Microsoft E² Educator Exchange celebrates “the Multicultural Classroom” initiative as the winner

Microsoft E² Educator Exchange awards has been inspiring global educators from approximately 100 countries

Vietnamese educator Nguyen Thi Hai Ha, teamed up with two educators from Germany and America, achieved the overall winner award with the initiative “The Multicultural Classroom”. This is the second consecutive year that Vietnamese educators have gained prizes at Microsoft E² Global Forum.

“Joining Microsoft E² Global Forum, we better understand and observe the power of technology, which can help to transform all the aspects of life, especially in the great impaction section such as education. Also, Vietnam was recognised and we are impressed on how the potential tools such as Office 365 can support studying and learning as well as improve our knowledge on using ICT to increase productivity in the classroom,” Ha said.

Recognised alongside approximately 240 educators from 79 countries, the Vietnamese team demonstrated exceptional innovation in their field and during competitive sessions at the event – working with their peers to design a project around the use of Microsoft technologies to “Hack the Classroom” to improve the teaching and study in the modern classes.

“Last year, with two awards at Microsoft E² Global Forum, the Vietnamese team had marked our country into the educational world map and showed how Vietnam can adapt technologies to help solve our challenges. The highest award this year demonstrated Vietnamese educators are as capable as teachers from developed countries such as the US and Germany, in utilising 21st century skills and technology in transforming teaching methodology to improve study outcomes,” said Dinh Tran, Education director at Microsoft Vietnam.

This year, the competition selected and distributed educators into small team randomly. Each team was randomly assigned a “hacker persona” and was requested to design a classroom hack following three themes:

(1) Identify a common problem they all faced in the classroom
(2) Propose an innovative solution that is reasonable to implement given the technical access available in each team member’s situations. The solution much match the assigned hacker persona
(3) Create an Microsoft Office Mix to describe the team’s problem and how it impacts learning, their solutions, and how their hack could be implemented. The Mix needed to be three minutes or less.

“As usual, beside discussions and speeches from well-known world-class educators, this year, the forum recognised and celebrated the achievements of educators who are preparing students with the skills to succeed the 21st century. The event brought 240 of the world’s most innovative educators for an unparalleled opportunity to collaborate, create and share their experiences on how to integrate technology and pedagogy in ways that achieve 21st century learning outcomes,” said Vu Minh Tri, general director of Microsoft Vietnam.

Microsoft E² Educator Forum was part of the Microsoft in education initiative that offers a range of professional development programs to bridge the gap between technology skills and innovative teaching and support educators worldwide to understand how to use technology in the classroom for better learning outcomes.