Led by the most welcoming Minecraft leaders Sara Cornish and Meenoo Rami, the event began with an activity to brush up on our networking skills where we were given a card each as we entered the room with the image of a Minecraft agent or tool that were colour-coded to aide finding a matching partner. This was an ice-breaker activity for ‘getting to know’ other mentors in each group table.

Once familiar with each other, the group was thrown a challenge to ‘Learn & Play’ and ‘Prepare to Craft’ together. Minecraft Mentor Meetup Build Challenge was an opportunity to informally mingle with each other over food and beverages to discuss what we could build in accordance with the given challenge card. It was a great way to explore ideas around the given theme which in our case was to build a Pixel art piece. We all had an opportunity to think and create in the given Minecraft world and learn from each other’s expertise. Personally, for me it was a wonderful learning opportunity as my expertise lies in designing plans rather than creating in Minecraft world and this gave me access to seek advice to improvise on my work from mentors that have had more experience.

The next challenge given to the global mentors was to design a plan that could help create a global impact using Minecraft. Suddenly the room was buzzing and noisy as each of the mentor groups got thinking of a unique way to create an impact. Being a curriculum writer, designing plans comes quickly to me and with the best to brainstorm with we came up with a plan that was a call-to-action towards a more tolerant world. With much going around us, students today need to be more open-minded than ever towards accepting other cultures, religion and respecting diversity.

To cap off the brainstorming session, the floor was opened to all groups to present and share their ideas and plans which brought in perspectives, diverse project ideas covering range of subject areas and age groups. Talking to and hearing fellow mentors helped motivate me even more to learn and gain experience using this framework and even create my own project. Bringing this huge learning back home, my enterprise, De Pedagogics, will soon be hosting a Minecraft Meetup back in India real soon.

Thanks to Minecraft team especially Meenoo Rami and Sara Cornish for bringing the best and brightest mentors together and provided us this dynamic workspace for 3-hours (that ended sooner than expected) to meet, learn, explore and grow.