Global Education Collaborative Advisory Board Meeting

Global Education Collaborative Meeting Details

I spent my Saturday night chatting with friends, new and old, from around the US and the world. It's so easy to to develop the ties to make these conversations possible now, and I wonder how many people realize this. We can't continue to live in our own little bubbles, and I think that's why I'm so interested in the promotion of global awareness. As I wrote earlier this week in a response on the Global Education ning, it's not about "competing in a global economy" for me... it's about experiencing all that the world has to offer. I want kids and other adults to realize that there is so much out there to discover and explore.

Inspired by the success of Steve Hargadon's Classroom 2.0 group, I've organized the aforementioned ning and the project is about a year old. We're up to about 520 members, and activity is growing steadily. I convened members last night,first using Timebridge to schedule the meeting, and then using Flashmeeting as our communication tool. You can replay the meeting using the above link. There's also a transcript of the accompanying chat. Aside from a few people having flash issues and not being able to show their video feed, the meeting went really well. 25 people from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Singapore participated!

I set a tentative agenda ahead of time which helped us stay on track. The first item discussed was how to develop a wider audience, specifically reaching out to teachers in Africa and South America, continents which are woefully underrepresented in the Global Education Collaborative. Alternative partnerships and publicity seeking measures probably will be pursued by members of our advisory group. We also discussed a survey, which I finished after the meeting, and you are welcome to take it here (Google Docs and Spreadsheets now supports survey creation). Our third agenda item focused on building community within our ning, and we mostly likely will be offering some monthly activities for adults so that we can get to know each other better. Collaborations seem to grow out of building relationships, so we want to give our members more opportunities to do so.

The ning design was also discussed and we decided that simplifying the design might help people find content. We decided also that a project template would be helpful, and that members need to post which country they are from as project partners are often seeking schools in specific areas of the world. Other design add-ons discussed included possibly adding Web 2.0 features such as a Meebo chat room and a Twitter feed for the GEC. I also think we need to build in some sort of mechanism for long range planning. For instance, U.S teachers can start promoting and planning now for next school year's projects. Last minute projects don't seem to work for teachers who already have pretty specific plans for meeting standards and the like.

Finally, many GEC members are interested in building a model global awareness curriculum. I'm not sure what that will look like, but as Emily Kornblut of TakingITGlobal pointed out, there are lots of exisiting curricular pieces out there that could be brought into play for this part of our project. She specifically pointed to Oxfam's resources. Personally, I'd like to develop something simple for teachers to refer to, possibly a global awareness version of this technology integration matrix. I'd love to see a continuum of example global education projects, ranging from the simple to the more complex, so that teachers could select projects to replicate depending on their level of confidence with content and technology. This curriculum model is in its earliest stages, so we shall see what direction it takes, but GEC members agreed that a wiki might be a great planning tool for this. We will establish one in the near future.

Stay tuned for more news from us...We're planning on informally getting together at the National Educational Computing Conference in San Antonio, Texas, this June. If you have any questions about our work, or about the tools involved in planning a global meeting such as this, please let me know. Also, we'd love for readers to join the ning and help us out as we continue to grow and thrive in this brave new world!

The meeting replay and note can be found here. This entry is cross-posted at the Infinite Thinking Machine, High Techpectations, and the Global Education Collaborative.

Choose Your Own Resolution

Choose Your Own Resolution

I can only speak for myself, but I believe in self-improvement. If my husband read that statement, he would probably remark that I’ve been watching too many TiVoed episodes of Oprah. However, I have observed that while some people are born brilliant and gifted educators, most teachers, myself included, have to really work at reaching our personal and professional best. I think we all owe it to ourselves and to our students to continually seek out new and better ways of educating.

So…it’s that time of year, and even if you don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, how about pledging to kick things up a bit in your classroom at least? Here are my suggestions!

1) Provide a window into your classroom.

Parents want to know about their child’s experiences at school, not to necessarily harangue teachers, but to simply learn more about their children. You can do busy parents a huge favor by providing a few glimpses. Some ideas are:

• Take lots of pictures of your students engaged in class work and of their actual work. If you use a regular camera, have your photos put on a disk when you get the filmed developed.
• Compose a newsletter for parents and send it out via email. Trick this out a bit by sending it out via Google Groups or…
• Jot down a few notes about classroom activities and add a few pictures in a blog or a wiki.
• Schedule volunteer activities for parents using Google Calendar.
• Get fancy and make a brief video about classroom happenings just like Bre Pettis did in Room 132.

2) Organize your digital closets.

Just like you probably already organize your paper based resources and other materials, take some time on a regular basis to organize whatever you store on your computer. One of my colleagues borrows from the business world and uses a popular management system created by David Allen called Getting Things Done.

My own suggestions are:

• Make folders on your computer for handouts, forms, and correspondence. Consider creating a folder for each student for storing examples of work and photos taken in class. Take a few moments each week to sort digitized items into these folders.
• Start thinking about the end of the school year. If you get organized now, you can easily burn a CD of your students’ work in June for an end of the year surprise.
• Also, consider making a yearbook for your class. There are many services that do this now for a fee. A few services to checkout are Snapfish, Blurb, and Shutterfly. I like Apple’s service that works with iPhoto; two years ago I created a softcover photo booklet for my daughter’s kindergarten class at a reasonable cost.
• Start tagging files. This will make searching for documents and pictures much easier. I know teachers who name files with students’ initials, so that they can easily find documents when searching their computers. Also, Mac users can select a file and then go to the File menu to select Get Information. Under the Spotlight Comments field, you can label that file with keywords. Using Spotlight, the OS X search tool, you can pull up anything that is tagged with a keyword later on.
• Backup all of your files. Do this now without delay. I paid the price this year and lost many photos when my hard drive crashed unexpectedly. Documents and other items that don’t require a lot of space are stored on my .Mac account and in my file server account at school. I also have a huge new external hard drive for storing my photos and video. Call me paranoid, but my original DV tapes and back up CDs of photos are stored in a fireproof safe as well.

3) Go global and take your students along for the ride.

• Start exploring Google Earth.
• Join the Google Earth Community.
• Take your class on a virtual field trip at Tramline Virtual Field Trips.
• Join a collaborative project at Global SchoolNet Foundation or at iEARN. Check out this list from Eduscapes.
• Go on a tour yourself. See Mike Searson’s iStory tour blog for inspiration.
• Apply for an Earthwatch Fellowship or a Fulbright Teacher Exchange.

4) Find some online neighbors. Join a community.

Busy teachers can find support and fellowship online. Here are a few starting points:

• Education World’s Message Board Center
• Golden Apple Foundation’s Teacher Excellence Network
• Support Blogging wiki
• Tapped In

5) Subscribe to free professional development.

Here are a few of my favorite sources for finding listservs, web sites, and podcasts for improving professional practices:

• H-EDTECH Discussion Network – an educational technology listserv
• ISED-L – a listserv for private school educators, but may be of interest to public school educators as well
• Edutopia – Their site and blog are fabulous, and make sure to sign up for their free magazine.
• Free educational podcasts in the iTunes Store
• If you are really feeling adventurous, learn more about RSS feeds by browsing Will Richardson’s RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators.

6) Acknowledge another educator.

Share your story about a teacher (or learning experience) that made a difference in your life. Take a moment to reflect on your own experiences through this project I recently started using Google Earth.

As always, I am interested in YOUR thoughts and suggestions. Please take a moment to leave a comment! And I almost forgot... here's my resolution. Thanks to Charlene Chausis for referring me to this fun resource!

Photo Credit: Sally Mahoney Click here to see the photo in Flickr.

Best of 2006: Resources for Teachers

For the past few years, I have been publishing a weekly list of links for educators and this fall, I began using Google Groups to manage this listserv. Because I spend a fair amount of time each week perusing various web sites and resources for teachers, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites this week. There's quite a variety here!

1) U.S Geological Survey

This site contains a mindboggling amount of scientific data and there's a section especially geared towards educators. My favorite part contains RSS feeds and downloadable Google Earth files of recent earthquake activity around the globe.

2) Room 132 Video Blog

Last school year, Room 132 teacher Bre Pettis made some pretty amusing and informative videos on events in his classroom. Bre has moved on to bigger things now, educating adults at Make magazine. These videos convey a sense of fun and enthusiasm for learning and help me remember why I am teacher.

3) 100,000 Wikis in the Classroom

My favorite word as a teacher is FREE, and Wikispaces is generously donating 100,000 free wikis to educators. I plunged into the world of wikis this year with a sixth grade collaborative computer science research project, and I was pleased as punch with the results. I'm excited to learn more about wikis through other ITM bloggers and from Adam Frey of Wikispaces, who will be presenting at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators in March. I serve on the conference committee for this annual event, and Adam has offered to create a wiki for the conference!

4) Google For Educators: Global Warming Student Speakout

Google For Educator's inaugural project (co-sponsored by Global SchoolNet) was another hit with my students. They mastered spreadsheets, both in Excel and in Google Spreadsheets and Docs, found relevant videos on Google Video, worked collaboratively in teams, and learned a bit about global warming in the process. I'm looking forward to other projects that Google may cook up for us in the future!

5) Apple Learning Interchange 2006 - Rethink. Global Awareness.

I've been fortunate to be a part of the Apple Distinguished Educator program for the past year or so, and my participation in this education community has changed my professional life in so many ways. Many ADEs, along with representatives from EF Educational Tours, traveled last summer to Berlin and Prague to create a global awareness curriculum. My view of the world has broadened and deepened because of this project, and I now understand how vital it is for teachers to bring the world to their students via technology, if not through actual experience.

The resulting project is housed in the Apple Learning Interchange which was redesigned in the past year. Now, any teacher can upload lessons and digital objects to share, rate and comment on projects of others, and subscribe to RSS feeds showing new additions to the collections. Additionally, any media in the ALI can be downloaded to your iTunes library.

Please feel free to point out any favorite web sites or projects of your own choosing by posting information in the comments section of this post. Stay tuned for my next ITM entry in which I suggest some ed tech resolutions for 2007!

I should add that I took the above picture in Berlin at an exhibition of Buddy Bears. Visit this web site to learn more about this international project. In July, 2006, the bears were on display in Bebelplatz, a square near Humboldt University.