Building Teacher Community through Teachers-Meet-Businesses

Teachers everywhere are experiencing arguably the most difficult school year yet, with the advance of technology-driven solutions to a global pandemic that has forced millions of school to go fully or partially virtual in no time at all. Feeling over-worked and over-exhausted, many educators are seeking out communities to sustain them whether that is through social media platforms, finding teacher groups online, or even relying on shopping networks to help other teachers to clear their classroom shopping lists in a recent initiative to show their support for each other. Now, more than ever before, teachers are building and leaning on their communities.

At BSD Education, we are committed to providing teachers with opportunities to nurture their connections to other teachers through various initiatives but most recently through a new talk series called “Teachers Meet Businesses” launched early last year in Hong Kong.

The aim was to build a community that bridged the gap between educators and businesses in terms of preparing students for the workplace. As such, our quarterly events were directly aimed at breaking this disconnect by showing first-hand how technology is disrupting industries, as well as how educators can better prepare students for their future careers.

The event provides teachers with an opportunity to share projects and best practices with their peers and explore new ways of using technology in the classroom. For businesses, these events allow professionals to see how current digital skills are being integrated into the curriculum, thereby influencing their future workforce.

During a “Teachers Meet Businesses” event, attendees are given the chance to expand their networks, exchange ideas, and share experiences. For example, at our first event, we heard from Iain Williamson, Head of Media Literacy at South Island School in Hong Kong, about his experiences implementing coding and digital skills as a cross-curricular initiative, and how it has prepared his students for their future careers by creating professional projects for the Agence France Presse (AFP). It is an especially important course for today’s students because not only are they constantly utilizing digital skills, many are looking for a more in-depth learning experience.

We also heard from Fiona Yu, a subject matter expert in Machine Learning, Distributed Data, and Blockchain Trading, where she discussed the skills students will need when entering the workforce. Specifically, she focused on building skills in data and data visualization.

At subsequent events, we heard from Matthew Wong, Group Manager for Digital Leadership at Swire Coca-Cola, and Andrew Pidden, Managing Director, Head of Sustainable Investments at DWS Group as well as Ross Parker, Director of Technology, Pedagogy and Assessment at International College of Hong Kong and Stewart Ross, Design and Technology Teacher at West Island School in Hong Kong. Our educational speakers discussed how the approach to project-based learning needs to adapt to the growing priority of digital skillsets. Our corporate speakers explained how the advancements of technology have directly impacted the global markets, from circular economic investments to developing environmental technology, as brands become more socially conscious. 

One of the clear benefits to “Teachers Meet Businesses” events is being able to hear both sides of the conversation. It is integral to preparing our students for the real-world workforce because at the rate technology is developing across various industries, students will enter industries that are 100% reliant on technological literacy, whether that is in code, data, programming, or careers seemingly unrelated to technology. Educators will be in a better position to create curriculums that work for the students of today if they can see what is necessary for future careers.

Through this initiative, these areas of expertise are not only addressed but are fueled by an innovative approach to education technology. We are committed to building a solid community of teachers who are passionate about infusing technology into academic learning to make students future-ready. 

Given the unforeseen challenges, this year has presented, the “Teacher Meet Businesses” events have been put on hold but our commitment to building a strong community is ongoing. We look forward to when we can hold another event soon and encourage other schools and businesses to contact us about getting involved in our next event.

For more information please contact us at info@bsd.education.

About Beth:

Beth Darvell is a social media marketer with a passion for all things content. She loves helping brands scale their businesses by leveraging the power of social media – without resorting to vanity metrics. She is American, not English, but is absolutely an Anglophile.

She moved back to Hong Kong where she started work as a Native English Teacher while also maintaining freelance marketing opportunities. She made the full shift to marketing in 2016 and hasn’t looked back. She is BSD’s Marketing Executive overseeing the organization’s social media marketing.

 

 

The Biggest Trend in Tech Education This Past Decade Isn’t Even About Tech

Mark Barnett, Lead Educator at BSD Education, recently presented and attended the annual UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development conference. The event was aimed at solving big issues in education that gave Mark insightful takeaways from the conference about the most important trends in education that will propel us forward in the coming decade.

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Looking back over the last 10 years of trends and movements in K-12 education, we have seen a rise in new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Coding, Robotics and Makerspaces; with a heavy emphasis on building student agency with tech skills. 

However, the trend that has evolved over the last 10 years which may be the most important of all doesn’t even involve tech. It is Social Emotional learning, empathy and what many call “soft skills development”. You may have even seen a shift to social emotional thinking in your own schools with mindfulness programs, empathy building projects or school-wide behavior management programs that focus on restorative practices. 

This past December, we attended the Transforming Education Conference for Humanity at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development in India and heard from experts all over the world who were implementing and practicing ways to develop social emotional learning for students and teachers. One of the main takeaways from the conference was that by introducing social emotional learning to students, many institutions have reported overall positive results, including better academic performance, improved attitudes, behaviors and relationships with peers, as well as deeper connection to school, fewer delinquent acts and reduced emotional distress (student depression, anxiety, stress and social withdrawal).  

While at the conference, we spoke to Dr. Tara Lynn Fraiser who researches and develops K-12 social emotional learning programs at Emory University in collaboration with the Dalai Lama. She described the importance of providing opportunities for social emotional learning to be as vital as the development and acquisition of academic knowledge and skills. She also spoke about how social emotional learning programs can help to deter anxiety and stress in the classroom for both the teacher and the students. A common theme that we heard at the conference was that teachers also need to develop these skills for themselves to help facilitate deeper connections. Many social emotional programs like those developed at Emory focus on developing capacity for the teacher. Teachers, take note! Don’t feel bad about taking that extra time for yourself at the spa, gym or lounge.  

While at the conference, we were able to see evidence of social emotional learning at work by hearing students speak at various panel discussions, workshops and poster sessions. We met 3 young engineering students from a school in Visakhapatnam (India) who had been working on a semester-long project to use empathy as a way to solve problems in their local community. They met with local farmers to learn about issues with irrigation and planting and then made prototypes of technologies like remote digital soil moisture monitors and robots that could help the farmers with seed propagation. By focusing on understanding the farmers’ problems through empathy, the students were able to design solutions that effectively solved the problems in a compassionate way. Developing empathy like this has been made popular in tech education through using the Design Thinking Method which starts with empathy as a foundation for understanding the need of people along with a social or technical problem.

We at BSD believe in developing social emotional capacity as well and feel that social emotional learning should fit together with any skill development. This is why we have designed all of our curriculum around our philosophy of CARE. We want to grow students to be:

Curious – always seeking to learn new things.

Adaptable  – never afraid to try something new.

Resilient – willing to start again and learn from challenges.

Empathetic – thoughtful about how their technology impacts the world.

The CARE philosophy that is baked into our curriculum helps students develop the right mindset to use technology to solve difficult problems. We help students develop self-esteem, empathy and skills they need to shape their futures by carefully designing lessons that require students to ask difficult questions, reflect on their learning and think about solving big problems. Our CARE philosophy extends to teacher’s needs too, by providing comprehensive lesson notes, guided practice and even professional development. Though, you will have to get your own spa package for that extra level of self care.

If you are new to social emotional learning or just want to learn more, we recommend this getting started guide. Feel free to start a chat with me at @BarkMarnett on Twitter or email me at mb@bsd.education to talk about Social Emotional learning, or anything on Education!

Boost Your Confidence in Introducing Technology into your Classroom

Written by Rachel Brujis, BSD Education

<h1>… <p>… <body>? Does it sound familiar or like a foreign language to you?

This is the answer we usually get when we work with non-tech teachers to make technology part of their classroom.

Teaching is fun but can also be terrifying, especially when you’re doing it for the first time. Adding technology you may not be familiar with, to enhance your students’ learning experience, may even sound more intimidating. But don’t worry, we have come up with top tips to make this potentially daunting experience, easy for you.

1.  Learn with your students. Your students will love the opportunity to drive the learning and at times act like the teacher.  Frame it as an adventure to explore together: “Let’s explore together, I know that some of you may have had experience with it before, let’s take this opportunity to learn from each other and together.”

2. Use the internet as a tool. A lot of technology experts use YouTube to top up their skills – whether to learn a new code or create a new tool. Can you use YouTube creatively with your students to learn and build something? For some classes with older kids, this can be a great way to change the learning environment. Besides, who would say no to watching YouTube for homework?

3. Work in partnership.  Remember the idea to make your students the teacher? You can assign students a role to make them part of the learning – whether it’s the CSS Superhero or HTML expert – this is a great way to build their capacity as experts and confidence teaching their peers a new skill.

4. It’s cool to copy. In technology, it’s not considered cheating if you copy! In fact open-source code is how a lot of programs are built.  The role of the programmer or product designer is to bring together existing pieces to make something useful and they only build new things where they need to.  Don’t be afraid to look online for inspiration for your design or code, and focus on encouraging students to think of new combinations that make something useful in the real world.

 

Interested in learning more about how to bring technology into the classroom? Email Rachel at rb@bsd.education or read more articles here.

Why We Aim For Students To CARE

Written by Rachel Brujis, BSD Education

“… I do not publish nor divulge [methods of building submarines] by reason of the evil nature of men who would use them as means of destruction at the bottom of the sea, by sending ships to the bottom, and sinking them together with the men in them.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

 

Our aim is to give students the confidence and skills to work with the most powerful technology tools of their generation.  And as Spiderman teaches “with great power comes great responsibility.”

This is a lesson that every inventor learns.  Early inventors were often tied to military purposes.  Leonardo da Vinci famously focused on defensive rather than offensive technology, and went as far as destroying some of his advanced designs to avoid what he believed would be the inevitable human destruction.  This responsibility expanded to scientists focused on chemical warfare – the wife of the German inventor of chemical warfare ultimately committed suicide when she couldn’t convince her husband not to publish his results – and even DNA – as scientists feared their recombinant DNA experiments would lead to accidentally incurable pathogens.

As we have seen around the world in the last few years technology is not only ubiquitous, but more powerful than ever. A power at the hands of everyone. From a young age, then, we want to equip students not only with the technical skills to use tools but also the moral compass to use them for good.  We call this teaching students to CARE – to be curious, adaptable, resilient and empathetic to the world around them.

We work with students to use technology in ways that benefit their communities.  We have students that are building connected scales to measure and reduce waste at their schools and others creating websites to donate to people in need.  Even something as simple as making virtual Valentine’s Day cards to show people some love can have a positive impact on others. In each case, our students look around themselves to see real problems and create solutions that really work for people in their communities.

Ultimately, we’ll measure our success by the impact that our students have and we want to give them every chance to make that a positive one.  Our moral compass guides BSD and we aspire for it to guide the projects, tools and movements our students create too.

Source: Less Wrong

Teacher Interview: Shasta Quilala from The Philippines

“Our partnership with BSD has, in two years time, provided us with threefold gain in the areas of:

Student Engagement – Their easy to use and navigate platform as well as the unique and unusual projects have seen us gain an increase of at least 50% overall across those subjects using their material as compared to those without. This engagement has also led to better performance in terms of scoring in tests and activities on the part of the student, and much lesser preparation and checking time on the part of the teacher, which in turn allows us to focus on the learning experience itself.

Professional Development – The computational and design thinking principles embedded into the curriculum drive our teachers towards a more learner centric approach in practice, not just in principle. They have also been able to provide us with real time, personalized support that have enabled even our new faculty to maximize the use of the program within their classrooms.

Organizational Growth – Our partnership with BSD has given us a competitive edge over other schools in the market and a unique value proposition that has increased our enrollment. It has also been an integral part of our developing a future ready, future smart curriculum and learning approach that we have used in order to gain accreditation for our programs at GSC.”

– Alessandra Valino, Vice President of Good Samaritan Colleges, The Philippines

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Since the Summer 2017 started, we have been working with an amazing school that decided to fully integrate technology education into their subjects and classrooms. We spoke to Shasta Quilala, a teacher from Good Samaritan Colleges who felt empowered learning technology education with BSD. 

1. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what subject you teach?

My name is Shasta, I am from Dagupan City, Pangasinan. I am a teacher at Good Samaritan Colleges, located at Cabanatuan City and I teach Technology and Livelihood Education (T.L.E.) for Grades 9 and 10. I also teach Computing for Grade 10 with cores Database and Visual Basic Programming.

2. What has kept you busy over the last few months?

The past few months have been very busy because our school decided to run our first ever Summer Camp (Back in March)! With the help of our teachers and the BSD Education team, our students had an in-depth, hands on experience with technology. We received a lot of positive feedback and reaction from the students, even how they felt they were famous techies. They even surpassed our levels of achievement, learning technology education through BSD Online!

When the school year started, we also ran a pre-learning session for technology teachers of Grades 7-10 to introduce HTML and CSS and get students started to help prepare them in using code across different subject areas, like English and Social Studies. It was a bit challenging at first because for some students, it had been the first time they ever used a computer. It was very satisfying and gratifying for us to see our students interests in coding, they could even code better than us!

3. What cool things are coming up in the next few months?

Technology education is being fully integrated into our curriculums this year. I am one of many excited teachers! Some of my colleagues have already started creating their lesson plans with BSD’s integration.

It is wonderful to see that teachers are starting to be more fond of technology and adopting it into their classrooms. They are starting to see code as their partner and tool for teaching, it makes learning more conducive and interesting. We hope it will be as successful as the recent Summer Camp held.

4. What do you want to do next in bringing tech into your classroom for your students?

As a technology teacher, I want to engage students in coding and robotics more, they are very powerful tools for everyone. BSD is a stepping stone for all Filipino students to come out of their shells and develop their tech journeys, we know and can see that there is a lot of potential. As their teacher, I am ready to mold and guide them towards the competitive world outside the four corners of our classrooms.