Group items tagged

The Manitou Springs High School featured Flat Classroom in an online article.  :)

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.

"After more more than a decade of e-safety work in UK schools, the evidence suggests that most young people, who are supported and informed, know the key e-safety issues and are able to stay safe online."

The school from Nepal, Lincoln School, has a blog to share experiences during the A Week in the Life Project this semester

Fascinating blog post about how misunderstanding the "pound sign" caused a project not to happen. The US school said to press the pound sign (#) but the UK school was looking for the british pound sign - they call the # the number sign. This is a great point about communication and overcoming. It makes me sad they couldn't figure it out and work it out, but great that these conversations keep happening.

book club

Global Project starting in December for upper elementary/middle school Aaron Maurer - Flat Classroom Certified Teacher

Publication by Steve Katz,Technology Integration Specialist Korea International School South Korea @stevekatz. Very useful and thorough, highly recommended for teachers across all disciplines.

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 blog post really resonates with me. Content delivery is only part of the answer to teaching and learning now. All teachers and schools need to broaden their horizons.

Students from the A Week in the Life Project 12-2 talk about their schools.This is an excellent artifact for comparing similarities and differences between lifestyles and cultures.

An outstanding post from Jodi Amri from Stafford Primary School as she shares her end of project reflection via this teacher blog for the A Week in the Life project, a Flat Classroom Project for Grades 3-5 (8-10 year old). Her last paragraph: "We are teachers and students who want to make a difference in our world. We know we can do this when we reach out to others around the globe to share our common interests and concerns and build bridges of understanding between us. The Week in the Life project has given us this opportunity. It has also shown us what technology integration should look like. In this season when we give special focus to the things we are grateful for, we want to acknowledge the opportunity we have each day to learn with and from each other, as well as to be inspired by the learning all around us."

Helen McConaghy and teachers at her school created this interdisciplinary global project

Tasha Cowdy from the Yokohama International School shares some final comments based on her experience with Very young students and global collaboration while she was doing the Flat Classroom Certified Teacher course last semester.

"This year Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in the UK, has been awarded $1 million in seed-funding for his wish to design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together. He hopes to build a School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online."

March edition of the ECIS IT blog by John Mikton that has a special feature on mobile computing. Excellent resources for tablet and ipad use in schools.

A great quad blog on possibilities for teaching and addressing social awareness as it relates to digital citizenship in schools.

My presentation at the TICAL School Leadership Summit today

From Alfred Thompson - former Microsoft Blogger but now CLASSROOM TEACHER. He's one of my go-to people for 21st century skills and I'm glad he's in the classroom again - some kids are very lucky. "Code.org has released their highly anticipated video to encourage more people, especially students, to learn how to code for computers. It's one of the better videos I have seen with a lot of names and faces students will recognize and a few they will not. They may want to learn more about that later BTW. Starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, NBA All-star Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi. Directed by Lesley Chilcott."

Aaron Maurer, middle school teacher with student teams participating in Eracism 12-2, shares his thoughts about the final debate where one student team debated in the HS round.