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.