Sunday, December 18, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, December 04, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Embedding Global Collaborative Projects - presentation

This past week I had two opportunities to speak to audiences on the topic of Embedding Global Collaborative Projects into the Curriculum.

The first session was part of the Global Education Conference 2011, where I presented online via Blackboard Collaborate virtual classrooms.

The second opportunity was at the Beijing Learning Summit 2011, where I had a room of interested educators from Beijing and surrounds.

Embedding Global Collaborative Projects into the Curriculum
View more presentations from Julie Lindsay

Don't forget our "Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration one Step at a Time" book will be released in January 2011

Some questions for discussion:
  • What are the characteristics of effective global projects?
  • How can we support the integration of global collaborative projects across the curriculum?

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Global Education Conference 2011 starts today!


The 2011 Global Education Conference is about to start!  Five days of non-stop presentations, 3 sessions every hour. Amazing keynote speakers, and even more amazing presenters from all around the world.

Read more on the Social Media page (how to connect!). Twitter hashtag is #globaled11

Conference Guide - lots of great information to get you started.

2011 GlobalEdCon Guide


 Flat Classroom are delighted to be a sponsoring partner of the Global Education Conference. We are even more delighted to have so many of our Flat Classroom teachers presenting during the week. Here is the list (I hope I have not missed anyone!). If YOU are serious about global collaboration in education and making partnerships and learning more about how to connect your classroom to the world. These are the sessions you should start with!

Collabo: The question and answer community for educators - AJ Juliani
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 20:00:00GMT

Global Virtual 3D Student/Teacher Community! David Deeds
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 01:00:00GMT

 SPOTLIGHT - Simple, Powerful Online Classrooms   Vicki Davis
 Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 11:00:00GMT

Designing a Global Collaboration Using Flat Classroom® Model   Cathy Wolinsky
Wednesday, November 17, 2011 at 00:00:00GMT

 A Week In The Life   Toni Olivieri-Barton
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 02:00:00GMT

Building Schools in Mozambique: How students can empower entire communities  
Sharon Peters
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 13:00:00GMT

Building Global Opportunities Together--Anywhere, Anytime   Eva Brown
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 16:00:00GMT

Cultural E-Learning Adventures  Anne Mirtschin
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 11:00:00GMT

SPOTLIGHT Embedding Global Collaborative Projects into the Curriculum Julie Lindsay
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 12:00:00GMT

What does it mean to be a Global Educator and how can we design lessons that help students become Global Citizens?  Honor Moorman
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 13:00:00GMT

Reading Across the Globe: addressing the context of cultural difference through collaborative discussion Donna Roman
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 16:00:00GMT

Across Borders  Lisette Casey
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 20:00:00GMT

Global Projects Theresa Allen
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 22:00:00GMT

Project Purpose: Students Making a Difference in Mozambique  
Ariana, Yahn, Allysen, Chantal, Sharon Peters
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 09:00:00GMT

SPOTLIGHT - 7 Steps to Flatten Your Classroom: Simple Steps from the Flat Classroom® Project  Vicki Davis & Julie Lindsay
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 11:00:00GMT

Digiteen Dream Team  Vicki Davis
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 15:00:00GMT

Take note that GMT times are for convenience.  To find the actual time of presentations in your timezone use timeanddate.com for time conversion



Sunday, November 13, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sounding Board Classrooms wanted for Flat Classroom Project November 2011

The current Flat Classroom Project 11-3 is inviting classrooms from Grade 6 and above to become Sounding Boards for the student collaborative wikis. All details are on the Sounding Board information wiki. We also invite you to join the Flat Classroom Project Ning and the SB group.

We have over 400 students in this project collaborating across 11 wikis. The skill of providing feedback as a sounding board classroom aligns with ISTE NETS.S 2. 'Communication and Collaboration' - '...to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others'.

Becoming a Sounding Board classroom is not time draining. 2-3 lessons will probably be enough to devote to this, less for older students. It will provide a great opportunity for you and your class to examine collaborative research work critically using the Peer Evaluation techniques developed by Flat Classroom educators.

Interested?? Come on board....be a SOUNDING BOARD!

Application online form: http://tinyurl.com/soundingboardfcp

Questions?  fcp@flatclassroom.org

Julie Lindsay
Director, Flat Classroom Projects LLC

Cross-posted with FlatClassrooms Ning

Friday, October 28, 2011

It's on again in 2011: Global Education Conference


Flat Classroom is delighted to be a sponsoring partner of the Student Strand of the Global Education Conference 2011

There is not much time left to get involved! The event is November 14-18....it is TOTALLY online and TOTALLY free!

Session proposals are due on October 31!
We invite ALL flat classroom teachers and others who are working in a global collaborative mode to consider bringing students into this event and showcasing their work.

This is an excellent opportunity to showcase student collaboration and action.  Time is short, get moving and propose a presentation!  All details at Global Education Conference portal.

Hash tags #globaled #flatclass

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, August 07, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Flat Classroom® Projects - applications now open for elementary, middle and high school projects

 Hello to E-Learning Journey readers! My summer is over....and I am back to the blog, the one I care about so much but have sorely neglected in the past few weeks. Stay tuned for some sharing and updates re my summer adventures, and for lots of news about our projects and book! Stay with me...there is lot to discuss and exciting times to look forward to this coming year.

Press release: Flat Classroom® Projects!
Applications are invited now for a selection of internationally recognised and award winning global projects run by Flat Classroom® to start in September 2011. Co-founders Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay are excited to be offering these opportunities for classrooms globally to connect, co-create and learn together in a carefully designed and supported digital environment.

The Digiteen™ Project explores digital citizenship through interaction and provides an opportunity for students to not only talk about digital citizenship, but experience via online connection, collaboration, shared research and presentation. It also has an action project component where a classroom designs an action to be carried out in their own school community and then shared back to the global partnership.

The Flat Classroom® Project is designed to develop cultural understanding, skills with Web 2.0 and other software, experience in global collaboration and online learning, awareness of what it means to live and work in a flat world, while researching and discussing the ideas developed in Friedman's book.

The ‘A Week in the Life...’ Project aims to join Elementary School classrooms globally with a view to exploring what life is like in each area/country through discussion, sharing and collecting multimedia to create final products together. The curriculum focus is Interdisciplinary, how we live, how we communicate, cultural understanding and awareness.

Entry to a each project is via application and subscription. In order to help meet the subscription price, teachers can apply for a limited number of sweat equity positions as ‘lead teachers’.

All details for each of these outstanding projects can be found linked from the Flat Classroom® website. We welcome inquiries to fcp@flatclassroom.org

Watch this space for more announcements of new projects coming, including the repeat of the popular ‘Eracism’ Project, as well as an opportunity for educators to join our next Flat Classroom® Certified Teacher course, also starting in September 2011.

Also, our book, ‘Flattening Classroom, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration one Step at a Time’ is due for release January 2012. Find out more at www.flatclassroombook.com

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

An International Journey

This is a narration of my journey as an international educator. It has taken a couple of different forms and I am sharing these via this blog post.

From the book co-written by my friend and colleague, Vicki Davis and me, 'Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time'
Written in Beijing, China June 2011.
“Come and teach in the real Africa,” was the advertisement that inspired my husband and me to apply for and finally accept our first international teaching positions in Zambia, January 1998. Our daughter, Violet, was three. We sold up most of our worldly possessions in hometown Melbourne, Australia and left for Africa on our new adventure. We are still out there, over fourteen years and five countries later (Zambia, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Qatar and now China), experiencing in addition to Australian, also British and International Baccalaureate curriculum while exploring and embracing diverse cultural differences.
Zambia was also my first position as a computer teacher. Yes, before that I was a music teacher, dabbling in technology for performance and composition. However, this book is not about my journey alone, it is about the journey of many who are willing to ‘push the envelope’ or be pushed into learning experiences that significantly alter personal perceptions of how the world works and how we can work together to make it a better place. 
The Internet changed everything. As an early adopter I still remember, in the mid 1990’s, organizing my school community at Eltham College, Melbourne, to arrive at 5am to hear via live broadcast the outcome of the International School’s Cyberfair (website design to unite and take action) competition. Our school had been shortlisted for the Environment award, and we gained an honorable mention, as announced personally by Al Gore at that ceremony. This was an exciting achievement for the school and on that day I reflected on the looks of incredulity when I announced weeks before in the staffroom I had entered the school in a global project, ‘But do the students know how to create a website?’, ‘What does it mean to share online?’ ‘What do you mean ‘global’’?
Other memories include running an ‘Internet Club’ as an after school activity at Simba School, Zambia where around the change of the millennium we participated in iEARN learning circle projects. This was an environment where the only computer allowed on the Internet at that time (by directive of our school head) was in a locked room in the library, with the non-networked computer lab being a good 5 minute walk away. This did not deter us!
My life changed again when Vicki Davis and I started the Flat Classroom® Project. I was in Bangladesh in a 1:1 school with wireless Internet access and with students who were studying the impact of technology on society. In addition Web 2.0 was emerging as a platform for communication and collaboration. The time was ripe to embark on something new that could be scaffolded by the new online technologies and could join students across the globe in meaningful learning experiences. As we joined our classrooms we shared audio introductions, posted images, instant messaged, and connected in real time via Skype. The challenge of working through time zones and cultural differences were often subliminal but omnipresent. Conversations, both synchronous and asynchronous took place during the intense project working time. Like boring a hole right through the center of the earth, students reached out, desperate for connection and confirmation that there was someone else on the other side willing to respond and work with them.
Very early on we saw the concept, power and magic of connecting with others globally and the difference it was making to learning, including stereotypical attitudes and behaviors. Not only did we keep developing new projects but we had a dream to bring students and teachers together face-to-face to cement collaborative relationships and work on action ideas. If the impact of global collaboration was evident in an asynchronous project, we imagined the opportunity for growth if we could get students and teachers working together in the same place at the same time. Our dream came true in Qatar 2009, when the first Flat Classroom Conference changed lives and cast a vision for the future.
Being an international educator, and having a daughter as a ‘third culture kid’ (with educator parents), I selfishly want others around the world to experience what we are privileged to live. I want them to be confronted with different religious and cultural beliefs and be immersed in an environment where English (or their own language) is not spoken and where simple communication can often result in highly creative sign language. I want them to acknowledge and respect differences and learn how to use their personal strengths to create a bond of understanding with new friends. I want them to question, doubt, be amazed, experience alternative lifestyles, treasure similarities, and learn how to get on with other people globally. I want them to be able to do this without losing their own identity and sense of belonging to a country or to a culture, and without feeling superior or inferior to any other person.
Through Flat Classroom® we are building bridges, forging new pedagogies, and questioning current education systems that place value on content above process and individual output and gain rather than on collaboration and community learning for understanding. This book is a part of the bridge and we encourage you to learn from the stories and apply it in your own learning situation. I encourage you to embrace your our own global journey.

As a presentation at the ISTE 2011 Opening Ceremony, June 2011.
The video excerpt:


The images from the presentation as a slideshow:


My annotated presentation slides:

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Across My Desk (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.