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"My best advice is to tap into an existing project. There are lots of them! But before you begin your search, take a few minutes to define what kind of project you're looking for. What areyour project goals? How will you incorporate your content area standards in addition to giving your students opportunities for developing global competencies? What time frame do you have in mind? Are you looking for a long-term project or a short-term one? What scope do you have in mind? Are you looking to connect with a single teacher/classroom/school or multiple partners? What kind of partner(s) are you looking for? Grade level? Subject area? Location?"

If you have experience with debate and are an educator, we need you. Will you take one or two hours of your time (at most) and serve as a judge for the Eracism global debate project? We have students around the world debating now and need a few more educators. Here's information on signing up. We'll train you on how to share. it is done using voicethread. Thanks for your consideration. If you coach debate, you might want to familiarize yourself with this new debate format "simulated sychronous" using voicethread.

This article is perfect for librarians wanting to utilize free books and help students "check them out" (if you can even use that term.) Here are three methods, the only thing I would add is that you can create a library with Evernote instead of springpad as well. Pass this one on. "three methods for creating and sharing a digital classroom library with your students. In all three cases, I'm going to assume that you have a source of free eBooks (Amazon's Free Popular Classics, Google's Play Store Top Free Books, or Project Gutenberg) and an app to read those books (Amazon's Kindle app, Google's Play Books app, Aldiko for Android, or iBooks for iOS)."

You can access your hackpads offline by syncing with dropbox. Very interesting concept.

I met Jutta Treviranus from the FLOE project. This is about creating open resources that are translatable, move from place to place, can be modified and made accessible to everyone. It is has tools that will make your content accessible for all learners. If you're making free content, you'll want to go to this website and look at their tools to help make your content accessible to everyone. This is great because it can help translate into other languages for the content we're creating for Flat Classroom.

It's on again in 2012! Nominate your favorite and most inspiring Web 2.0 users.

A collection of tools that are fun to work with. Transform your photos and images

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.

"Popcorn Maker makes it easy to enhance, remix and share web video. Use your web browser to combine video and audio with content from the rest of the web - from text, links and maps to pictures and live feeds. "

"Cultural awareness in the context of a global project reaches further than using correct 'netiquette', inclusive language and knowing what time zone your group members are from. At the core of cultural awareness is respecting and embracing cultural difference and valuing the cultural learning taking place." A collection of resources for looking at digital citizenship through the areas of awareness 'cultural'.

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.

"MARK YOUR CALENDARS for May 2, 2013!! Megaconference Jr., now in its 10th year, is an international program designed to give students in elementary through secondary schools around the world the opportunity to communicate, collaborate and contribute to each other's learning in real time, using advanced multi-point video conferencing technology. Megaconference Jr. addresses local and national curriculum standards in multiple subject areas. It will also help students and teachers develop the capacity to effectively utilize high-speed networks, videoconferencing and other emerging technologies to enhance learning experiences."

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!"

Take courses and create your own courses! Could have potential for the classroom.

This notebook holds many forms, ideas, projects, for flattening your classroom. I like to save original documents here just in case links are broken on web sites at a later date. You can join this notebook or bookmark it to have access to the files contained here (in particular, the permissions forms.)

I love this idea. I want to have a Parent Tech night, but we have parents who may know more than me about tech and media. Great way to get all stake holders to come.

St. George's day is April 23 where people around the world celebrate English heritage and patriotism. For those of you who are integrating holidays from around the world as part of your global competency, this is a great lesson to study about Britain. This is a collection of lesson plans on the topic.

Flat Classroom, in conjunction with Taking IT Global - 'Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds' Starts August 22 5pm EST, (August 23 7am Australia) Followed by 3 further sessions over the next few weeks. Come and discuss global collaboration and how to flatten your classroom.

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