Beginning of 2016

I'm excited. After becoming a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert last year, I have now been given the title of MIE Surface Expert. I love my Surface Pro 3 and am even more excited to be getting a SurfacePro 4 as part of this programme. Looking forward to it!
Thanks to Kurt Soeser for providing the header - it is much appreciated and looks great!

The beginning of the year has been mad. I have been meaning to blog for ages, but all of the setting up and prep has meant that I have had little time to just sit and write.

Enrolment
We have 2 days of enrolling new students at our school and I really enjoy these days as an enroller. I get to meet new students and work on getting a good programme together for them.

School of Apps
We have 11 students this year and they have started the year well. Very keen and motivated, and even with all the admin in the first few days, they are writing apps already. I am also loving the OneNote Learning Tools. These are fantastic for a few of my students in here. One has some sight issues so the large print is fantastic and a couple are dyslexic. How amazing to be able to cater for them with such great tools.

Professional Development
I am really keen to help staff this year and have set up sessions to instruct and support staff on a range of topics. Carmen Kenton and Andy Gorton are great support in this and Carmen and I will enjoy our lunchtime duty in the Computer lab where we can help staff and students. For my own development I intend to spend quite a few hours each week working on increasing my knowledge of Office365 and in particular OneNote.

Year 11 Music
I am looking forward to teaching this class, as it has been a while since I had this year level. Using OneNote for all their work and looking at how I can incorporate a lot of technology in the class is the challenge. It is a large class and has a wide range of abilities. I am keen to use StaffPad for all the music notation instruction so I have work to do on this as well.

Badges
Really keen to get these up and running. Just sorting the graphics and we can get started. It will be good to get them out to students this year and see how they will work.

Along with organising Itinerant Music lessons, School of Music classes, MIE Expert info and reading, keeping up with Twitter, and my own life/work balance it will be a busy year.

Bring it on.