Think you have some marketing skills in your school?

If you think you have some students with real ability to create innovative and exciting marketing campaigns, then here’s your chance to put it to a test.

Get them to sign up for the Microsoft Student Champion competition.

The Microsoft Student Champion competition invites marketing & business students across Europe to Devise & Deliver a campaign for their fellow students.

The campaign should be aimed at driving awareness about the benefits and savings available to them as registered college students.

First Prize of €5,000

What a great way to get some “real world” experience in your classroom.

Sign up and Register here

A new twist on talking about Bullying

I find that I go to one of my favourite websites, Teachers TV, more and more. The content and videos they have available are interesting, challenging and innovative. There is a great deal of content out there about bullying, but I’m sure you’ve never see any like “Inspirations-The Scary Guy”. I thought it was compelling and insightful. Just look at the faces of the students in the audience and stay long enough to hear their comments

Take 15 minutes out of your day and see what the “Scary Guy” has to say. It will be worth your time.

Microsoft PC Design Competition

Thanks again to my colleague rayfl for making me aware of this competition for designing the next generation PC. This is a terrific opportunity for students to showcase their design talents and possibly win up to $10,000.

So, go to the website for Next Generation PC Design Competition and check out the rules and prizes and think about submitting an entry.

Good luck

Innovative Teachers Forum Awards

I’ve been very lax in getting new postings up and I apologise for that. I’ve recently returned from Helsinki, Finland where I attended the Global Innovative Teachers Forum Awards. The event is a key part of the Microsoft Partners in Learning (PiL) programme and is the showcase for Innovation in Education as developed by Teachers themselves. There were 89 global winners that came out ahead of the over 100,000 worldwide entries. I was fortunate enough to host 2 teachers from Northern Ireland who won the competition here. They were Ewan Mackie from Glengormley HS for his entry “Tablet PCs Supporting Applied ICT” and James Maxwell of Ballyclare HS, who was representing Dr. Paul Wilson’s entry “Thinking through Robotics”.

If you’ve already signed up on the PiLs Innovative Teachers site, you can their entries here.

If you haven’t registered, you can do so here. You then go into “view community” and look at the “VCT folder”

Every teacher attending was considered a winner. There was a judging panel of esteemed Educators from around the world that selected the best 24 entries and then chose the overall winner in each category.

A special congratulation goes Tommy Maher from Scoil Naomh Fiachra in Kilkenney, Ireland and his entry “Don Quixote Impossible Dreamers”. Tommy won 1^st place for “Innovation in Content”.

  
Video: Ireland project - Don QuixoteYou can see all of the winners here and see a photo gallery here.

I will be launching an Innovative Teachers Network portal for Northern Ireland Teachers in the next few weeks so make sure you sign up after it gets announced. In the meantime you can register on either the Ireland site or the UK site to familiarize yourself.