Microsoft Student Ambassador Meet

The Microsoft Student Ambassador Meet was held on 17th and 18th December 2015 at the Microsoft Corporation office in Gurgaon. Gitansh Satija (IX A) our Schools Microsoft Student Ambassador attended the two day workshop which comprised 62 other student representatives from across the country. Some of the schools which had sent their representatives to attend the workshop were Genesis Global School, Noida, Mody School, Rajasthan, Sri Chaitanya School, Bengaluru, Sanskar Valley School, Madhya Pradesh, etc.

The workshop gave an insight into skills for collaboration, critical thinking, problem- solving, communication and ICT which are fundamental for success as an entrepreneur.

On the first day, we had the honour to meet Mr. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, India and Ms. Promila Bij, Vice President, Learning Links Foundation. We had an interactive session with them where they discussed integral features introduced by Microsoft. We were given information and allowed the usage of the latest Windows products like Kodu, Minecraft, Sway, One Note and Office Mix. Thereafter, we had an ice breaking session where the student ambassadors introduced themselves and played an interactive game in teams. The game Tech Ladder required them to make words based on technology. Teams, by turn, had to recall words that started with the last letter of the previous word.bFor example, when the first team called out the word Sway the second team had to guess a word starting with Y as sway ended with Y. The word they guessed was Yammer. It was an interesting game that kept the students absorbed.

Thereafter, participants were divided into two groups, student ambassadors and educators. The student ambassadors were given two hours to make a project with Microsoft applications like Sway, Office Mix, Kodu and Minecraft. The students were divided into six groups, each group with 10 to 12 members. Some of the topics given to them were Big Bang Theory, Life in a Metro, Extinction of Dinosaurs, etc. While working on the project, the students had the opportunity to explore the office premises too!

The educators took part in a collaborative design session for which they were divided into groups of five. The teams had to design a new search engine or an online assistant (e.g. Google, Bing) especially for teachers. They had to keep in mind the challenges they encountered while accessing information through search engines and try to overcome them while designing the new search engine. It was an invigorating session and thoroughly enjoyed by the teachers. The day finally ended with a talk on Xbox and Kinect by the chairman of Xbox.

The second days session was initiated by Neeraj Gill, General Manager, Public sector, Microsoft. He shared his experiences spanning over 20 years in the IT and telecom sectors. He was followed by Mr. Pratik Mehta, Director Education, Microsoft who spoke about his work. His responsibilities include overseeing the educational programme across grades K-12, higher education and skill development. Following this, two student ambassadors from Springdales School, Pusa Road spoke about their experiences while visiting the Micosoft office in the USA.

On the second day, the student ambassadors displayed the project assigned to them on the first day. Gitansh Satija and his team had developed their project around the topic Life in a Metro. They had made use of the applications Office mix, Sway and Kodu in their project. Gitansh was appreciated for incorporating the application Kodu in his game. The educators were introduced to the latest version of the Microsoft Educator Network and then taken through a short course on Teaching with Technology. The session ended with Ms. Promila Bij handing out participation certificates to both the student ambassadors and educators.

It was an exciting two days of learning, collaboration and exploration of ideas and a great exposure for young Gitansh Satija.

Ms. Kriti Chakraborty, Computer Department.