Several weeks ago news came through that Apple were holding their next round of applications to bcome a Distinguished Educator. The process is pretty striaght forward but the number of applicants is not. There are only 50 places available this time round (does it change?) for applications from 6 countries: Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Now, I'm guessing there must be upwards of 600 applications based on 100 per country for less than 9 places per country as well. I mean, Singapore alone must hit close to 200+ applications due to the high prominance of Apple outlets there and the ties to education already. Here, in Taiwan the number of Apple resellers is growing but the ties to education are low. In Taiwan there isn't even a genuine Apple store let alone an abundance of training centers given that Foxconn are spitting distance away from our school. I think, at last count (while we were trying in vein to contact a Apple Server expert we encountered several at the time and only one could help out with our needs) there were 5 as a newish one opened a near the Technology University but its claims are dubious.
So, this leaves me with the dilemma of what to include in the application. Have you looked around the usual video channels for ADE applications? There are a slew of videos that, if you take a step back and think about what the assessors the other end are seeing and experiencing, do I want them to see iMovie with the same music and language? I mean, iMovie is brilliant and that but the standard Apple music and titles are becoming somewhat staid (as nice as they are!). Or, as I began to think longer about it, do they really want this? Do they want you to speak about yourself in language that, let's be honest here, we don't use on a daily or even weekly basis. You become ensconsed inside a feedback loop of edu-slang spouting the latest and greatest must-have acronyms, mnemonics and fads.
Well, after diliberating long and hard about what other educators have undoudtedly spent hours buildng as part of their Apple applications, I decided not to bludgen the poor sods the other side of my application by having to listen to my softened Midlands drone. Instead I went for showing off what the children in my school are doing. A montage if you will of good fun and a little creativity into the mix.
This is what I put together.
This took ages to make and trim and re-take and take out items and replace and God knows what else. Several liters of coffee and borderline arguments with both myself and my poor girlfriend I got to this point. I hope it's Ok and I get the gig as a friend/ colleague in the Apple Education arena seems to enjoy it so much and has done for several years now. It's just a shame the other countires I've lived in and too the school's I've worked in haven't embraced Apple products and the weatlh of creativity it brings.
If you have never seen this before then this is what you have to do:
Let's see how far I get in this process. It's certainly been reflective and a thought provoking process and one I've thouroughly enjoyed. But if I don't get in what in blazes am I going to make for the next video? Maybe I'll turn myself into a LEGO mini-fig. Hopefully that'll get a wry smile from the adjudicators and they'll laugh my application into the ADE books.