TILE Hub on Teams
Hopefully you’re familiar with the TILE Hub Teams site – a community of practice facilitated by the TILE team. It’s a space for the staff at Staffs to ask questions about teaching and learning tech, share their experiences, support each other, attend drop-in sessions and find out about training and workshops. Although many people find it a helpful way to consult TILE for tech support, we encourage all members to participate in helping and inspiring each other to use digital tools to enhance their teaching.
Within the Teams site there are a number of topic-specific channels to contribute to. For example, in the “Ask a question” channel, you can do just that, and get a response from anyone in the community. In the “Blackboard” channel, colleagues support each other and share good practice around the Blackboard VLE, and any Blackboard-specific training is advertised here too.
Introducing the new SUMEC channel
This month, we’re adding a new channel specifically for sharing innovative practice using Microsoft software. Although it will be hosted on the TILE Hub site, the new “SUMEC” channel will be curated by Francesca Brown-Cornwall and other talented MIE Expert colleagues from Staffordshire University. But most importantly, EVERYONE can share their innovative uses of Microsoft tools.
Maybe you’ve created escape rooms with Sway or OneNote, maybe you’ve had some epic successes with Minecraft or Word. No matter what the context, this channel is a space to showcase fabulous Microsoft ideas. It is not intended to be a troubleshooting channel (you should still post in “Ask for Help” if you need help), but a space to see and share best practice with Microsoft education tools.
The aims of the channel are as follows:
- To focus on how Microsoft Technologies can be used to develop teaching and learning practice.
- To enable staff to become leaders and advocates of Microsoft Technology to enhance teaching and learning by developing digital skills.
- To showcase the innovation and quality of Microsoft facilitated teaching and learning at Staffordshire University.
- To facilitate accreditation, achievement and recognition of skills, such as through the MIE Expert status application.
What is an MIE Expert?
MIE stands for “Microsoft Innovative Educator”, and MIE Experts are a community of educators across the world and at all levels, not just HE. They are passionate about teaching and learning, creative, resourceful and collaborative. And, as the name suggests, they have expertise in using Microsoft tools for teaching and learning that they want to share with others.
MIE Experts need to have completed extensive online training provided by Microsoft (three of the Microsoft Learn learning paths) before they can apply to be part of the program. Self-nominations are only open once a year (maybe twice if we’re lucky), and nominees need to provide evidence of their expertise to a regional Microsoft representative in order to be accepted into the community.
You can find out more about the process of becoming an MIE Expert here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/educator-center/programs/microsoft-educator/expert
Where did SUMEC come from?
The SUMEC programme was a SCoLPP (Staffordshire Centre of Learning and Pedagogic Practice) innovators project, which you can read more about in this SCoLPP blog post. We are delighted that the legacy of this project means we have colleagues keen to share their expertise and experiences with others through the new TILE Hub channel. Hopefully, this will also inspire more staff to achieve MIE Expert status and disseminate their fantastic work with Microsoft software. We look forward to this growing community taking shape in this new Teams channel, and can’t wait to see the amazing practice facilitating high quality student experiences with Microsoft tools.