Monday this week I had the great pleasure of receiving an email from Microsoft to congratulate me on being selected as a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE) for 2017-2018. This was a wonderful surprise, following my application submission earlier this year. The application process involved putting together a PowerPoint Mix or Sway to overview my work. I chose to create a small portfolio in Sway which was an excellent opportunity to reflect on the last academic year. Now I am part of the MIEE programme I look forward to continuing to model the use of Microsoft technologies for learning and teaching. More importantly, I look forward to training and supporting colleagues in their own use of Microsoft technology for learning and teaching.
The year ahead
The MIEE status stays with me for a year and over this time I’ve been thinking about what I want to work on. Like any other commitment I take, I took to Twitter to outline my plans for the year:
1) Sways & Mixes to help students 2) Help colleagues in library with #DigitalLiteracy & #MicrosoftEdu 3) Increase student use of #OneNote https://t.co/9ZI0zyOxDr
— Lee Fallin (@LeeFallin) 4 September 2017
As outlined in my tweet, I have three areas I want to work on and in this blog I’ll add a fourth – my own CPD.
Sways and Mixes
I think Sways and Mixes are fantastic educational tools. I especially love how I can quickly create a Mix in PowerPoint. While I can use more complicated tools, they take valuable time. Time I don’t have. For Sway – I love the dynamic and responsive nature. They work really well for content heavy pages that need to be accessible on any size of screen. The ability to set image focus points always ensures the most important elements of any diagram are preserved no matter what device someone is on. I am looking forward to getting some Mixes and Sways online.
Support colleagues with digital literacy and Microsoft 365
Over the last couple of years I’ve been doing a lot of work on digital literacy. My work over the last few months with Microsoft Office 365 and a whole range of Microsoft tools and apps (Learning Tools, Sway, Office Lens, Snip, PowerPoint Mix) has brought new perspectives to this work. Having built my own expertise through practice, I’m now looking forward to supporting colleagues developing their use of Microsoft educational tools, apps and Microsoft Office too. I’m also keen to update some of my existing resources with the latest tech solutions.
Promoting OneNote
OneNote has long been a component of Microsoft Office. It is however, often in the shadow of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I think it is one of the most undervalued aspects of the office suite and I always love introducing users to it. Often, students have OneNote installed on their computer but have never even opened it. I want to try and promote it more within my own institution. I think OneNote combined with Office Lens is the perfect solution to all a students note taking needs! Additional aspects of this including further experimentation with Class Notebooks, and I look forward to seeing how they can replace some wikis I am currently using in the VLE.
CPD
Technology is always developing and I aim to keep myself up-to-date on any new tools Microsoft release, and any updates to existing tools. I’m also keen to continue developing my knowledge through the Microsoft Educator Community.
Nice post. I became an MIE a few months ago, it really opened my eyes and has made me do many more courses through Microsoft Education. I love it!
That’s great to hear! The Microsoft Educator Community really helped me to tie together a lot of the work I’d already been doing – and fill in the gaps. Thought about applying for MIEE yourself next year?
Thought about it, and even completed the Microsoft in Education and MIE Trainer Academy Pathways, but unfortunately a lack of time means I can’t really put as much time in it as I would like to and need to to justify MIEE. For now, I’m just happy to be a Community Influencer 🙂
Ah – time is the devil! Did you do the MIE trainer pathway online? I really enjoyed that. Looking forward to delivering some more training on campus too.
Yes I did, it was good. Really felt like a good and value-added course, which is rare for online stuff. I am slowly promoting all the extras in Office365 we have but nobody knows about. Love OneNote and Mix!
I agree. I think that particular course was the most valuable I’ve done so far on the Microsoft Educator Community. I’m quite enjoying the 21st century learning design course too though. As for tools, my favourite at the moment is Snip. I really miss it when using a computer without it: https://mix.office.com/snip
The 21st century learning one was very good. Not easy, but very informative, and has definitely made me think more about digital literacy and the disconnect between skills new first years have and what we expect them to have. Still no real solution, but it gave me more understanding, and I now promote the university-organised digital skills workshops much more. Students seem to appreciate it…