As the summer season comes to an end, tomorrow marks the 1st back-to-school/week day. I am writing this post just to avert my blog from experiencing the repercussions of a quarterly blogger’s block and of course, to give you a glimpse of what transpired last summer. 🙂
Last Holy Week, I was fortunate enough that I was able to participate in the Apple Distinguished Educators Institute 2013 in Bali, Indonesia. The 5-day event was overwhelming – there were lots of opportunities to meet around 300 educators from the Asia Pacific Region who teach and innovate using Apple technologies!
Each day was different because you get to meet a new face, exchange QR code stickers (as a form of business card), and share experiences about using Apple in education. 
It is like developing your personal learning network online as well as offline. Of course, the challenge then is to echo what was learned from the institute and be an advocate, advisor, author and ambassador to the academe. Lastly, all of the ADEs get to have a plaque and a shirt shipped to their mailbox!
When I returned to work, I delivered a Summer Short Course in UP ITDC. I was assigned to teach computer programming for teens using the Alice environment. It was a learning experience for me because I get to teach kids again while the last time that I did this was when I was still an undergraduate student teaching computer literacy as a summer outreach program for a Computer Science organization. I realized then that Alice can be used for digital storytelling as well through its 3D environment while teaching the basics of computer programming to kids. I really recommend that every teacher or trainer gets to experience handling different types of learners because this shall challenge your knowledge, skills, and techniques in teaching. The challenge for me in this activity is the ability to adjust with the learners’ skills – they were fast on picking up every lesson that I taught them (which is good btw) and add to that the time constraint that I was only given a day or two to study how the platform works.
After teaching kids, I was then assigned to deliver an eUP workshop on ICT integration in the K-12 curriculum to teachers and school administrators. Primarily, it was an event wherein Android tablets will be given to a class and my task was to teach the participants how to integrate this device not only for teaching and learning but also for productivity as well. This experience was also challenging because I’m more exposed to iOS devices and that I no longer have an Android device. However, I still managed to gather resources and learn the platform despite of the platform difference and time constraints. If you think about it, this is one of the challenges of being a 21st century educator – to be able to adjust openly to new environments and learn new tips and tricks.
From being a teacher and trainer for some weeks, my role shifted to being a student. I was a participant in 2 trainings for a week: one was iOS App Development Training (by iTrain’s Tan Aik Keong) and the other was Google Sites as an LMS training (by Google Certified Teacher and Google Apps EDU Certified Trainer Wendy Gorton). 
Both trainings were very fast paced and you really have to explore how things work for you to learn effectively and maximize the features of the technology. Now the challenge for myself is to be able to make time to learn more about these technologies.
And to end all of my summer activities, I was included in the strategic planning of in my full-time job. I was wondering (or hoping) though that I’ll get transferred to their team by the time that the office starts relocating teams.
Wish me luck! 🙂
EdTechGuro 