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Do you believe in the idea that our futures and personalities are governed by Zodiac star signs. Here is an example, which one of these do you think describes myself and Kristen, are you able to identify our personality traits from just our blog posts? (or even from the occasions where you may have met...

My favourite part of the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum is meeting the teachers that have submitted Virtual Classroom Tours to share with their colleagues. I’m lucky enough to have been asked to be a judge at this year’s Forum, which is a lot of work, but also means that I get to speak in-depth...

We have talked a lot about Dan Roberts, one of our award winners from the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Hong Kong. He is still very much an active member of the Innovative Teachers programme, and Kristen and I are in contact with him and his school on a regular basis. He has just returned from...

From what I’ve seen visiting schools in this country, I’d say on the whole…not much. (Don’t feel bad; teachers and schools in the US trust students a lot less.) The level trust we have for students and pupils is always made obvious when I visit other countries. Here are two examples. Denmark :...

View Full Album This is our final post about Innovative Teachers Forum in Vienna. This event has been the most successful yet for UK Teachers and the UK Innovative Teachers team. It follows on from our most successful UK Innovative Teachers Forum ever. We are expecting this success to continue with...

At our Innovative Teachers events around the world, we're seeing more and more teachers guide their pupils on a journey that takes them beyond their classroom, school - even their country - by connecting them with another school somewhere else in the world. I've seen a school in Sweden connect with a...

There are only 7 days left before the closing date for submissions for the Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Forum . If you were thinking of submitting a Virtual Classroom Tour (VCT) yourself or know of a teacher whose work in the classroom deserves recognition. Then this is the week when you need to...

And Blwyddyn Newydd Dda to all the Welsh blog followers. So it is 2009, a new term, time to reflect on 2008, enjoy the last of the mince pies and start on those New Year's resolutions (which, if you're anything like me, you'll keep up for all of about two weeks). When we look back at 2008, we're proud...

Putting together a project for a competition is probably the last thing on your mind at this time of year, especially with so few shopping days left until Christmas! Nonetheless, I wanted to give you some inspiration over the festival period, before you finish for a well-earned Christmas break. Take...

Microsoft's worldwide Innovative Teachers Forums are about teachers from all over the world forming a community and working together. More than that, however, they are about celebration. Every teacher that attends these Forums has already won an award in their country or their region, so we're celebrating...

Obama may have won, but there is a far more important competition going on. Yes! This is what you have all been waiting for. Who has won the coveted Innovative Teachers Awards? So, if you are drinking red wine as you read this post, put your glass down. You won’t want to spill any by leaping with...

This is no holiday for the Teachers. We make them work hard, but we make sure they have a truly rewarding experience at the same time. Today, the groups of teachers went on their assigned field trips. I joined a lively group, sent to the Po Ling Monastery on Lantau Island. You can see our route here...

Stuart and I split up on Tuesday; he joined the teachers on educational excursions all over Hong Kong that I'm sure he'll explain, and I sat in meetings in a hotel ballroom for most of the day. (Not that I'm bitter. Or jealous. Hotel ballrooms are lovely.) I did have one opportunity to leave the hotel...

As mentioned, next week we will be blogging ‘live’, (well, almost) from the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Hong Kong. Kristen and I will be accompanied by Peter Carney and Dan Roberts whom, Kristen spoke about in her last two blog posts. They have the hardest job at the event, as they will be...

Stuart and I have been talking about the teachers we work with all over the UK ( here ), including those who create Virtual Classroom Tours (explained here ) and travel with us to Innovative Teachers Forums around the world (described here ). We're about to embark on the grand-daddy of all Innovative...

We throw around the word "innovation" a lot in education today. Indeed, it's one of our favourite words at Microsoft, as we've frequently referred to Innovative Teachers or Innovative Schools programmes in this blog. But what does it really mean? I was reading an education and technology blog put...

My fellow blogger Stuart was a science teacher, and still talks about things like chaos theory and tarantulas. Even though I taught English and French, I found this quick science resource too fun to keep to myself. A colleague of mine at Microsoft sent around these short video snippets featuring...

Luckily they are all around us working away in our school and classrooms, up and down the country in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and in my job I get to meet these people and have the privilege to work with them. I would like to share with you some their work which you can freely download...

Bear with me for just a moment, and I promise this will go somewhere. I read Don Quixote during my first year at university, when we were required to plough through the entire 1,000 pages of the 17th-century novel in two weeks. I struggled with it, and I was 19 years old and had chosen to study literature...

I am not the most travelled person. After all, I live in Wales, why would would I need to go anywhere else? But all that changed when my Virtual Classroom Tour won an award at the UK Innovative Teachers Forum held at the Microsoft Campus in Reading in 2005. I was chosen along with three other teachers...