always learning

Cross-posted on the TechLearning Advisors Blog

Two weeks after returning from the Flat Classroom Workshop in Hong Kong, I am still inspired and energized about what learning could (and should) look like.

The key component for me was connecting students, both face to face and virtually, from a variety of backgrounds to work together to solve a common problem. Although we might not have the luxury of bringing together diverse groups of students every day, we certainly have the capability to connect them using technology. No matter what subject you teach, I truly believe adding a global component is not only possible, but necessary to prepare students for our increasingly connected world.

As Fernando M. Reimers writes in Leading for Global Competency:

Good educators know that the real world is ever more interconnected and interdependent. We all share in facing such planetary challenges as climate change, health epidemics, global poverty, global economic recessions and trade imbalances, assaults on human rights, terrorism, political instability, and international conflicts. We also share opportunities for global collaboration in such areas as scientific and artistic creation, trade, and international cooperation. These challenges and opportunities define the contours of our lives, even in their most local dimensions. Yet in spite of growing awareness of the importance of developing global skills, few students around the world have the opportunity today to become globally competent.

As exciting and enriching as globally collaborative projects are, it can be a daunting task to start one on your own. Even if you have a great idea, you might not always know how or where to find the right partner(s). Ideally you would know the people you’ll be collaborating with personally before starting a project, but sometimes you don’t have that luxury.

So, here are a few ways you can get started:

Window shopping

These social networks are great places to start looking for teachers who have planned a project and need collaborators, or just a place to see other projects and how they work. I always like to start with a little “window shopping” before I jump into my own project – often someone else has already started something that will work perfectly for me!

• Flat Classrooms Ning
• The Global Education Collaborative Ning
• Global Education Collaborative Projects Database
• Classroom 2.0 Ning
• Online Projects For Teachers Ning
• Teachers Connecting

Find a Geographic Focus

If you’re looking for a classroom in a specific country or city, try exploring the network of international schools around the world to try to find teachers who might be interested in working with you. These schools are often well-resourced, well-connected in their country, and offer a western-style curriculum. Even if you’re looking for a local school in a different country, international schools can be a great way to start making international contacts. You might want to start with this list of international school teachers who are blogging and/or on Twitter.

Ask the Professionals

A few weeks ago I was honored to be part of a panel on Global Awareness hosted by Lucy Gray and Steve Hargadon. I certainly felt like a small fish in a big pond speaking alongside the directors, presidents, and chairs of so many well-respected and established organizations dedicated to connecting teachers and students around global issues. If you’re looking for an organized, formal connection with other classrooms, these would be a great place to start:

• Taking IT Global
• iEarn
• ePals

Build Your Own PLN

It can be difficult at first, but developing and expanding your own personal learning network may end up being the most rewarding professional development of your career. Connecting regularly with individuals and groups that can push your thinking, support your learning, and collaborate on projects both in and out of the classroom means that you are learning what you need, when you need it.

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the plenary session of the AIS ICT Integration Conference coordinated and led by Chris Betcher. As a member of the closing session, alongside 5 other amazing educators – Sharon Peters, Matt Montagne, Toni Twiss, Tom Barrett, and
Cindy Barnsley – I noticed that all of us described using technology to make a positive impact on the world. These are the people I want to be learning with! And it all starts with simple steps – commenting on blog posts, participating in online conferences, joining regular online live events. These two posts might help you get started:

• First Steps Toward Becoming a 21st Century Educator
• Five Tips for Creating a Global Classroom

Jump In!

Once you have an idea that will work and a classroom (or two) to connect with, get started! This post outlines the process I go through when beginning a new project: A Step-by-Step Guide to Globally Collaborative Projects.

Final Thoughts

Oftentimes, when I’m working with teachers new to technology, I end up suggesting a project idea which is easy, fast, and convenient, just to ensure that they (and their students) have a successful experience. But, now, after leading the Flat Classroom Workshop, participating on the Global Awarenes Panel, and joining the AIS ICT Integration Conference, I’m reminded that these globally collaborative skills and experiences are critical. Even if global projects are not always the easiest or the fastest to plan, and even if they don’t always work out perfectly, this is what we need to be doing with students and teachers on a regular basis. With the right approach, using technology in the classroom can be about making the world a better place.

Works Cited

Reimers, Fernando M. “Teaching for the 21st Century: Leading for Global Competency.” Educational Leadership, ASCD, September 2009, Volume 67, Number 1.

Peace on Earth image by cayusa

Yikes. How can it possibly be February 2009 already? What happened to January? And for that matter, what happened to 2008? I know “time flies” and all, but this is ridiculous!

The last five weeks have been pretty much a blur especially because I’ve been stuck with a case of never-ending bronchitis, that seems to be finally, miraculously, slowly, ending just this week. I actually had that moment of suddenly feeling better on Friday. You know the one: you stand up, blink, swallow, and then realize you suddenly feel kind of good. In fact, you remember that this is what you used to feel like all the time before you got this illness. It’s a pretty good feeling.

At any rate, along with the coughing fits, sneezing, runny nose, and general malaise, I have also been extremely busy this past month, which explains where the time has gone (and why I haven’t been posting as often as I usually do). Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Teaching the first course in ISB’s new SUNY Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy

Thankfully, Jeff and I are partnering up on this course, so although we’ve been super busy getting things going, two heads have certainly been better than one! We started out with a one-hour introductory session after school in late January and had our first full-day session on the last Saturday in Jan (watch the archived uStream footage here). Thanks to Clarence and Chris whose fabulous guest appearances definitely made our 7-hour Saturday session even more engaging and practical than Jeff & I could have done on our own!

So far, teaching the course has been an excellent experience. We have 50 ISB teachers participating on campus (plus 5 new ISB teachers joining us virtually) with the widest range of understanding and ability levels possible. Seeing as I’ve never taught a formal graduate-level course like this before, it has been such a steep learning curve for me. I’m so conscious of the fact that we have learners at all different levels, that we need to keep everyone engaged, but not stressed, and that we need to model best practice in all of our interactions throughout the course.

Of course the fact that all 55 participants are my colleagues makes this even more interesting… And not to mention adds quite a bit of reading to my Google Reader account.

Participating in the K12 Horizon Report Advisory Board

Along with Lucy, Judy, Julie, Westley, Alan, Karen (and quite a few other educators whose names I recognize) I have been participating in the process of creating the K12 version of the annual Horizon Report. After I got over the shock of being invited to be on the Advisory Board, I realized just how exciting (and challenging) this experience would be. As much as I love envisioning the future, I’m not sure I have a real grasp on the nitty-gritty of exactly how we’re going to get there. And that’s pretty much what this report is all about.

We started off with sharing our thoughts (via a wiki) on upcoming trends in technology and which of those would be applicable to education in the Horizon Report time-line structure.  I found myself much more easily able to envision 1 – 2 years out than the extended 5-years out, but I’m not sure why. I guess what happens in 5 years depends on what happens in the preceding 4 years… Either way, it was definitely the most authentic use of a wiki I’ve seen in a while, and it was absolutely fascinating to see what others on the Advisory Board see in our future.

Unfortunately I was not able to attend the face-to-face session in Dallas a few weeks ago (one of the few disadvantages of being an international school teacher), which sounds like it was a real highlight of the Advisory Board process. It certainly would have been interesting to meet all of those visionary educators in person. We’re now on to the voting stage, in order to select which trends will have the greatest effect on education in the next 5 years. I definitely don’t feel smart enough to continue hanging out with this bunch though!

Guest Speaker at Apple’s Think Ahead Roadshow in Bangkok

One of the perks of being an Apple Distinguished Educator is speaking at Apple events in your region. This will be my first time presenting at an official Apple event (aside from the ADE Institute) and I’m really looking forward to it. I attended a similar roadshow in KL a few years ago and remember being impressed with how many different international schools were represented in the audience.

I suppose you could say I’ve sipped the Apple Kool-Aid, but I have to say, I spent the first 5 years of my teaching experience in a Windows school, and the following 4 working with Macs. In comparison I would generally say I spent well over 50% of my teaching time troubleshooting those Windows machines – none of which I am doing in an all-Mac environment now. I can focus on the teaching and learning bit, without wasting so much time on the “making the computer do what we know it should be doing” bit. Yeah, that’s probably why they asked me to do the session next weekend…

Returning to Qatar Academy in Doha for a 3-day consultancy visit

Thanks to Julie and the administrative team at QA, I’ll be heading back to Doha next week for my second visit in two years. This time around I’ll be working with the Senior School (middle – high school) on building an understanding of 21st century learning. It looks like I’ll be delivering 3 plenary sessions to the full faculty (The 21st Century Learner, The 21st Century Educator, The 21st Century Classroom) and then working with individual departments to plan authentic units of inquiry which naturally embed technology. Thanks to all of Julie’s hard work, QA will be 1:1 next school year and this is the kick-off to the practicalities of working in a 1:1 environment.

Delivering the grade 4 Common Assessment on Influence

Last December, I worked with our grade 4 team to develop a common assessment for their first social studies unit of the year, Influence. We spent several afternoons designing an authentic assessment task that followed the Understanding by Design process and utilized technology tools (wikis and VoiceThread) that are developmentally appropriate and fit naturally into the assessment task.

After we returned from our semester break, I had the extremely stressful challenge of making sure that each class had access to the laptop carts for the duration of the final assessment (oh, how I dream of being 1:1). Juggling several classes, dealing with the bizarre slowness of our internet connection over the past month, and facilitating the delivery of this common assessment pretty much ensured that I was on fast-forward every single day.

In the end, I must admit, I’m quite happy with the assessment. The task was at the right level for the students, the technology was a natural fit for the task, and the students had a taste of a project based learning experience. I’m looking forward to getting some valuable feedback from the teachers so that we can revise and improve the assessment while the experience is still fresh in our minds.

Is that all?

Now I know that’s barely scratching the surface of what so many others manage to do on a regular basis (I’m not writing a book or earning a PhD… yet…) but it definitely kept me busy for the past few weeks.

How do you cope with being overwhelmed for an extended period of time and actually manage it all without shutting down?

This weekend I discovered TweetDeck and I am totally in love! (Yes, I am late to the party with this one @JavaJive, Jeff showed it to me ages ago, but better late than never, right?).

As you may know, I am obsessively organized (often mocked for the obscene amount of folders I have for storing old e-mails) so the fact that I can actually organize my twitter friends is just about the best thing since sliced bread. All weekend, I’ve been categorizing and organizing all my twitter friends into convenient groupings – so much easier to follow what I want to follow, instead of just what rises to the top!

One of my fun new groups is “International Teachers.” I had been following quite a few teachers that I know personally, but being able to categorize them in TweetDeck has helped me find dozens more just this weekend – and now they’re all nicely organized into my “International Teachers” group, so when they post something new, I notice right away.

I love connecting with international school teachers, because even though our day-to-day experiences may be very different, we all share the common bond of teaching overseas, our schools are often very similar, and it’s amazing the number of times we will cross paths during our careers – despite the fact that we may currently be on opposite sides of the planet!

In an amazing coincidence, I woke up this morning (far too early, I might add), to see that Lucy and Vicki had found TwittGroups, a way to create groups of Twitterers with a common interest (Lucy started one for Apple Distinguished Educators Worldwide and Vicki started one for Teachers).

I figured this would be a great way to find even more international school teachers, so I created a group for us! I’m not so sure how this works yet, but even if it just ends up being an opt-in listing of international school teachers, this would be a great way to connect and find more international colleagues in one central place. Please, join!

I’m also curious about international school teachers that are blogging. I’ve been organizing (of course) my Google Reader account as well, and I have an “international teachers” folder that I’d love to add more feeds to – I just need to find them!

It’s amazing to see how we’re all connected – despite being so widely spread across the globe – connecting with one international school teacher in one city begins an amazing chain reaction of so many others in that city, and then their connections around the world. I love it!

Is there a central place where I can find a listing of international school teachers who are blogging? If not, anyone want to share some links in the comments here? I’ll be sure to write a follow up post with links to all the bloggers and twitterers that share! What a great way to connect with our fellow international school teachers!

Update: I just had a brainwave! I’ve been wanting to try out Google Forms for a while, so I just made one for international school teachers to share their blog and twitter info. If you’d like to be listed, please fill out the form here and check for the results here. Looking forward to connecting with even more international school teachers!

Amongst the Flags by thadman