Sunday, December 23, 2012

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

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

Monday, December 17, 2012

Eracsim 12-2 - Debating across the Globe - Live this week!

After two months of hard work, the Eracism 12-2 finals have started. There will be three finals debates, the first debate last week was Bracket C:
3C - THINK Global School (Argentina) Class 2 - Affirmative
2B - Bettendorf Middle School (USA) - Negative
​Judges: Catalina Valenzuela (Lead Judge), Karin Linehan and Leigh Zeitz
Recording
for this debate
Congratulations to the Affirmative team, THINK Global School for being the adjudicated winner of this debate!


 
The Eracism 12-2 finals this year are being held synchronously in the virtual classroom, Blackboard Collaborate. Student teams must be ready to speak, respond and rebut with very little preparation between each speaker. Judges are sent to a breakout room at the conclusion of the debate and have about 5 minutes to deliberate and return with their conclusion and decision about the winning team.




Teacher from Bettendorf, Aaron Maurer, who is also a Flat Classroom Certified teacher (although this is not a requirement for inclusion in the Eracism project) shared a thoughtful blog post after the debate last week. In this he says:
"These two pictures show education at a high level. We have students listening, analyzing, and trying to process new ideas and concepts in real time without much time to finalize as a team. During the short quick breaks they quickly dispersed ideas and had to quickly gather all their ideas, write ideas down and looking for that one loophole that we needed to win. It was remarkable. I sat on the floor with my coffee and just watched it unfold. I try very hard to keep my thoughts and ideas out as this is their debate. I do give them things to ponder, but never give facts or information directly."

Aaron has another team debating this week, this time against a team in China - and you can imagine the logistics behind how we have finally determined a time for teams to debate live, given that China is 14 hours ahead of where Bettendorf is located.

Eracism Project fosters a global debate, it also fosters learning about the world through interaction with others who live in different circumstances and have different ideas and opinions. It also teaches both educators and students how to use the technology available to connect and communicate effectively.

Please join us for the live final debates this week:
Link for the Debate classroom.
TOPIC: "Global management of natural resources will cause more harm than good"

Bracket A
Date and Time of Debate Final: Monday, December 17th, 2012 at 9:00 a.m. EST, 14:00 GMT. Find YOUR DATE and TIME for this event
3A - Quality Schools International Bratislava (SLOVAKIA) - Affirmative
6A - Lounsberry Hollow MS (USA) - Negative
Judges: Karin Linehan (Lead Judge), Catalina Valenzuela, Susan Adams

Bracket B

Date and Time of Debate Final: Wednesday, December 19th, 2012 at 8:30am. EST, 13:30 GMT. Find YOUR DATE and TIME for this event
8B - Bettendorf Middle School (USA) - Affirmative
3B - American International School of Guangzhou (China) Class 4 - Negative
Judges: Leigh Zeitz (Lead Judge), Catalina Valenzuela, Susan Adams and Andrew Csizmadia

Apply for Eracism 13-1 NOW - Involve YOUR students in this global debate next semester! Applications open until February 7, 2013.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

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

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

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

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

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

Flat Classroom Project for Teachers - Concept and Practice

As part of our Flat Classroom Certified Teacher course (FCCT), revamped for this semester, we are asking teachers to actually complete their OWN mini-Flat Classroom Project. We realised that completing our course over 14 weeks, reading our Flattening Classrooms book, completing the Flat Classroom 15 Challenges and connecting and communicating was good....but not enough for educators to REALLY understand what it means to collaborate and co-create.

So, similar to the Flat Classroom Project, see the FCP12-2 current project as well, teachers were put into mixed teams (Friedman flatteners), across different themes (Pink's themes) and collaborated on research to share on a wiki, then created a personal piece of multimedia (based on their topic and theme) and inserted an outsourced clip from another team member.

Here are some examples to see what I mean.

Barb's video - Social Entrepreneurship and PLE's


Jason Graham - also Social Entrepreneurship and PLE's - but quite different to Barb's

Caroline Black talks about Social Entrepreneurship and PLEs
Julie Balen's is about tackling PLEs from the Innovation, Invention and Prediction angle.
Helen CcConaghy The Education of Generation G shares how games and gamification can improve learning.
Lisette Casey shares her insights into Tablets in Education.
Tasha Cowdy - Tablet Computers in Early Childhood Talks about changing how young people communicate with the world through their CLN - Class Learning Network.


Tablet computing in Early Years education from tasha cowdy on Vimeo.

Yvonne Caples share through Transatlantic Journey 3.0  about communication and productivity with a mobile device.

Well done to the FCCT 12-1 cohort! They are also about to do their final presentations to complete the course. These are on their new global project designs. Everyone is welcome to attend as they are part of our Future Learning Action Talks (F.L.A.T.s). The next FLAT is on December 6, please join us online to hear about progressive global project design and ideas to flatten the classroom. You can find all FLATs listed as events on the Flat Classrooms (educators) Ning.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

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

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

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

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

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

Saturday, November 10, 2012

How to attend the Global Education Conference!

The Global Education Conference (GEC) is on for the third consecutive year and is bigger and better than ever. Over 400 presentations, including Keynotes, will be delivered across 5 days, 24 hours of the day. Thanks to Lucy Gray and Steve Hargadon and the many other international advisors, the website is looking good and ready to go. You can access the sessions and schedule in any time zone you need. Volunteers are being called for to help with session moderation and general organisation during the event. Volunteering is an excellent way to meet new people from many different parts of the world.

We encourage you to attend GEC as it is totally free and totally online, and there is ALWAYS something in your timezone when you are free for an hour or two during the day. Help is also needed to promote this further leading into next week, so we encourage you to also spread the word and share any press materials or badges.

Flat Classroom are excited to share with you the MANY presentations scheduled for the Global Education Conference, November 12-16, 2012 (next week!) from our very own Flat Classroom teachers and friends! Here a list of Flat Classroom teachers and Flat Classroom Certified Teachers who are presenting at GEC. Please support them, add their sessions to your calendar. You will learn a lot about Flat Classroom projects across K-12, as well as a lot about other global projects and global collaboration generally.

Not sure how to attend?
An online conference can be daunting - especially one that runs 24 hours a day, 5 days in a row! How do you access this? How do you make the most of this opportunity?
Black board Collaborate is the virtual classroom for presentations during the conference. Make sure you have downloaded the Java app necessary before you want to attend a session. It is easy to do, but if you are opening Blackboard for the first time it may take a few minutes.
Here is a short video to help you learn how to access the tools and be comfortable in this environment.
Thank you to the multimedia students at Middle Bucks Institute for Technology who created this video

This video provides clear instructions on how to participate, how to find the sessions in YOUR time zone and how to access the Blackboard Collaborate rooms.
Thank you to the multimedia students at Middle Bucks Institute for Technology who created this video.

In addition - a SPECIAL invitation for those with students in upper middle and high school. Are you promoting 'leadership'? Do you have students who want to develop leadership skills, who want to share your ideas and meet other students online? Do you have students who want to discuss how positive change can be made in the world and plan with others how to do this? If so we invite you to encourage them to join the Global Student Leadership Forum (the NEW name is Global Think Tank - to be announced at the launch!). Flat Classroom and THINK Global School have joined together to support this student initiative. The launch is during GEC, and we invite you to attend, and your students to attend. All details HERE. Sign up to be sent more information HERE.

Here are some recommendations for sessions to attend, especially for middle and high school teachers,  (don't worry, by Nov 12 each link below will also have the session time and link to the Blackboard Collaborate room to attend). It is impossible to be part of everything...BUT each session will be recorded and you can also access it after the conference!

Don't forget to LIKE the Global Education Facebook page. If you are tweeting this on, please use the #globaled12 hashtag, and follow this tag next week!

Finally, help us to promote the conference through your networks. Promotion via Badges and Press releases.

Have a great Global Education Conference everyone!