Friday, September 15, 2017

Case Study 2.3: Ed Gragert - Global Connections

The Global Educator - Case Study 2.3

Ed Gragert - Global Connections


I am privileged to have been connected with Ed for over 20 years. What I find inspiring about Ed Gragert is that he never stops working towards a better world where global/international competency and intercultural awareness objectives are normal and prevalent across all levels of education. 

When you review his LinkedIn profile you will see the leadership he provided for iEARN (1990-2012) as Executive Director, and then Interim Executive Director 2015-16. As he states, 
"Had the privilege of serving as the Founding Director of iEARN and worked with a fantastic staff to grow the K-12 network from two countries (US and USSR) in 1990 to 140 countries, making it the world's largest online educational network for collaborative project-based learning."
Ed's passion for building communities around collaborative goals is infectious - and it is initially because of him and his influence and encouragement to join iEARN that I am here today able to write with some authority about global education and collaborative learning.

Connect with Ed
Twitter: @egragert

DOWNLOAD the full case study

Ed is featured through The Global Educator for his wisdom and insights. This quote from Ed about global collaboration is one I use often when sharing with other educators.


Recent updates from Ed

In a recent email exchange, Ed shared these updates......
  • I’m exploring the launch of something I’m calling “Virtual Volunteers for Education,” an initiative that seeks to address the power of technology to facilitate one-on-one connections between the large number of educators (retired, current, future) around the world with young people who do not have access to a quality education (due to class size, isolation, gender bias, disability, difficulty with a particular part of the curriculum (“calculus isn’t my thing”), etc.).  I wrote a Huffington Post piece on it at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/ed-gragert  I had a chance to share this idea in a keynote presentation at the July 2017 iEARN Conference in Marrakech, Morocco—and received very positive feedback from educators globally.
  • I’ve been working to internationalize teacher education programs at several universities, using virtual exchanges among faculty and future teachers as a Board member of the GlobalTeacherEducation.org organization.
  • I also have been active on a number of other issues — as reflected on my pieces on Huffington Post (see above). 
  • Finally, a fair amount of my time has been involved in local political organizing and activities here in NE Pennsylvania.  We’ve put together a rather large group working to oppose and reverse the current agenda in Washington, DC. 



This is the tenth post in what will be a 36-week series featuring the 36 case studies from my book, 'The Global Educator: Leveraging Technology for Collaborative Learning and Teaching'. This book was published by the International Society for technology in Education in July 2016. The book contains contributions from over 100 educators and case studies featuring over 50 educators.

Read more about The Global Educator and find out where to purchase the hard copy and eBook/ePub versions. In addition, access other Case Studies in this series.

Julie Lindsay is the author of The Global Educator, and of this blog. 
Connect with Julie
 - Twitter @julielindsay
 - about.me/julielindsay

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