“So you’ve sold your soul…”

While at the Bringing-IT-Together conference (one of the best gathering of learners in North America) in November 2015 I had the opportunity to present at a few sessions, mostly on OneNote (of course?) but I also got to work with some folks from Microsoft and, in recognition of being a Microsoft Education Fellow and Innovative Expert Educator and my school being a Microsoft World Tour School, they gave me an amazingly red t-shirt with the image below on the back.

I’m not one for “labels” (Distinguished Educator, Certified Innovator… all those pretentious, self-aggrandizing badges from various companies… what was the SmartBoard one?) . I’m not a fan of wearing corporate labelling, either, and am regularly removing tags, flags and the like from my clothing. And except for PCMI, I’m not one for t-shirts at all (I used to have to wear a collared shirt to sit at the dinner table), but I was very humbled that our Microsoft Canada Education rep Lia De Cicco-Remu had gone to the effort of recognizing our contributions that I wore the shirt the second day of the conference. And I liked the way the artist had brought a lot of important ideas together into one design — I shall track down her name.

But sure enough, friends noticed and one of them said “So you finally sold your soul to Microsoft, eh?” I replied as I have whenever my enthusiasm (or my wardrobe) emphasized a particular company’s product — I will sleep with anyone who produces a better learning experience for my students. I will push them out of the bed, though, if something better comes along, For the past eight years, right now, for the foreseeable future, Microsoft has been bringing their A-game, first with OneNote on a pen-based tablet computer (okay, and then we ran with it) and now the on-going development around Office365. There is nothing better on the market for the learning that goes on in, around and beyond our School. Not a day goes by that a different teacher (or staff member … they’re on board now too) expresses to me how one aspect of Office365 has made learning more visible, deeper, easier, more collaborative or their job/life more interesting, quicker, better. Microsoft Canada has been incredibly supportive and their staff are nothing short of amazing.

So I’m quite happy to sleep with them.