Securing Europe’s competitive future through education: Innovative Education Forum 2010
25 March 2010
The feeling in Berlin this week is not quite one of the majestic city of the past, but much more an innovative, exciting capital looking to the future.
The city is hosting the 7th Innovative Education Forum, which brings together teachers from across Europe to compare notes on innovative teaching and learning strategies – components essential to European ability to compete on the world’s stage.
The three day event has by now established itself as one of the most influential international gatherings of exceptional educators and education experts from the worlds of business and science. With the event Microsoft hopes to build a network of teachers that promotes information exchange and best practice sharing across Europe, as well to provide a platform for teachers to be able to gain exposure to latest trends and thinking in the world of education.
The Innovative Education Forum represents an important component of Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Program and our broader commitment to education. We have been working with our partners since 2003 to encourage schools to strive to realize their full potential by use of innovative techniques and digital media in the classroom. We believe e-skills will be the foundation stones of the knowledge economy of the 21st century in Europe, and our belief has been the driving force behind the organization of Innovative Education Forums in London (2004), Stockholm (2005), Tallinn (2006), Paris (2007), Zagreb (2008) and Vienna (2009).
Linked to this European-wide education congress is a competition, which looks at the learning projects that have been created through innovative use of technology across a series of different categories, such as Innovation in Community, Innovation in Content, Innovation in Collaboration as well as the Educators Choice, in which participating teachers choose their own winner. The twelve winners will be announced during the gala dinner at the end of the event and I am proud to be able to say that it is impossible to predict the winner amongst the plethora of outstanding projects.
I very much hope that we will be able to transmit some of the feeling of excitement to a workshop Microsoft and EUN and organizing in Brussels in roughly a month’s time (20 April). We are bringing together policy makers and experts to look at European policy commitments to education, in particular in areas such as one-to-one computing. If you are interested in attending, drop me an email.