Group items tagged

"The Connected Educator Month is around the corner. Norway, Australia, New Zealand and the USA have organized hundreds of events for educators to learn, connect and collaborate. As I am preparing to be part of a panel on October 2, 4 pm (USA EST)/October 3rd, 9am (NZ time) and keynote in Oslo, Norway on October 21st, I am looking at 4 big ideas around the connected educator through the lens of connected professional learning."

"If you want globally connected students, you need globally connected teachers who are capable of communicating, collaborating and connecting to experts and peers from around the world. These educators are harnessing the power of global connections for their own learning in order to bring the world to their students."

"How do we learn vocabulary of a second, third or fourth language best? As a class, we discussed different methods including mnemonic devices and how they help us remember, organize and make connections in our brain. Some of us prefer: visual connections rhyming words acronyms a sentence in context humorous connections etc. In order to embed modern skills and literacies and connect to our school's Core Values and mission, students created Popplets. The tool (Popplet) allowed students to create a web based mind map. Each bubble/ "popplet"represented a vocabulary word related to medicine/illness/symptoms."

"Ask yourself the following questions. Then ask these questions of your faculty and administration. * Is global awareness and education important to students who do not and most likely will never own a passport? * Should/is "Global Awareness" or "Global Competencies" (be) taught as a (required) separate course/subject? * Do you infuse culture BEYOND food, music, games, festivals, language or art? * Do teachers need to be globally connected in order to connect their students?"

"We have heard plenty from teachers. We have heard plenty from educational "gurus" and theorists what students should/shouldn't be learning and how we should/shouldn't be teaching. I have written and talked plenty about the need for globally connected educators. I have even written a chapter in Heidi Hayes Jacobs' upcoming book about Global Literacies. It is time to hear from students!"

"Below you will see a slide deck, I shared with an Elementary School during a webinar a few weeks ago addressing challenges and examples of globally connected learning."

"Technology is not about "replacing" learning nor teaching. Technology is a tool to make learning and teaching possible in ways that it never was before nor that we had ever imagined (Well, maybe Gene Roddenberry from Star Trek had). I would like to share a small example of how technology tools can enhance a learning experience by making (personalized) connections to what is being learned in the classroom, bringing in the outside world, and taking learning literally "off the page"."

"The issue of copyright came up with our 7th graders as they were creating Gloggs about different characters of a story. The Language Arts teacher asked me to join them to reinforce and discuss copyright, creative commons, public domain and fair use. Not an easy task … I decided to show the class the ~10 minute The Fair(y) Use Tale video clip."

"Based on Taylor Mali's visit to The American School of Sao Paulo, Meryl Zeidenberg and I were inspired to amplify students' poetry writing by adding a visual and audio layer as well as connect them globally to other students' poems. We are launching the Visualize Poetry Around The World project and are looking forward to connecting teachers and students, bringing global awareness and encouraging them to look beyond their own backyard and their own perspective."

"In Part 1 of Literature Circle Discussions, I shared 6th Grade Humanities teacher, Emily Vallillo's well structured and organized Literature Circle lesson. In Part 2, I shared the upgrade of traditional lit circles to a new learnflow which included filming the discussion to annotexting the film with behavior's observed and metacognitive reflections on student blogfolios. DUE to the sharing of their work on their blogfolios and the dissemination on Langwitches blog as well as via my network on Twitter the learnflow did not stop, a new learning opportunity arose, when Author, founder and co-director of Habits of Mind, Bena Kallick made contact. Students and teachers are getting a taste of and are being reminded that learning in a connected world is never over… The simple fact of documenting and taking the time to publish "what we are doing in class"… is connecting us to a world of learning opportunities."

"These questions intrigued Ana Paula Cortez, one of our Portuguese teachers at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, and compelled her to explore them with her students. prep--Inspiration: 7billionothers.org--In 2003, after The Earth seen from the Sky, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with Sybille d'Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, launched the 7 billion Others project. 6,000 interviews were filmed in 84 countries by about twenty directors who went in search of the Others. From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes: What have you learnt from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children? What difficult circumstances have you been through? What does love mean to you? Forty-five questions that help us to find out what separates and what unites us. These portraits of humanity today are accessible on this website. The heart of the project, which is to show everything that unites us, links us and differentiates us, is found in the films which include the topics discussed during these thousands of hours of interviews. Objective: Raise awareness of culture and interconnectedness of common themes/threads that connect humans no matter of their cultural origin. Take advantage of our multilingual students to share and connect speakers of different languages. Students: 7th & 8th grade Portuguese Language Learners Project Idea: Middle School students create a video (testimonies, journal type) responding to pre-set prompts from 7billionothers.org (love, happiness, work).Future extension idea: personalize the prompts by tweaking to address specific middle school topic…. friends, family, what do you want to be when you grow up….) Process: 1. Discuss video filming techniques.. observe the ones recorded on 7billionothers.org: Framing, Angle, Stability, Background"

"I had the pleasure of meeting Bob Greenberg, the mind behind The Brainwaves Channel at BLC14 in Boston. Bob has been traveling the US and the world to film and connect educators who share their own thoughts, perspectives, experiences and ideas on education."

"I have been dying to share this project with all of you, but I have been holding off until we have completed the unit (well almost…). There seem to be more and more opportunities popping up for our 5th grader to continue learning and connecting their knowledge about Christopher Columbus… Take a listen to the students' "CC Newscast" video and then read on about the "upgrade" process from textbook to globally connected learning!"

"No lesson, no event and no learning should stand alone. We connect what we learn with our experiences of the past and store newly acquired skills, facts and experience to be retrieved in the future. Previously, I wrote about framing a field trip with Google Earth. I try to make the case of the importance to allowing students to learn to make connections, to not just expose them to a learning experience without pre-knowledge activation and reflection "to put things in perspective" to follow."

"cross posted with permission from Dr. Silvana Meneghini,'s On The Edge Blog. Silvana, the High School Technology Coordinator at Graded, The American School of São Paulo, shared a How-To post to connect augmented reality to student reflection by adding a layer of learning (not technology for technology sake). I highly recommend adding her blog to your RSS reader and following her on Twitter to connect with her learning and teaching journey. Enjoy Silvana's post below: Augmented Reality allows you to expand the experience of the real world with information, video, sound, GPS data, and so on. If well utilized, it can be much more than just another cool tech thing… You will see below an example of how Augmented Reality was used to expand the experience of visitors to our school's Art Exhibit. As students had to reflect on and verbalize their artistic choices, an augmented reality layer was created for viewers of the exhibit. In the process, students were excited about sharing with an authentic audience and had to really recall and reflect. It created a hyperlinked reality that enabled amplification of the viewers' learning experience that was much more engaging than text."

"I am pleased to share with you an opportunity for Middle School Students to collaborate on a global perspectives project. Mark Engstrom, the Assistant Principal and Middle School Geography teacher at my new school in São Paulo, Brazil, and his collaboration partner, Laurie Clement, a MS teacher in Windsor, Canada, have put together various projects to connect middle school geography students from around the world and to facilitate collaboration among them. This past school year, our students in Brazil worked together with students from Canada, USA and Sweden. They are expanding this opportunity to more schools and countries."

"his post if meant to be seen through the lens of Looking and Documenting FOR Learning from the perspective of administrators or staff in charge of supporting teachers' professional development and ongoing learning. I worked with teachers and administrators this past week at the Bavarian International School in Munich, Germany. Rachel Jackson, teacher librarian (mostly on Twitter) & Kim House, Technology Coordinator (mostly in a TodaysMeet backchannel) did an incredible job in documenting the work over our 3 days together."

"I have been enthralled watching the following TED Talk (Ideas worth Spreading) How to Listen to Global Voices by Ethan Zuckerman: Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves. Blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman wants to help share the stories of the whole wide world. He talks about clever strategies to open up your Twitter world and read the news in languages you don't even know."

"The school I work for alternates every year between a Science Fair and a Jewish History Fair exhibition. Students are to research and create a project for the respective subjects. This year the school prepared for the Jewish History Fair. The sixth graders wanted to explore the theme "Jewish Communities Around the World. "