Microsoft’s E2 – Education Exchange is opening its doors and inviting all educators to join them on March 22, 2017, at 9:00a.m. EDT (this will be 15:00 in South African time). ! This FREE, online event is designed to provide insight into the latest trends in education. You are invited to learn from education thought leaders, innovative educators, and students – to be the change in your school or system and make what’s next!

Think about inviting a bunch of educator colleagues and friends over for a live streaming party on Wednesday 22nd March at 3pm in South Africa when the live streaming of the E2 event in Toronto takes place. This is an incredible opportunity for collaboration, discussion, and inspiration!

Here are some tips for hosting an out-of-this-world streaming party:

1. Register for the E2 digital event 

First of all you’ll need to make sure you have registered for this event on the Microsoft Educator Community:  http://aka.ms/eduexchange

2. Invite your colleagues and community to your streaming party

The E2 is taking place currently in Toronto and the 300+ (5 of whom are MIEExpert educators from South Africa) who are attending will be:

• Learning from inspiring educators using technology in innovative ways to help students achieve more
• Participating in hands-on workshops on key topics around education transformation
• Visiting exemplary showcase schools to see transformation in action
• Engaging, interacting, and posing questions with speakers and other educators from around the world
• Exploring the future of digital transformation and develop a shared vision for education in your system

You’ll catch some of this in the live streaming session.

                         

3. Prepare for an exciting program in the live streaming event

The E2 is Microsoft in Education’s annual event recognizing and celebrating the achievements of educators who combine content, pedagogy, and technology in exemplary ways to prepare students for success. Here are some of the presentations you’ll see:

• Be inspired by founder of WE.org, Craig Kielburger, who will share ideas on how to empower students to develop a lifelong passion for service to affect positive change in the world. You’ll learn about the WE Schools program giving students and schools the tools they need to take social action, empower others, and transform lives.
• Discover how online learning technologies will be able to understand facial expressions and read student emotions from Daniel McDuff, a Researcher at Microsoft who spoke at TEDx Berlin. Hear how this technology can help educators gain an understand the experiences of their students via moment-to-moment tracking of cognitive and emotional states.
• Hear from trailblazing teachers and grade 8 students from Queen of Heaven school in Canada who are working on a school project to help improve access to education for young people in developing countries.
• Discover how by using Minecraft as a platform for learning, educators can motivate and inspire every student to achieve more, and ignite a passion for learning.
• See live, interactive demonstrations that share innovative approaches to learning enabled by technology, and hear of favorite ways to Hack the Classroom.
• During the online event, you’ll also be able to Pose questions to event speakers, Microsoft representatives, and fellow educators in our live Q&A
• Receive an E2 participant badge and receive 500 points on our Educator Community.

4. Create an “Inspiration Board” and ask your attendees to post their answers!

Choose a wall, window, whiteboard, or any other surface in the room of your event, and ask participants to answer an open-ended question related to the theme of the event such as “What is your small step to big impact?” Have the educators write their responses on post-it notes and add it to the Inspiration Board. Encourage them to share their responses on social media, and don’t forget to Tweet the final board with all the responses!

 

                                

5. Ask the educators present to come up with a post-event Mission Statement.

After the event is over, have educators write down one thing they will do in their classroom, something they will implement, or an idea that was sparked. You can have educators write these down on whiteboards and create a photo collage of ideas that the educators can share on social media, or compile the responses into a powerful blog post.

6. Connect with the world by posting to social media!

Engage with other streaming parties and viewers around the world by posting pictures of your event to Twitter or Facebook with one of the hashtags mentioned below. Remember that we will be broadcasting live photos of streaming parties around the world on the broadcast! Post comments, thoughts ideas etc and use the following hashtags:

• #E2
• #MakeWhatsNext
• #MicrosoftEdu
• #MIEExpert
• #MicrosofteduSA

                     

7. Assign roles to different participants

Assigning roles and responsibilities not only ensures the live streaming party goes more smoothly, but empowers and engages participants. Roles can include someone to monitor the discussion group, represent the streaming party on the live global chat, take pictures, post to social media, reply to other Tweets online, take questions, etc.

A streaming party can be a really exciting event. Take a look at how Microsoftpresented some of the streaming party photos that were posted online on Twitter during the online #HacktheClassroom event last year:

So, see you online on Wednesday 22nd March at 15:00 hours South African time for an amazing online experience