Introducing Eunice High School
Eunice was the first school in South Africa to be selected for the Microsoft Innovative Schools programme several years back. After that their principal, Paul Cassar, was the first South African educator to be featured on Vice President of Microsoft – Antony Salicito’s blog ‘Daily Edventures – Antony Salicito’s 365-day look at global heroes‘. (Take a read by clicking on the image below). So it is not surprising that Eunice would take the initiative of launching Windows 8 in the innovative way you’ll read about in this post!
The Windows 8 launch at Eunice High School
Windows 8 was launched on Friday 26 October at Eunice High School in front of 700 eager Grade 8-11 girls, with Anthony Salcito, VP for Microsoft Education, skyping in to talk to the group. Eunice is a government school in Bloemfontein and is part of the Microsoft Global Innovative Schools programme. The event kicked off with a demo of Windows 8, highlighting exciting new functionality and ways that Windows 8 can help teachers and learners. The girls had to get involved in the demo by helping to create a decorated photo taken of the assembly using our webcam and the app “Fresh Paint”. We emailed this off to Anthony to welcome him to South Africa and Eunice School.
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Anthony shares his thoughts
Anthony undertook an immense commitment to spend 24 hours skyping into classrooms and assemblies around the world as part of the Windows 8 launch in the education space. Following the demo we connected to Skype and Anthony shared his thoughts on how technology can support education and more interactive teaching and learning approaches. He fielded around 10 questions from girls and teachers who were eager to hear his comments and ideas on how Microsoft is supporting developing countries, what makes Windows 8 special, how Microsoft works with students and ways that technology can bring learning to life.
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The Skype chat trended on Twitter
The event was a great success and the school felt enormously proud to be part of a Microsoft global launch. The #microsofteducation hashtag trended in South Africa with all the girls‘ tweets on Anthony’s talk and Windows 8! A more comprehensive list of the tweets can be seen at this URL: Eunice tweets about Anthony Salcito and Windows 8.
We look forward to seeing the new ways that the teachers and leaners incorporate Windows 8 into their activities.
