Pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment has al­ways been crit­i­cal for teach­ers, and at the re­cent Mi­crosoft in Ed­u­ca­tion Glob­al Fo­rum 2014 in Barcelona, more than 1,100 at­ten­dees re­ceived a crash course on ed­u­ca­tion, in­clud­ing Kei­th La­ban, an In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy teacher from Trin­i­ty Col­lege East.

La­ban won the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's eCAL ICT in Ed­u­ca­tion In­no­vate Award last No­vem­ber, and he trav­eled to Spain's sec­ond largest city to at­tend the event held in March. This year's Fo­rum recog­nised and cel­e­brat­ed the world's most in­no­v­a­tive school lead­ers and ed­u­ca­tors who ef­fec­tive­ly use ICT in the class­room to trans­form ed­u­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry and to help stu­dents max­imise their po­ten­tial. This is the sec­ond time La­ban has at­tend­ed a Glob­al Fo­rum.

"Ever since I at­tend­ed the first Fo­rum, it has sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed me as an ed­u­ca­tor and as a teacher train­er. I have held sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment ses­sions since then based on 21st cen­tu­ry learn­ing and the use of Mi­crosoft tools in the class­room," La­ban said. "I am us­ing the train­ing re­ceived from Mi­crosoft to de­sign learn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties that en­gage stu­dents in the much need­ed 21st cen­tu­ry skills, as well as to train and up­date my col­leagues on the chang­ing ed­u­ca­tion par­a­digm and the use of ICT in ed­u­ca­tion."

Cel­e­brat­ing its tenth year, the Mi­crosoft in Ed­u­ca­tion Glob­al Fo­rum pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ed­u­ca­tion's best to learn from their peers, share class­room tri­umphs and chal­lenges, and col­lab­o­rate to help trans­form ed­u­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry. It was at­tend­ed by top ed­u­ca­tion lead­ers, school lead­ers, ed­u­ca­tors, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, and oth­ers from more than 97 coun­tries.

The Fo­rum al­so of­fered ed­u­ca­tors best-prac­tices to help ex­pand their knowl­edge of the ways tech­nol­o­gy can make a dif­fer­ence to stu­dents, both in­side and out­side the class­room, and pre­pare them for work and life.

Lo­cal­ly, Mi­crosoft is work­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion through its Part­ners in Learn­ing (PiL) pro­gramme–a com­po­nent of the YouthSpark ini­tia­tive, the com­pa­ny's glob­al com­mit­ment to em­pow­er­ing youth through op­por­tu­ni­ties for ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment and en­tre­pre­neur­ship. PiL sup­ports the suc­cess of each ed­u­ca­tor through world-class, re­search-based pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment, on­line com­mu­ni­ties, and ex­clu­sive recog­ni­tion pro­grams for the most in­no­v­a­tive ed­u­ca­tors in the world.

"Ed­u­ca­tors need help. Stu­dents need help. Over the past ten years, PiL has been com­mit­ted to ac­cel­er­at­ing the progress of ed­u­ca­tion re­form," said Frances Cor­reia, Mi­crosoft TT coun­try man­ag­er."With US$750 mil­lion dol­lars in­vest­ed to date, we've led the way in part­ner­ing with ed­u­ca­tors, help­ing near­ly 8 mil­lion ed­u­ca­tors around the globe, and reach­ing more than 190 mil­lion stu­dents in 114 coun­tries in our first sev­en years alone."

Since his re­turn and to sus­tain mo­men­tum on the ground, La­ban is us­ing the knowl­edge he gained from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Fo­rum to in­flu­ence his col­leagues in try­ing in­ven­tive prac­tices, with a hope of achiev­ing ed­u­ca­tion re­form in T&T."I am keen on shar­ing what I've learned with fel­low ed­u­ca­tors at my school and with ed­u­ca­tors in oth­er schools through­out the coun­try. I have al­ready done some teacher train­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ed in We­bi­na­rs as part of my year-long Mi­crosoft Ex­pert Ed­u­ca­tor agree­ment,"he said.