Learning On The Job

I’ve had a great day in Singapore.

First I spent the morning with Keri-Lee Beasley and Katie Day at the UWCSEA East Campus. Believe it or not, it was my first time meeting Twitter friends face-to-face. Other than being close to an hour late and still slightly wet from the morning downpour, I had a fantastic time chatting with Keri-Lee and Kate: answering their questions about our 1:1 program; asking them questions about how they plan to implement the NETS; sharing tips and ideas about Diigo, OneNote, portfolios, planning with other teachers, professional development. And to end it with a bang, one of Keri-Lee’s talented 5th grades gave me a wiz-bang introduction to Scratch!

I then hopped a taxi to the Singapore American School, where I met with Audrey Forgeron and Susan Sedro. I am impressed with the sheer enormity of the school (over 3500 students!) and their continuing efforts to orchestrate an integrated approach to technology. I also learned a few tricks from Susan about Google Docs (apparently anybody can edit now, even without logging in) and SharePoint (specifically focusing on the ‘Share’ part) that could make a huge difference for teachers who are interested in getting their students collaborating and  are willing to geek out a bit in order to do so.

There was so much more that was discussed at both campuses; these are just some highlights as it’s impossible for me to put it all into words. Thank you once more to Keri-Lee, Katie, Audrey and Susan for accommodating me and spending such precious time with me. I hope that I can reciprocate in the future!