Group items tagged

Google image search is being redesigned. I hope that one of the big changes that the quote below means is that we'll have more transparency with copyright. So many times, when I ask a source, students say "Google Images." No. No. No. Google images isn't a source, it is a search engine. You must quote the original source!! Hopefully this will make it easier. From Google Webmaster central... "We now display detailed information about the image (the metadata) right underneath the image in the search results, instead of redirecting users to a separate landing page. We're featuring some key information much more prominently next to the image: the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it comes from, and the image size."

I want to point out Terry Smith, a judge for Flat Classroom this past 8 weeks, and what he did as he did his judging. He used the process of judging to see what the students were saying about edtech and current trends as well as to have current information to share his students, but he also modeled excellent feedback by leaving messages for the students he judged. It is the words that communicate presence and the students who received messages from him came to me with excitement. While many of our amazing volunteer judges do this, I wanted to point it out because he did it so well. This is the link to the thread where we talked about what he did but you can also click on his name and see the kinds of comments he left and the videos he reviewed. This is the kind of "flattening" that creates mutually beneficial symbiotic learning relationships but also gives us good feedback for improving what we're doing with the students. You can volunteer to judge projects on this website as well.

Vicki, this link does not seem to work? It takes me to a blank comment form on the Ning.

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.

Honor Morman, a Flat Classroom Certified Teacher, shares her thoughts about introducing global collaboration into the curriculum. "Here's what two of my students said about our participation in the Flat Classroom Project, a 12-week project in which we collaborated with 15 other classes in seven different countries to create a vision for the future of education and society based on emerging technologies and the characteristics of the net generation: "[I learned] how important it is to be a member of a global society-communicating globally and working together as a global community is the only way we can solve global issues and improve the lives of all of us. Communicating and collaborating via the web with global partners is how we will do it in future." -Lara "[Participating in this project helped me become] a global leader, able to communicate important global ideas and different perspectives across cultures and borders and share those ideas for the betterment of my community and the world." -Katherine"

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."

Article by Andrew Churches, http://edorigami.edublogs.org/, talking about the benefits of global learning, and gives a great wrap for Flat Classroom. "Our classrooms are not limited to the four walls of the physical building we teach in but can encompass the entirety of the planet. Technology-much of which is free-has enabled us to push back the classroom walls and stretch our virtual arms across the globe to shake hands with classrooms and students almost anywhere."

We all tend to think we are more central to a project than we really are. This is no surprise but is very important for those who think they are indispensible because you're not. ;-( I just think being realistic is important. This is also a challenge for us in Flat Classroom because students think they are important and central EVEN if they aren't communicating and reaching out to partners and this is a problem. I've had kids claim they "did all the work" and when looking at the words, it doesn't bear out. They are shocked when they realize how little they've done. I think this thought process is a a problem for collaboration. No matter what people do, they think they did it all even if the wiki says otherwise or data says otherwise. For this reason, it is important to point out this disparity to teammates and also how to quantify the participation of others. "Do you provide information or materials which are necessary for them to do their job? To what extent are the tasks you each do related? Now imagine that everyone in the group does a similar exercise, quantifying their own relationship to everyone else. According to research from Jonathon Cummings of -Duke's Fuqua Business school, you are likely to overestimate the degree to which others on your team depend on you!"

""The use of Facebook by students around the world to communicate with one another does more harm than good."" This is our topic for the Eracism 2013 project. You may wonder - why did we limit it to Facebook - well, after much-- yes, --- debate-- on our end, every good debate topic should have compelling topics on both sides - we wanted to have compelling discussions around social media and keep with the original spirit of the 4 students who envisioned this project. They wanted to debate topics of importance to promote cultural understanding. If you want to sign up, this is linked to the 2013 press release that will tell you how to enter a team from middle up to high school (there are 2 brackets). We debate asynchronously in a method we call "simulated synchronous" until the finals, when we have a synchronous live debate in blackboard collaborate. 

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.

Tom Whitby writes a provocative blog post about Connected Educator Month, August 2012. He states: "No, to be a good teacher, one does not need to be connected. However, the question is if you are a good teacher and unconnected, could you be a better teacher if you were connected? Shouldn't we strive to be the best that we can be? It's not only an Army thing. Being connected offers not only exposure to content and ideas but also the ability to create and collaborate on ideas. Being connected fosters transparency and debunks myths of education that have been harbored in the previous isolation of the education profession. This is the stuff of a true learner's dreams, and, as educators, are we not all learners?"

Family path has the highest impact.  Get parents on board and you will find that the barriers that we face will dissapear

Great reflection blog post from Sunny, a teacher in Australia who ventured to the Flat Classroom Conference in Japan! Full of ideas I've headed home - collected my thoughts and hope to put some of the plans we made as teams into action - because flattening our world - connected across the globe to share experience, help each other and learn together is what education should be about. Final presentations and more about the conference can be accessed at http://conference2013.flatclassroomproject.org/home

Yong Zhao's new book in 2012 - "The book is about preparing global, creative, and entrepreneurial talents. It is my attempt to answer a number of pressing questions facing education today. These questions are exemplified by two new stories that have dominated the media recently, one around the Facebook IPO and the other the debt and jobs of college graduate"

From "The 20% Project" to "Staff Development for the 21st Century" Education Is My Life covered all the big topics in 2012. This book takes the best articles from our blog and compiles them into a must read for the education community. Whether you are interested in technology, 21st century leadership, or staff development - this resources provides information and inspiration to all.

"Teacher Preparation for the Global Age: The Imperative for Change, highlights promising practices identified during this meeting and subsequent discussions and suggests a framework for internationalizing the education of all pre-service teachers and increasing the number of world language teachers, especially in less commonly taught languages."

Australia/Sydney-based award winning educator, Chris Betcher, talks about the long-term advantages for students of connecting and collaborating globally. He includes footage from his students today who worked on global projects over 10 years ago and the impact this had on their lives and future careers. This keynote was produced for the Flat Classroom Project 12-2, November 2012. http://fcp12-2.flatclassroomproject.org/Keynote Chris Betcher: http://www.chrisbetcher.com http://twitter.com/betchaboy

There is a fantastic feature on wikispaces that lets you drill down by student and see what work they've done. If you click on "recent changes" and then type in the userid and date, you can see the work. I now have students turn in their work on a google checklist - when they edit over a period of time, they type in their id and the dates and paste the link and I can grade with one click. This saves so much time and gives me a digital dashboard of all of the work they've done on a project.

Tom Whitby shares insights into connected learning - asking if we should be flipping the model and the learners connect to model the benefits for the educators...... He also states: "Major education conferences are including more and more student sessions exploring the possibilities of student connectedness, connected learning, and choices students have in this technology-driven culture." Yes! that is what Flat Classroom conferences and live events do....and more!

"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."

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.