Innovative Teachers Forum Awards

This page will provide information about the South African event. Click here for a printable PDF version of this page.

What is Innovation?

In the context of a teacher's school, learners or other circumstances the notion of innovation can have different meanings.  A teacher in a school with few resources or large class sizes, say, can be said to be innovative if they achieve something that might be considered modest and normal in a school rich in resources or tiny class sizes.  Context is everything.

Innovative actually means new but it does not mean new in an absolute sense. It especially does not necessarily mean highly technical. Innovation must be contextualised. Innovative means creative, different and new to the people involved.

The Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum is all about sharing practice so Leading Innovation Practice needs to demonstrate that it is effective in a wide arena.

Leading Innovative Practice

1. should be celebrated when the impact is demonstrated through better learning, quicker or more enjoyable learning (this list is not exhaustive);
2. should also have a wider scope, bringing in learners and teachers from other classes, or schools, perhaps drawing in parents and adults.

The work that a teacher is presenting should fall into one or more of the themes below.

• Content: the creation and use of content in a variety of media so that the content is not only the result of enhanced learning, but is available to other learners in and beyond the school
• Communications and collaboration: the use of the communications aspect of ICT to join classrooms within the region and also worldwide
• Community: the inclusion of the school's wider community in learning activities for the mutual benefit of the community and the learners in the classroom

Work is innovative if it is new and ground breaking in the context of the institution where it is being applied. 

What teachers will have to prepare as an entry

Initially teachers are asked to complete the application template

All entries must be received before midnight on 30 June 2008.

Submit entries (the completed template) by any one of the following means:

The national finals

If your innovation is judged to be one of the twenty best received you will be invited to present a poster explaining your innovation to judges at the national finals in Johannesburg on 21 and 22 August, 2008. At this event two of the finalists will be selected to attend the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum Awards in Bangkok, Thailand in October 2008 sponsored by Microsoft.

Each finalist will need to produce:

1. a poster display no larger than 1m wide x 1.5m high
2. a Virtual Classroom Tour PowerPoint template (guidelines will be provided)

The poster space will be a pin board with a table in front.

Do the course

The contents on the innovation workshops are available online. You can work through this workshop as a distance course with the assistance of an online tutor.

Click here to go to the online innovation workshop.

Contact us with further questions: innovation@schoolnet.org.za

Official Innovative Teachers Site

What is Innovation?

What teachers will need to prepare for the regional events

Innovative Teachers Forum

Regional events in 2006

South African Finals 2007

Worldwide Finals 2007

Click here to go to the online innovation workshop

2008 Flier