From my friend Kyle Dunbar - if you want to join in - sign up on her blog.
"I am giddy with excitement about the opportunity to host a Virtual Book Club discussing the fantastic book Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time by Julie Lindsay and Vicki A. Davis. The book club was announced last Sunday night in my school division and I am thrilled that we already have thirteen teachers signed up! Even better, we have teachers from across our school division and from all different grade levels. It is a wonderful thing when already busy teachers find time in their lives to discuss powerful educational ideas with their peers.
Now, I am ready to get some global participation in this book club. I can't think of a better way to brainstorm about global projects than to have teachers from across the globe in the session together. So, we are inviting all teachers, parents, students, thinkers and learners out there to join us for six live meetings to share what they think about the projects, resources, and research discussed in Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds.
We will be meeting on Mondays at 7:30pm EST on the following dates:
January 7th
January 21st
February 4th
February 18th
March 4th
March 18th
(find the time in your area here)
Meetings will be live using Blackboard Collaborate and will last one hour. We will spend the time sharing thoughts about ideas raised in the book. It will also be a great opportunity to connect with other educators that share similar passions and beliefs about flattening our classrooms walls. We will share strategies and resources for building those 21st century skills like collaboration, communication and creativity in authentic ways.
Excellent collaborative work by teachers in the Flat Classroom Certified Teacher 12-1 cohort re designing a handshake for Middle school students using Glogster.
This is my public evernote notebook where I'm sharing notes about global collaboration in education, technology, and my notes from conferences. If you're following the leading edge of technology and use evernote, you can use this notebook to keep abreast of the things I'm collecting in this area. I've added Julie Lindsay to the notebook, so, we'll look to collect there as well.
Evernote shared notebooks are great ways to share collections of information in a slightly different format than bookmarks.
Created by Julie, Jason and Tasha as their 'quad-blogging' assignment for the Flat Classroom Certified Teacher course 12-1
Excellent resources and comments!
Julie Balen's blog - One of our new Flat Classroom Certified Teacher graduates from the 12-1 cohort. A thoughtful and committed educator who now flattens the classroom wherever she can!
Flat Classroom will run another global live event in Hawaii, July 24-26 2013. plan to join us now!
"Educators and students interested in global issues and improving their international connections should join this conference."
As Vicki and Julie state, "Once you go Flat, you never go back!" My passion for global education has only gotten stronger through the participation of this project.
All of these students that I had the opportunity to work with through both teams that we operated have done nothing but remind why I love my job! Kids are amazing! Simply put. When they shine and show their talents and you know that it is all them that have done the work, then as a teacher/leader you know you have done your job. I simply sat back and watched them blow my mind. It is amazing what kids can do when you place them in a situation where there is no ceiling but the ones they place on themselves. When they remove that ceiling WATCH OUT! because it is a spectacle to behold.
"Collaborative projects broaden teachers' horizons, too, connecting them with colleagues from around the world. Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) and Julie Lindsay (@julielindsay), founders of the Flat Classroom Project, had never met face-to-face when they launched their first collaborative project several years ago. Now, they have co-authored a book, Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds to share their field-tested insights about collaborative PBL. They lead teachers from around the world on several "flat" projects annually, using technology to overcome distances and connect learners in shared inquiry and problem solving. "