Background
I am a strong advocate of empowering people through education and I am currently pursuing this advocate in my job.
As the Regional Academic Programs Manager (APM) for Microsoft Asia Pacific, I lead the Microsoft Partners in Learning program across 12 countries in Asia Pacific. Working with local APMs, we strive to increase technology access for schools, foster innovative approaches to pedagogy and teacher professional development, and provide education leaders with the tools to envision, implement, and manage change. All these are done through establishing good and effective public-private partnerships across the 12 countries.
Prior to assumming this role, I work for the Ministry of Education, Singapore. I taught A-level Economics in college (think it is Grades 11 & 12 equivalent in US) and held diverse portfolios. I have keen interest in innovation and research and had led many teams in these areas.
I have a honours degree in Economics and a Post-graduate Diploma in Education from National Institute of Education.
Beyond work, I like to build things. I enjoy putting Lego-blocks together and piecing jigsaw puzzles. And, I love the sun and sports. I like to play team sports under the sun on large green pitches, such as hockey and soccer, or individually conquer long distances like running a marathon. On the other hand, I love music too (play percussion) and had watched most musicals in West End!
What made me interested in this course?
More than 50% of my work (for example communications with customers and collegues around the world) is done virtually, through emails, conference calls and virtual meetings. In my work, I do meet many people in schools who are like me, where information communication technology (ICT) is part of their daily lives.
Given growing ubituitous learning in many schools around the world, online learning is commonly observed. Furthermore, under the Innovative Schools program, I work closely with various schools online.
Hence, I would like to learn more about the models of online schooling and its pedagogical approaches. I would also like to learn more about the research done around the impacts of online schooling. Hopefully, I can contribute more towards the Innovative Schools program, from my learning in this course.
My experience with online learning - positive and negative encounters!
As online learning is not very common in 1990s, my first online learning experience was in university, where course admin, info, updates and content is dealt with online. As online learning is rather new, most of us did have problems navigating in the course web. Adaptabity becomes a core skill to have! Having adapted to the new learning environment, I really enjoyed the convenience of retrieving information anytime, anywhere, and learn at my own pace. Hence, this experience was first negative then positive.
Following that experience, online learning became more common and it has been part of my learning to date, including this module!
Having started teaching at 2002, I was at the other end of online learning, ie. teaching students through the virtual world. I must say that it was initially very challenging because designing an instructional program around a virtual world was a new experience and that it is rather time-consuming to prepare all the new teaching and learning materials online. However, after a getting buy-in from other colleagues, with team work and experience, the preparation of teaching for online learning became easier. And, it was very fulfilling to observe positive impacts on students' learning - engaged learning, teaching less learn more, etc.
Wow, what an interesting background. I'm happy to meet you virtually since we share similar experiences although I worked for Sun Microsystems (Microsoft's arch nemesis) although I must admit that I have interviewed with Microsoft in the past. Shhhh... I have also been involved in my capacity at Sun working on virtual worlds and other learning platforms as well. I look forward to hearing more from you as the course progresses.
ReplyDelete-Robin
Very interesting background to say the least! Can you explain what exactly you do with schools in those 12 countries? Thanks!
ReplyDelete- Sam
I work with a colleague at the regional headquarters to manage the Microsoft Partners in Learning program (http://www.microsoft.com/education/pil/partnersinlearning.aspx) in the 12 countries. This is a social citizenship program in the Education vertical, where MS seeks to partner the public sector and contribute towards transformation of education. So, the same program may run differently in different countries, depending on the focus/goals of respective education ministries.
ReplyDeleteThough implementation may be different, the program has 3 main pillars of activities, namely Innovative Schools, Innovative Teachers and Innovative Students (you may wish to read more about respective pillars in the URL provided above).
Example of an activity is the Innovative Teachers competition at local, regional and worldwide levels, where we get teachers to share best practices and show recognition for outstanding works by teachers around the world. Another example is the Innovative Schools program, where we build a community of schools, giving them resources to make systemic changes in their schools respectively, getting them to share their best practices and mentor others around them.
Besides program, we do build resources too, like innovative schools and teachers kit, where there are free tools, lesson plans, etc. to help educators integrate technology better in teaching and learning.