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Global Education Conference Schedule. It starts in just a few hours. If you are doing work in global education, this is your week!

Awesome! This is an online learning environment dedicated for educators and students to learn how to effectively use Google Apps in an educational context.

Free Google Apps training center. This will take you through the tools that are part of Google apps for education. Share this with your teachers and students.

This request from Ernie Easter: "Hi Vicki - Margaret Lincoln, a librarian from Battle Creek, Michigan and a member of the Maine Holocaust Education Network Ning has posted a request for educators who use art in teaching about the Holocaust to submit curriculum ideas. The artist is a Holocaust survivor. Would you be willing to look at it and add it to your blog? The only thing I am unsure about at this point is the commercial aspect of it, if any."

Conference for educational bloggers -- too bad it is in the waning weeks of the school year.

Join thought leaders in education policy and national politics to discuss how the Internet is changing the discourse of education reform, and how those changes are affecting the 2008 presidential election. ED in '08 welcomes ed-bloggers and political bloggers to take part in the discussion. I'm glad the "thought leaders" in American can come, however, the timing of this conference precludes most teachers I know from even considering coming we're all in the "home stretch" and rarely are we able to leave the classroom, especially this time of year. I would hope that one day the edublogosphere would truly level us so that teachers would be included in these discussions. For, until that happens, I doubt we'll find any truly relevant change for the classroom.. just more buzzwords and "programs" that don't suit today's student. Hint: If you want reform, ask some good teachers or at least include them in the discussion. There are some big picture thinkers out there that ARE teachers in the public classroom.

Mulitmedia resources for educators at all levels. There are ways to conduct International projects too.

digital media for the classroom

Some lovely video resources. For US educators, they have the resources aligned with US standards. You can register on the site and organize the resources into your own folders (like for your classes.)  "Teachers' Domain is a free digital media service for educational use from public broadcasting and its partners. You'll find thousands of media resources, support materials, and tools for classroom lessons, individualized learning programs, and teacher professional learning communities."

#TEDActiveEDU How can we empower kids to reshape the education system?  Fantastic idea worth spreading started by Steve Hargadon on March 3, 2011 calling students to action in speaking up about their education. Our Flat Classroom Keynote from Mount Carmel Area High School "Student Perspective ~ Change Matters" was one of the top 10 videos.

"The First World OER Congress will be held 20-22 June 2012 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France. Organized in cooperation with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), the Congress aims to influence educational planning worldwide and to encourage governments to support the development and use of open educational resources."

It is finally here. Here are the details on our Flat Classroom global book club. (click the link for more) Every week for 10 weeks we will meet at an alternating time - 12 hours apart. (For the East Coast USA it is Sundays at 6 pm Eastern or Monday mornings at 6 am eastern)  Visit our Book club calendar to convert these times to your Time Zone. Subscribe to this calendar via Google calendar to keep up with events.This is Sunday evenings at 22:00GMT alternating with Monday mornings at 10:00GMT in our Blackboard Collaborate room https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0 .   The book club is free and everyone is welcome. #flatclass Book Club Meeting Times Week and Date Time Topic of Conversation Week 1: Sunday March 11 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 1 - Flattening Classrooms through Global Collaboration (p 1-17) Chapter 2 - Impact on Learning: Research in the Global Collaborative Classroom (p18-30) Week 2: Monday, March 19 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 3 - Step 1: Connection (p 31-61) Week 3: Sunday, March 25 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 4 - Step 2: Communication (p 62-96) Week 4: Monday, April 2 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 5 - Step 3: Citizenship (p 97-125) Take a break. Week 5: Sunday, April 15 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 6 - Step 4: Contribution and Collaboration (p 126-157) Week 6: Monday, April 23 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 7 - Step 5: Choice (p 158-196) Week 7: Sunday, April 29 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 8 - Step 6: Creation (p197-214) Week 8: Monday, May 7 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 9 - Step 7: Celebration (p 215-234) Week 9: Sunday, May 13 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 10 - Designing and Managing a Global Collaborative Project (p 235-267) Week 10: Monday, May 21 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 11 - Challenge-Based Professional Development (p 268-293) Chapter 12: Rock the World (p 293 - 304)  We're also inviting the educators featured in each chapter to be with us for the conversations about "th

Lots of talk in technology circles about 6th grader Thomas Suarez an iphone programmer.His best selling app is Bustin Jieber a Justin Beiber "Whack a Mole." He shares how he learned how to program an app. How he taught himself the iPhone Software Development kit.  He started an "app club" at school where any kid at school can come and learn how to design an app. He is part of an ipad pilot program. The students are asking teachers to help them design apps for education and the money is going into local education foundation. 

Great sessions from Discovery - one is coming up on October 22nd about Bernie Dodge.

Discovery education has the greatest WEbinars. I'm going to attend the one next Wednesday with Bernie Dodge. These are free great sessions. I highly recommend listening to the one with Bernie Dodge - he is doing some great work and came on wow2 last year and talked about webquests and web 2.0 and was getting ready to embark on some really cool work. I"ve GOT to hear what he has to say. This is great for teachers and anyone teaching educators.

Information about the tapped in festival.

Tapped in has been a mainstay in education and a non threatening method of using chat to link with people around the world. This longstanding contributor to education has its 2008 Tapped In Festival scheduled for July 23 and July 24th with some neat things planned. This website has more information for you and certificates of participation will be available for those who participates. Teachers should connect in which ever way they feel most comfortable and the power of embedded networks should never be ignored.

This study breaks a lot of the stereotypes people may have about use of the Internet. It also presents important information for libraries and schools.

Wow -- this longitudinal study shows that all generations show "google generation" traits with over 65 year olds spending 4 more hours a week online than some of the younger ages. It argues that libraries must adapt to the digital mindset AND that young people are lacking in information skills! This is an important study for all educators, business leaders, AND students on the Horizon project. Another reason to remind ourselves that we base practice on RESEARCH not STEREOTYPES!

Wow -- this longitudinal study shows that all generations show "google generation" traits with over 65 year olds spending 4 more hours a week online than some of the younger ages. It argues that libraries must adapt to the digital mindset AND that young people are lacking in information skills! This is an important study for all educators, business leaders, AND students on the Horizon project. Another reason to remind ourselves that we base practice on RESEARCH not STEREOTYPES!

"Staff reacted with shock and disbelief as they learned of the defacement of tribute pages set up to honour 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher and eight-year-old Trinity Bates." This is an important article to discuss with students as the defacement of these pages happened because the group was set up for anyone to join and without moderation. Education Education prevents hurt and harm as happened in this case. Of course, it doesn't change the fact that Facebook, even though it is a global company, seems to have a centralized communications structure.

An article in last week's Education Week looks at the increasingly common practice of reading aloud to middle and high school students. In discussing the practice with Mary Ann Zehr (I'm quoted briefly in the piece) I made the point that while there is certainly nothing wrong with reading out loud to teenagers, it is symptomatic of what I call "literacy creep" - the tendency of elementary school-style instructional techniques to find their way deeper into K-12 education across all content areas.

Yet another beautiful analysis of a major problem in education today by the good people at Core Knowledge.

One teacher reflects on how she feels "post-Wisconsin." Many teachers are hurting these days. "During my five years as a teacher I have learned that no matter what happens, the kids will be there the next day. They will show up and expect me to educate them, and they deserve that. There is little or no room to recover or wallow, and certainly no forgiveness in terms of wavers in classroom productivity and performance."

Commons from teachers who are heartbroken.

Another PA parent opts his child out of PSSA standardized testing as a measure of civil disobedience.  Word of caution:  This can very much hurt a school's Adequate Yearly Progress and ultimately the school may suffer.  But, what if this movement spread amongst parents?  What then?  Would the government take over the school?  

Starting on Sept 8, the US dept of education will ask students to respond to the President's Back to school challenge to create videos, up to 2 minutes in length describing steps that they will take to improve their education. This will be the website for the Iam what I learn website.

Conversations about Computer Science education week are beginning to float around. I think we can do many easy things including webinars and sessions with leaders that students can interact with live and even just a hashtag for people to follow on twitter who care about the topic would be useful.

"New research suggests the amount of education a woman has along with having children later in life are key predictor's of a child's success in adulthood. "