Twitter for Beginners in Education | LinkedIn tags: Twitter education socialmedia Handshake from Frederica Academy Gr 1 Students in Gr 1 at Frederica Academy, Georgia USA introduce themselves to partners in the K-2 Building Bridges to Tomorrow, Flat Connections project http://flatconnections.com tags: handshake k-2 education globalcollaboration Organising my Studies with Evernote | Miss Spink on Tech Great blog post by Australian educator who uses Evernote for workflow. tags: evernote education workflow curation information Educator as a Social Networked Learner - YouTube Jackie Gerstein created this short upbeat video about being a professional networked educator tags: connected_learning networkedlearning education That Time When SAMR Gets Us Into Trouble - Drape's Takes tags: samr education technology SAMR Model Explained for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning tags: samr education Collaboration - On the Edge of a New Paradigm. on Vimeo Moving into the age of collaboration tags: viralvideo information knowledgenetworks education collaboration Verbs and Nouns - Marc Prensky "Verbs and Nouns" is a useful concept that Marc offers to help educators better understand the role of technology in education, as well as to help them balance the past and the future in their teaching. tags: marcprensky education Recipe to flatten your classroom simple steps to go global #OZeLIVE Feb2014 - YouTube My presentation from the recent OzeLive online conference tags: jul ozelive conference global education QITE Gold Coast PD Day - Connected Learning - Global Understanding I am keynoting this event on March 22 on the Gold Coast, Australia. Hope to see you there! tags: education conference keynote Jeff Brain on Using Comics and Digital Storytelling to Teach Digital Citizenship | Common Sense Media tags: digitalcitizenship education digitalstorytelling comic commonsensemedia So-Called "Digital Natives" Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows - ReadWrite tags: education media literacy digitalliteracy digitalcitizenship How do inquiry teachers teach? | Inquire Within tags: inquiry education This is how inquiry teachers teach… | Inquire Within tags: inquiry education TES Australia Information Centre for the Australian Curriculum - Resources - TES Australia tags: Australiancurriculum education TuvaLabs | Data Literacy Skills For a Brighter Future tags: data literacy education Personalize Learning: UDL for All Learners tags: udl ubd education Educator as a Social Networked Learner - YouTube Lovely short video by Jackie Gerstein as a primer for connected and networked learning globally. tags: connected_learning network PLN education Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

According to the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011, in that year 57 million children were not in school, having fallen from 60 million in 2008. Children in conflict-affected areas make up 22% of the world's primary school population yet they comprise 50% of the children who are denied an education - and this figure has risen from 42% in 2008. There has been a decline in humanitarian aid in education and refugees often flee to neighbouring developing countries, putting strain on already weak education systems.The EFA report also states, "Governments identified conflict as a major barrier towards getting all children into school when they signed the Dakar Framework for Action in 2000. They recognized that children in conflict- affected countries are robbed of an education not only because schools may be closed and teachers absent, but also because they are exposed to widespread rape and other sexual violence, targeted attacks on schools and other abuses. Mohammed is from Syria and now lives in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and has been there for 8 months. He has been teaching there for 4 months. These are his words about the conditions for schooling in this camp.    "Our main problems are the shortage of text books, we need boards and markers.  There’s a big deal of coordination with foreigners. There are problems as teachers are dealing with children who have become aggressive because of the situation and the parents are not following up with their children in the school. There is a lack of textbooks and stationary. Because the schools are run by the Jordanian Ministry of education the teachers must be Jordanian and the Syrian teachers are only assistants. It would be better if all the teachers were Syrian. All the children in the camp are Syrian. If teachers were Syrian too, we’d be of the same culture, and the children accept the Syrian teachers more than the Jordanian ones. But I praise the Jordanian people for their efforts in the school. The Syrian teachers also have lots of experience in teaching. I was teaching for 12 years in Syria and there are many teachers from Syria who have high qualifications and who are well educated, but they are marginalized in the camp. We should be using their expertise in teaching in the camp. Save the Children had a recruitment for schools and I applied for the job four months ago and they hired me because of my experience and because I have my own university degree and have been teaching for 12 years. I passed the test with full marks. I teach in school number 3 where there are two schools in one. A primary and secondary combined. Girls in the morning, boys in the afternoon. 800 students in primary from 1st to 4th grade and 400 students in secondary school from 5th - 11thgrade. The school doesn’t look like a school. I want a yard where children can play. We want our school to look like other schools. The principal is Jordanian. I want to do something better in the school, to have my name officially in the school because I am Syrian like the students. There are 25-40 in each class at my school, school 2. In school 1, there are from 80-120 in classes because of its location in the camp, it’s in one is in the most densely populated area. This is why there are so many students. And it’s in the oldest area of Zaatari, which is a massive, massive place. It takes a couple of hours to walk across the camp. All children are welcome to register for school and are encouraged through the ‘Back to School’ campaign with Save the Children. We go to their caravans and tents and ask if there are students out of school. We called their parents and encouraged them to register in the school. The majority of children in the camp are in school though. There are 50,000 children in the camp in total. Half of them are school aged children and 20,000 are currently registered with a school. Some have missed up to three school years. It’s important they are enrolled into school. We are engaging with the students through the curriculum, but we still need support for that. We have a plan for the whole school year. We have to use the Jordanian curriculum and it can be hard for the new students. There’s not a big difference between the two curriculums, as the last version of the Syrian curriculum was similar to the Jordanian one. The problem is not for us as teachers, the problem is for the children as the learning style is very different. In Syria we start with letters and then give the words, in Jordan they give the words first and then the letters. We have received training how to teach the Jordanian curriculum. UNICEF also gave us a course on how to be a good teacher. They are training other teachers at the end of March. It’s a good course. Every day the World Food Program distributes high nutrient biscuits to the school for the children and the teachers help hand them out. Education is very important for children here. We are as Syrian teachers, role models for our students and try all the time to support them and give them attention because sometimes they drop out and we encourage them to stay at school. We have extra lessons for the children and their parents about ethics and morals in order not to be bad people because of the situation. Some of the children are still scared of school because they saw their schools being destroyed because of bombing and think the schools are like those in Syria. Some of them don’t come because they think they are not certified in Jordan but this is not true, they can all come. Some refuse to take the Jordanian curriculum and want their own Syrian curriculum. Sometimes some students don’t come to school because it’s very far away from their tent or caravan and are afraid to be targeted by the bad boys in the street. Because I teach boys some of them are waiting for job to get money because they are very poor here and they want to help their families. They want to continue their education to be in the university in the future but I think they are not accepted in Jordanian universities but I am not sure. The younger ones are wanting to go to school because they love school. In Syria now, some students are still going to school in the safe places but not all the towns are safe. But other schools like my old school is completely destroyed and nobody can go to school. Through the crisis if it’s safe the children can go but if it’s not safe, if there are shootings and bombings around the school they couldn’t go. Some of the schools were occupied by some of the fighting groups. I kept going to school to release the tensions and to support the families there but many children didn’t come because of fear. To help the children we try to tell them that we must go on and all the time give them hope for the future. I got no support from anyone to carry on my teaching in that situation. There were no organizations there. The teachers are there for the students but the majority don’t come as it’s not safe for them to reach the school and the number of students are very little, that’s why you can’t call it an education process. I was teaching in my school until it was completely destroyed, then I move to another school. Once all schools in the area had been completely destroyed, then I left and came to Zaatari. The majority of teachers left Syria to come to Zaatari, but some have stayed doing humanitarian work for families there. And some keep teaching the students in villages. My school was attacked at night time so neither the students nor teachers were there. They bombed the whole village that time and they destroyed the school because it was in the area. Once they stopped paying me my salary in Syria, it was very hard for me. We had to look for bread and everything. We had to start working as volunteers to help families. Because the situation became so bad with the bombing and shooting, we advised everyone to leave and then we left after them. When my salary ran out, my main work was to collect wheat for the families and to send it to the men to make flour so they could make their own bread. I wanted to try to help and support all the people in my village. I have six boys.  They were attending school but they left Syria one year before me but I was able to keep constant contact with my family.  My boys were from 2nd to the 10th grade.  They all go to school again now. Now I get some support. We receive items and can buy items with coupons. And Save the Children pay us 10 Jordanian pounds a day. Syrians aren’t legally allowed to work in Jordan so we work on a voluntary basis so we receive a stipend. It’s not a salary to live on. We don’t pay for rent, and children don’t pay for school and we have food rations. The coupons give us the basic food and to buy other things for the family. On a typical day here, in the morning I get the bread for my family. I wake up at 5.30am. I spend some time with my family. The school start at 11.30am. It ends at 4 pm. There’s a break when I go home for a rest. Then I go to the street and talk to the families about their needs because we want to take the messages from the street, and to hear about their issues. At night I prepare the coming lessons for students. It takes two hours for me every night. Then I spend some time with my family. I advise other teachers arriving to teach like me to be honest. They are dealing with special cases who faced many bad experiences in the crisis and saw many bad things and bad pictures with their own eyes. They have to consider the situation when they teach their children at school. I wish that people keep supporting us here in the camp. The support by organisations like UNICEF and Save the Children in the camp is going very well but we still need more support. I hope we get back to Syria and if it lasts longer than I expect, I hope the standard of the school get better here so that it’s good for our children."All photos credited to Alaa MalhasThis blog post is a contribution to Week 3 of #TeacherTuesday, a UNESCO and EFA initiative. I invite you to also read from my blog:  Week 3: Afghanistan: An issue of Gender Equity the World Should Take NoticeWeek 2 - Honduras: Teach Students in the Language of their thoughtsWeek 1 - Malawi: The Struggle for Literacy#TeacherTuesday - background information "Find out more about theTeacherTuesday campaign: read the blogs and join us for weekly tweetchats with the teachers".  Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Thinkuknow - home Come in to find the latest information on the sites you like to visit, mobiles and new technology. Find out what’s good, what’s not and what you can do about it. If you look after young people there’s an area for you too - with resources you can use in the classroom or at home. Most importantly, there’s also a place which anyone can use to report if they feel uncomfortable or worried about someone they are chatting to online. All the information here is brought to you by the team at the NCA's CEOP Command. We hope you like it! tags: digitalcitizenship education 8 Differences Between Traditional and Collaborative Leaders tags: leadership innovation education ASB Online Academy: Connected learning for global understanding The next 6-week online course for 'Connected learning for global understanding' starts April 14. Register now! tags: jul onlinelearning education globalunderstanding connected_learning Free Technology for Teachers: Free Collaborative Video Creation with iPads tags: ipad collaboration video co-creation education Connectivism A 3-min overview of what and how to do with connectivism. Very accessible as a starting point to understanding this learning theory. tags: connectivism education viralvideo youtube Empowering Innovators on Vimeo A series of videos looking at innovation using technology. The first video includes the use of 3D printing. Great visuals and explanations. tags: education innovation 3dprinting technology Friend Our World Children on a United Nations Peace Mission | Friend Our WorldFriend Our World tags: unitednations education peace student Decoding millennial mystery tags: millenial education geny Stormboard - Online Brainstorming and Planning. Add a sticky note and post it online with dot voting. tags: education collaboration GCC - Global Competence Certificate Program tags: globalcompetence education Why 'World Savvy' Education Will Better Prepare Students And Make The U.S. More Competitive tags: globalcompetence education globalawareness Finnish Education Chief: 'We Created a School System Based on Equality' - Christine Gross-Loh - The Atlantic tags: Finland education From lecture halls to laptops: how do we like to learn? - interactive | Education | theguardian.com Interesting survey of 2000 teachers in the UK about their experiences of higher education and their attitudes to online study. tags: survey research infographic education BBC - Culture - Reading the world in 196 books This is a wonderful story! tags: education reading global books globalcompetence Design Thinking: Tools to help make thinking visible \ The Lab tags: designthinking visiblethinking education How To Download All Your Personal Data From Facebook Important to know when managing online spaces and places. This could also be a good activity for students to check what they actually have up on Facebook. tags: digitalcitizenship Facebook education socialmedia Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

The #TeacherTuesday focus this week is on Kenya.The UNESCO Education For All Report shares details about how poverty is a key factor in education - and in fact whether primary school children learn the basics. So, this may be obvious and a redundant statement, but readers of this blog are encouraged to learn more through this diagram that shows the impact of poverty on children of primary school age. Note especially that this age range for completion of primary school is 14-18, significantly older than in more developed countries. This chart shows Grade 8 students across both poor and wealthy countries.Review also the statistics from a few years ago about the impact of poverty on girls in developing countries, including Kenya. Kenyan teacher: MargaretLet's take a closer look at Kenya, through the eyes of teacher Margaret, who teaches in a school in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa. The following is in Margaret's words from a recent interview transcript. "A normal size classroom is 20 foot by 25 foot, with dual desks where 3 or 4 children sit. They children are big so they have to squeeze on the desk. There are around 85 children in each class and we put them in groups of 9-12, quite large. It takes a long time to reach them all and look at their books if you spend 5 minutes on each child. We have children of all abilities. We are quite supportive and responsive to the needs of children..... We get to about 80% of the children. Around 60% or 70% of the children in my school can read and write when they leave school. The children share books, 1 to 3 children per book. The government sends the books but they get destroyed in their bags and sometimes the children sell their books at 50 to 100 shillings to buy food in the slum. 100 shillings, it’s about US$1.5. They sell them for their own food because they’re not getting enough at home. They get food at lunch at school but they sell their books to get their supper. The government policy says that children are admitted to the school anytime they come. Children go out campaigning to get other children to come to school. We don’t turn away any child. The leaders, the chief, government officials will look for children in the slum to bring them to school, especially those who have special needs. And the local leaders around here try to bring the children to school too. It’s not mandatory to have uniforms. So it’s free to come to school. The uniforms help give the school an identity, so you know where the children are from and where they go to school. There is a poverty line between rich and poor. A child whose parents are working means the child is fed, they are literate, they are able to follow up on their child’s education and learning. Whereas the parents at the school where I teach, particularly since the government introduced free education, it was like the government took the burden off their shoulders and started caring for their children. They believe the government should give everything for the child’s education and they don’t need to do anything extra.The feeding programme very much increases the children’s concentration. The children love the food and that’s what keeps them in school. If there’s no food, about 50% don’t come to school. It began in 2004 or 2005. Now we have feeding programmes, the literacy levels have gone up. We also try to help some of the poor students to get scholarships and sponsors. It means 60-70% go to high school in comparison to about 20% before because of this and the feeding programme that means the children are in school all the time. They see doors open up if they finish school. One of the reasons some of the students who live in poverty aren’t learning is because their parents did not learn. The slum is made up of parents who are illiterate. In the slum community I think the literate make up maybe 20%. There are 80% who did not go to school or if they did they did not have a very good education. They don’t see the value of education so they don’t follow up. There’s the conflict between the urban setting, the domestic violence, the urban poverty. Some children stay at home and are sick. They are used to the hard life. There are those who are doing odd jobs at home - carrying water for people, going looking for papers to sell - doing odd jobs in the slum over the weekend, fending for themselves.I have so many memorable students. Oh my goodness! There is a very big number of children who have done well. I’m so excited about all the children in my head! That is my joy. I have one called Denis. We actually did what is called collective learning. He came to school and we had to move him to class 5, then to 6 and then to 7 and then we took him to class 8 and he did very well and he’s now in the university. He came from the slum. The teachers had to contribute for his university fees. I’m telling you the teachers are lovely here. We do contribute if we can’t find sponsors who can help them. There are those who come back from the university to help us mark the books, and we use them as role models. Teaching of languages is difficult when teaching the beginner. Swahili is the teaching language for grades 1-3, then we introduce English. But some in middle class did not come to class 1. So there are children who don’t know how to read at all. There are those who have stayed home for 2-3 years and then coming back to school. Other schools around refuse them, but we’ll take any child who comes. Any child who comes to school is admitted. There is a big difference between rural and urban school because they’re not densely populated. The way we do things in urban areas is different. In rural areas teacher to student ratio is 1-40, here is 1-70/100. I came to this school on promotion in 2003. I was ready to become a senior teacher. I was promoted to become a deputy. I love slum children. All my life I’ve taught in the slum. I’m very comfortable in the slum! I grew up in a setting almost like slum. I normally give myself to them as an example. When you come from a slum, because my father was very poor, I know what it means to be sleeping hungry, struggling with education. My siblings and I have all succeeded because of education. Most of the teachers don’t come from good backgrounds. Most of us grew up in villages but in poverty. It was our ambition that with school you can better yourself because that is how we became teachers, so we tell them that everything is possible with an education. I wake up at 4am, I get the bus in the morning and travel for 2 hours to my school. I have my regular duties to perform. I’m a class teacher of grade 6 with 85 children in a class. It starts at 8am, but we normally come early to mark the books. I also take care of the feeding programme so have to measure the food for the day. I have to mark my work. It’s normally a packed day. Today when you called I was issuing text books to all the different children. There is a lot of counting to be done and a lot of different activities. We end at 3.10pm and then the children have prep until 5pm. Between 6 and 7pm we give an extra hour to some children that can’t do their homework at home because there’s no electricity or space at home. I leave at around 6.30pm. We have to make sure that we clear the compound. Sometimes leave at 7pm. Imagine!  But when I’m doing it I don’t mind. We work for the children. Five days a week. We use phonetics, and ‘look and say’ methods, using pictures. We teach the syllabus. ‘Look and say’ methods with real objects and cards. The government sends money for exercise books. But the books get filled up before the government can give more so the parents chip in. If they can’t chip in, it’s a challenge. We have identified those who are extremely poor. When they run out, we order extra for them and give them books. We provide sanitary for the girls because the school population is poor and because we want girls to come. Because of their maturity, the government gives sanitary towels every month. But sometimes their parents and older siblings take them from them.  There are now even higher numbers of girls than boys in my school! We’re very happy about it. We are 20 female teachers and only 7 male teachers. Even the male teachers take care of the girls! More female teachers is normal in urban areas because females stay with their spouses in the cities. The males are the ones who talk with the boys, and the females with the girls and then we put them together. Female teachers supportive to boys and vice versa. There are teacher training colleges - 60,000 shillings for a 3 year course. We have in service courses, workshops and seminars, on new trends in education. The training takes place during school hours - 3 week workshops - and then others take place in the holidays. We don’t close the school when we go for training, we rotate training. There is no training for how to teach in slum schools! We’re given training to teach anywhere where there are children - not even in a school! Even if there is no school but there are children, you teach under a tree! I’m supposed to supervise other teachers in their class, but I can’t do that as I have nooooo time but we give an induction to new teachers. I tell them to be responsive to slum children and supportive them and love them the way they are. If nothing else, this child is lucky. Because they’re dirty doesn’t mean they can’t learn! If you can make the child clean in the compound do it, if not, don’t’. Sometimes the parent s come to the school drunk, so what do you do? We try to talk to the parents. We call them individually. Very few of them actually come to the school. Class control depends on individual teachers. We try to advise new teachers on how to handle large classes. To put the children in groups so that they learn from each other.  There is a persistent shortage of teachers. The government has its own way of doing things, but we are getting forgotten by policies. I am praying the government trains more teachers so we break the large classes into small classes of 50 so we produce the best children from the slum. So the numbers are manageable. I am praying the government can support us because we cannot teach our own children. There are some schools with more teachers in other parts of the towns. In the slums we have less teachers In Kenya you are sent to wherever you are supposed to teach. According to the policy, we are trained to teach anywhere where there are children. We have never known why there are less teachers in the slums. We have never known what happens. We have tried to get teachers for a long time but we don’t get. We have about 5 schools around the slums and shortage of teachers all through.I am a mother of four. Three boys and one girl. My kids are big now. My biggest, my girl, is now working in the USA, the second is a soldier in the defence forces, the third is in college and the last is in high school, form 2, in the western part of Kenya. Apparently they didn’t want to become teachers (laughs). I shall be the last teacher in the family! I carry my bag, this work it keeps you busy, no, but it’s what I love. All my siblings are teachers by the way. We are four. And my grandfather was also a teacher! My parents really encouraged me to become a teacher. Because it is teachers - you know we were so poor - and we got a lot of help from teachers. It was the teachers who brought us up. We were surrounded by teachers 90% of the time who were helping and helping so that’s how we grew up, with their help. Help with reading, my first shoes I was given by my class teacher to go to class 1. I remember a teacher telling us one time that we should never complain about hunger or poverty because that would stop us from getting an education. If we don’t have food today, we go to school and we get that food in abundance in the future. There is a very big difference between then and now. At that time few girls were in school. When I did primary, out of 28 students, we were only 4 girls. Dropout rates were very high, and of girls even higher."This blog post is a contribution to Week 5 of #TeacherTuesday, a UNESCO and EFA initiative. I invite you to also read from my blog: Week 4 - Syria: Displaced learners in Zaatari refugee campWeek 3 - Afghanistan: An issue of Gender Equity the World Should Take NoticeWeek 2 - Honduras: Teach Students in the Language of their thoughtsWeek 1 - Malawi: The Struggle for Literacy#TeacherTuesday - background information "Find out more about theTeacherTuesday campaign: read the blogs and join us for weekly tweetchats with the teachers". Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

What are you doing in June? Do any of these apply to you as an educator? I am looking for inspiring professional development to participate in that will inform my teaching and learning next yearI really want to know what this 'global collaboration' is all about! My school is talking about the need to build global competency and make authentic working connections with other schools, but I have little idea of where to start!I want to know how to become a connected educator using Web 2.0 tools and how to connect my students as wellI am attending ISTE 2014 and if I come in a couple of days earlier this will link in nicelyI really want to attend an action-based workshop and construct new ideas with other educators and build a learning experience for my students!I have been reading 'Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to global collaboration one step at a time' and want to learn more from the author! I have tried to take my class/school/district global but need to know more about connecting and collaboration - and I need to join a vibrant community that is already doing this!I am excited to be connected to Alan Preis, IT Director at the Atlanta International School, Georgia, USA as well as Chair of the ECIS IT Committee. AIS will host for the Flat Connections Workshop 2014: Connect, Collaborate, Go Global in Atlanta and we are looking forward to welcoming educators and education leaders to this 2-day event, June 25-26.Read details via this smore - embedded below as well. Put this on your calendar now!Questions? Please email admin@flatconnections.com Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

#satchatoc 29 March 2014 (with images, tweets) · mrsholly · Storify An energising tweet meet where I was the invited guest - talking about global learning, collaboration and how we can change the teaching paradigm tags: education Twitter PLN PLC flatconnections jul Best content in The Global Education Conference Network | Diigo - Groups tags: education globalcollaboration globaleducation Global Collaboration Projects that Go Way Beyond Skype -- THE Journal Delighted to see this article in THE Journal about global collaboration, including Flat Connections projects. hats off to Theresa Allen and Avylon Magarey for also sharing their ideas and practices as they join classrooms around the world. tags: jul flatconnections globalcollaboration education digitalcitizenship Starting Something That Matters - GSES 2014 | Findings tags: gses social_entrepreneurship education Online courses - Free Google courses tags: education Google free online Digital Technologies: Implementing the Australian Curriculum Learning Area - Course A free open online course for primary school teachers to help prepare them for the implementation of the new digital technologies curriculum in Australia which will have compulsory computational thinking & coding from K-8. Started March 24. Register to join. tags: Australiancurriculum digital_technologies education digitalcitizenship Ross Learning System on Vimeo Interesting approach to an interdisciplinary and spiral-based curriculum centred around cultural history tags: education interdisciplinary curriculum The International Foundation for Information Technology IF4IT tags: Informationtechnology education Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

The #TeacherTuesday teacher this week is Cees from the Netherlands. This country has some of the best learning outcomes in the world.Learning outcomes vary widely between countries. The following is excerpts from a chart showing the percentage of children of primary school age who reached Grade 4  and achieved minimum learning standard in reading. SOURCE: 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report: Teaching and Learning — Achieving quality for all. Paris, UNESCO. Figure 4.2, page 193. © UNESCO www.efareport.unesco.orgThis first image shows Sub-Saharan Africa and South/West Asia. Note the scale at the top.This image shows Netherlands as leading the way in the N.America/W. Europe set of countries, and with Singapore leading in the East Asia/ Pacific countries listed.  Cees works at a secondary school called Spinozalyceum Amsterdam for 12-18 year olds. It’s a general high school in the Netherlands. The school class size averages 26 and there are 1100 students. Cees teaches history. The following excerpts are from an interview with Cees about teaching and learning at his school.Talking about the teaching profession and becoming a teacher in the Netherlands:Teaching was not seen as a good profession but right now there’s a lot of attention in politics to say let’s improve the level and appreciation for it.  If I compare myself as an academic teacher who studied for five years with another master after that, then the starting level of pay is quite low, but after about ten years then it becomes more acceptable, but it takes a long time to get on a certain level on which you are comparable to other salaries, and people who have marketing jobs, for example, earn a lot better. There are some school subjects in which a lot of people will try to get jobs as teachers but there are also real shortages in certain subjects. Economy teachers and German teachers and certain other language teachers are hard to find. For history there are a lot teachers. We have a professional education for teacher, if you want to teach in the Netherlands you need to get your papers. Those teacher educations are loose, I guess, so it doesn’t mean that everyone who’s teaching has the right papers because of the shortages in the offer of teachers, you get a certain license but it’s always, well, the school need to show to the inspection that they have good quality. So you have to do your best to get certified teachers as a school. We have first grade and second grade teachers in Holland. First grade need academic qualification at first. That means I was studying history for five years. After that I am a historian. I’m not a teacher. Becoming a teacher you then need to do a full time year of study and then you learn a bit the basics of teaching history.  Right now you have a master in history and then you need a teaching history master. That’s first grade. If you want to be second grade teacher that means you can’t teach the higher grades. We have pupils who are 12-13-14 years, but those who are 15-16-16, you can only teach the younger kids, so not of the preparing final exam class. You can always become a first grade teacher by doing extra lessons, but you must already have a lot of interpersonal and pedagogical competence. When asked about professional development: We have a certain amount of teaching hours and all the coming tasks from that - preparing and the after work - and from 5-10% of your time is reserved for professional development every year - courses and training. 10% is a big amount. It’s much time. Everyone has to write a professional development plan and in that plan you have your growing points - your developing points - and we do this every year after we speak to our boss who does our analysis. You then you do the courses you need. We don’t have a huge budget, we have 500 euros a year, which isn’t much, but we do the courses in-house with, for example, ten teachers at a time so you get a discount. We have also a lot of training in how to go along with problem kids - pedagogical side - and those trainings are really moving because they tell a lot about your own personal difficulties. That’s another that passes on the educational system in Holland. Lots of 360° reflections on yourself in Holland. Thinking about what does this problem I have say about me. I found this quite interesting - student evaluation of teachers! This is not so common in my experience around the world: One other reason for why we are able to improve ourselves as teachers is the pupil enquiry lists in which pupils give their opinion about you and your lessons. It's a very confronting way and big motivation to improve yourself. You want satisfied pupils! Of course these test are input for the evaluation with your boss about functioning properly.Pedagogy and student centred learning: I am teaching at a school where it is very student focused. Students are the masters of their own learning process. You teach them how to cooperate, how to be self-supporting, and to make their own decisions how to learn things. In our professional courses, we create those lessons with lesson forms. We know how to deal with all the learning styles - the doers, the thinkers, the dreamers - we have training in how to manage the different levels in our class - it’s called teaching on demand. It means we have different cognitive intelligence in our classroom. Simply said, we have smarter and less smarter pupils on our class. You design choice in your lesson programs for the disadvantaged students. So the more you focus on the pupil with your learning activities, the more different choices they have. If they have a choice in which to start first, and what to learn later, and what they have to work on themselves, and what is a common activity, it motivates them to learn.  The typical school day: My typical day starts as I arrive at school at 7.50am and the lessons start at 8.30am. In the first hour, pupils are a bit quiet because you need to wake them up still. Most of the time the first two hours are really nice to teach because they’re still rested and attentive to your lessons. The more the day is over, the more knowledge they have and less attention. At my school the students are really social, really paying attention to each other. We do a lot of group activities. Every day in the middle hour they have one hour to decide what to do - it’s called the Delton hour - a free hour when they put themselves on the list to say what courses they want to do - maths, French, German or history, and then they work for themselves, but they can ask us for extra help. We can also invite certain pupils who need extra attention. Then we have the big power break when the kids eat their sandwiches - typically Dutch we don’t have the warm lunch!  - Holland is a typical sandwich culture and I don’t mean the nice sandwich with egg and butter, it’s more likely bread with a slice of cheese!  Then the last two hours are difficult to get their attention. It means we have to have more creative classes but it’s not always easy to get their attention. We finish on average at 3pm or 4pm.  Thoughts about teacher collaboration beyond the immediate school - and on technology integration as a bridge for better learning: I guess that if we cooperate more between the teachers nationally - maybe if the ones who are writing the school books are aiming more on how we can create more active lessons that will help a lot more. When you find a really different lesson plan on the internet you wish you could find more. It needs to be written out, you can’t tell someone in one minute, how and why you can do a lesson. But the current method doesn’t offer that. We need more learning activities and programs. Teachpitch.com is a good example of a tool we use to professionalize ourselves by sharing knowledge with other teachers in the world by the internet.  My hopes for the future of teaching in my country? I am really hopeful about technology helping us to improve the organization that is needed to implement student-centered learning. Last Friday we had a mind-blowing presentation of the Dutch educational entrepreneur Bob Hofman that introduced Peerscholar (invented and used by the University of Toronto) to Europe. This computer program is a very good example of how teachers will be able to help students really reflect on each other’s work, and which will improve their responsibility to their own learning process. Less focus on grades and more on the content and the reflection of how they are learning. This blog post is a contribution to Week 6 of #TeacherTuesday, a UNESCO and EFA initiative. I invite you to also read from my blog: Week 5 - Kenya: Working to break the poverty-education cycleWeek 4 - Syria: Displaced learners in Zaatari refugee campWeek 3 - Afghanistan: An issue of Gender Equity the World Should Take NoticeWeek 2 - Honduras: Teach Students in the Language of their thoughtsWeek 1 - Malawi: The Struggle for Literacy#TeacherTuesday - background information "Find out more about theTeacherTuesday campaign: read the blogs and join us for weekly tweetchats with the teachers". Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom tags: connected_learning education 9 Simple Steps To Create A Good Presentation Using Google Drive ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning tags: Google presentation education BrainPOP Jr. | Internet Safety Good video for Primary school level with clear messages on how to be safe online tags: digitalcitizenship education Escape your search engine Filter Bubble! From @duckduckgo tags: filter curation searchengine education Search DuckDuckGo "The search engine that doesn't track you" tags: education searchengine research Make your digital resources easier to discover | Jisc tags: curation search education socialmedia tutorial Hashtify beta tags: hashtag twitter education Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Online Tools for Creating Charts & Diagrams tags: online education charts collaboration Free Technology for Teachers: Collaboratively Create Multimedia Documents With Lucidpress Lucidpress looks like an excellent tool to collaboratively create an eBook - this is what we have been looking for to complete the Flat Connections Global Project. tags: ebook collaboration education multimedia Andy Carvin: First Look Media’s Andy Carvin: Be a Journalist First, Brand Second | Mediashift | PBS - newsle Andy says, "The most important currency in social media is generosity. Be generous with your knowledge, your skills, your time, and people will eventually become generous with you as well. And you have to be open to admitting what you know and what you don’t know - exposing some of your vulnerabilities. That’s how you’ll build trust and a community over time." tags: socialmedia Twitter education journalism Class Charts - seating plans and behavior management software tags: education Lincoln IB Middle School Skype an Author Students Skype with the author of a book they read and interact over the topic of writing and how to become an author. tags: fcge14-1 globalcollaboration education Skype Learn What the True Meaning of Kaizen is - YouTube Kai = change, Zen = good The process of ongoing improvement tags: kaizen education celebration 14 Little-Known Ways Students Can Get More Out Of Google - Edudemic tags: google education infographic Creating An iPad Workflow For Teachers, Students, And Parents tags: ipad education workflow How to Infuse Digital Literacy Throughout the Curriculum Evaluating content and engaging online.....and more.....are all part of being digitally literate..read more tags: digitalcitizenship education digitalliteracy Vialogues : Report on South Africa's Struggling Education tags: education southafrica Be a Digital Citizen - YouTube I like this - a clever short video reminding us of essential digital citizenship concepts and practices. Raises a question about image citation - one of my Flat Classroom images was used - final citation screen (if that is what it is) is unreadable. Hmmmm tags: digitalcitizenship education video viralvideo Teachspace - Home This site has been developed to celebrate and share the amazing projects and activities the students and staff are creating every day using technology at ACS Hillingdon International School. The highlight of the site is the showcase area where students share their created projects. tags: creativity technology education I Need a Bigger Screen - 100 iPad Video Wall on Vimeo What can an advanced technology group, a robotic dog, a heap of iPads and a creative spirit produce? tags: viralvideo ipad fun education Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

The theme for #TeacherTuesday this week of technology and access to learning is dear to my heart and my work from the past 20 years. Also, having lived in Bangladesh for four years, 2003-2007, I have great empathy with the teacher this week as I have seen and interacted with and lived with the wonderful people of Bangladesh who have a resilience, an amazing intellect and joy for life. The teacher interviewed is Mosammat Reba Khatun. She is 40 years old and lives in a small riverside village in Bangladesh. She completed 10 years of schooling, is a single mother and lives with her parents. Much of the text below is in Mosammat's own words, (indicated by a different font). I teach on Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha’s solar-powered floating school and I have been teaching there for the last 10 years. The school is located on the Gumani river in the Pabna district in northwest Bangladesh. Our floating school works in the remote river basin where there is no education option, particularly during the monsoon season. It collects children from their homes, teaches them on board and returns them at the end of the session. Then the school-boat moves onto the next village. The school offers three shifts per day and reaches a total of 90 students.It runs from January to December. Our school has a classroom for 30 students and internet-linked computers and electronic resources.  Our floating school provides education up to grade IV. Students are 6 to 9 years old. The students that get good exam results receive the SuryaHurricane solar lantern (a low-cost solar lantern made from recycled parts of the conventional and much-used kerosene lantern) as scholarships. Parents also receive on-board trainings on human rights, nutrition, health & hygiene, sustainable farming, and climate change adaptations.I teach students in grade II. My students are 7-8 years old and they study Bengali, Maths, English, and learn drawing and there are 30 students in our class. 67 percent of the student are female.We need the floating school because in the monsoon season (late June to October), one third of Bangladesh goes underwater. Boats are the only means of communication in the flood-prone areas. It makes it very difficult to access basic services. Roads to schools get flooded and children cannot go to land-based schools. Therefore the floating school is the only education option here - it travels to students and provide education at the doorsteps.   The school-boat is specially designed by architect Mohammed Rezwan (founder of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha) to adjust to any equipment configuration as well as to protect the electronic equipment from heavy monsoon. The boat is outfitted with a multi-layered waterproof roof. It is built with local materials, traditional knowledge and labour.Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha was a 2012 WISE Award winner (World Innovation Summit in Education, Qatar). I was there at WISE that year when Mohammed Rezwan accepted this award. You can find many more details, including videos, about the solar-powered floating schools on the WISE website. There is also an interesting live chat archive and an interview transcript with Mr Rezwan. The floating school ensures access to education and information in the monsoon season. It encourages parents to send their girls to schools and pushes for female enrolment. The trained parents grow new crops that ensure foods and year-round income. The rate of early marriage is reduced. This floating school is the combination of a school bus and schoolhouse. I am teaching our students at our doorsteps. It saves time for the working children and me.  There is an overwhelming need for floating schools in the flood-prone communities. About 20 percent of each village population is school age therefore many parents want their children to get enrolled in the floating school. They always request for the enrolment of their children.A lot has changed in the last 10 years. To begin with there were not any computers or solar powered system on the boat. Considering the need, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha gradually introduced the computer and internet, then the solar system. When we found the surplus solar energy on the boat, the organization introduced the solar lantern. The design of the boat was changed during the past years. Technology is very important to us as we use Internet linked computers at school. We use cellular data network for Internet connectivity. Children learn computer skills and watch educational shows. It encourages children and helps to learn more. Computers in the classroom have encouraged the students to learn the new technology, watch the educational shows, learn how to draw pictures and visit the online educational websites. I think technology makes learning easier for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. For example because the students often live in such remote areas that are often off the [power] grid we have started the lantern scheme to enable children to do their homework in the evenings. Only 5 students in each class have received a SuryaHurricane solar lantern as scholarships so far, but most of the houses want the SuryaHurricane solar lantern. There is a real growing demand of renewable energy and communication technology in Bangladesh.In the UNESCO publication of 'Curriculum and assessment strategies that improve learning', 'Deploying technology to reduce disparities' section, it states: "Digital classrooms can enhance learning and bridge knowledge and skills gaps among less qualified teachers." and "Innovation in the use of technology can help improve learning by enriching teachers’ curriculum delivery and encouraging flexibility in pupil learning. Greater access to computers in schools helps reduce the digital divide between low and high income groups. However, new technology is not a substitute for good teaching." and "In poorer countries, the availability of ICT infrastructure remains a crucial consideration. Many countries cannot yet support widespread computer-assisted learning because schools lack internet access or, in some cases, even electricity supply. But, given the investment required by poorer countries to ensure that all schools have electricity supply or internet access, the use of ICT is unlikely to be as cost-effective as spending more on teachers to reduce class sizes. Teachers remain central to curriculum delivery, particularly for low achievers needing additional support."It seems to me the floating solar-powered boat model brings technology to the classroom by providing essential infrastructure at a workable cost. The next step is to focus on the design of interactive software and how that supports learning within and beyond the indigenous culture. The teaching can be very challenging, as we are working with children from landless, extremely poor families vulnerable to natural disasters. Their parents mostly work as day laborers and have irregular family income. The condition of the houses is poor. The children under age 5 are malnourished and infant mortality rate is high. Girls are not allowed to move around freely. Many parents are reluctant to let girls go to school but we meet with the parents monthly to encourage them to send their children to school regularly so as to ensure good attendance and low drop out numbers.  Our school curriculum is student focused, interactive, interesting and designed to be fun for children. Our class size is limited to 30 students which allows for teacher and student bonding. Our students are involved in reciting rhyme and poem, singing, story-telling, reading and discussion on books from the library, drawing pictures on paper, writing poems, etc. These are the ways the children are encouraged to express their creativity and learn more. Students are also encouraged to participate and work in groups. Generally the children find it easy learning how to read and write at our school. All teachers attend a two-week long orientation training at the beginning of their work here. The training covers the project overview, floating school, curriculum, parents meeting and reporting guidelines. Also, there are day-long refresher training sessions every month. They cover next month’s syllabus and teaching guidelines, parents meeting agenda and extracurricular activities. At the monthly training, we discuss also about the school performance during the previous month, challenges, and required educational materials (we receive primary textbooks - grade 2 to 4 - from Upazila Education Offices of the Bangladesh Government). We also share feedback received from the parents. I start the day very early in the morning. I cook food for my daughter and me. Then I teach on the floating school. I work 4 hours each day for teaching and lesson planning/marking. My classes finish at lunchtime. After returning home, I work as a tailor. In the evening, I travel through our village to meet the students and their families.  The school can help the whole family - Muhammad Sagar Hossain (7 years) is a student of grade II on the floating school. His father Muhammad Altaf Hossain is a day labourer, who seasonally migrates to town in search for work. His mother Ms. Munira Begum looks after the family and works in their homestead garden. She received agriculture training on Shidhulai’s floating training centre, and now practices sustainable farming. Sagar’s older sister Mosammat Munni Khatun also studied on the floating school. He wants to be a floating schoolteacher to teach his villagers. I hope for the future the importance of creating access to schools for thousands of children living in the flood-prone areas of the country is recognised. In the flood-prone regions the roads to school get flooded and some schools go under floodwater and children therefore cannot go to school in the monsoon season. It is the main reason for school drop outs in rural Bangladesh. I think the government, its development partners, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha and other NGOs should work together to bring more floating schools across the country. I decided to become a teacher because I love children and wanted to help them towards developing a better future. I believe our teaching inspires them, it always remains in their heart and becomes a part of their life. I think teaching is a gift of a lifetime. It has given me immense opportunity to give back to my community, help poor students to access to school, and impart positively on children. This blog post is a contribution to Week 7 of #TeacherTuesday, a UNESCO and EFA initiative. I invite you to also read from my blog: Week 6 - The Netherlands: Teacher preparation means higher learning outcomesWeek 5 - Kenya: Working to break the poverty-education cycleWeek 4 - Syria: Displaced learners in Zaatari refugee campWeek 3 - Afghanistan: An issue of Gender Equity the World Should Take NoticeWeek 2 - Honduras: Teach Students in the Language of their thoughtsWeek 1 - Malawi: The Struggle for Literacy#TeacherTuesday - background information "Find out more about theTeacherTuesday campaign: read the blogs and join us for weekly tweetchats with the teachers". Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Search Education - Google tags: Google search education Get More Out of Google [infographic] tags: infographic Google education Global Competence in the 21C tags: globalcompetence education global Connected Learning: Harnessing the Information Age to Make Learning More Powerful | Alliance For Excellent Education tags: connected_learning education What Do They Know? Dismissing a Viral Presumption About Millennials | Eszter Hargittai "If anything, considerable research has shown by now that there is large variation in Internet skills among young adults, often related to their socioeconomic status, and factors other than age explain skill differences across generations such as a person's level of income and education."tags: millenial education technology digitalliteracy Plenary by Sugata Mitra | Harrogate Online "In this talk, Sugata Mitra will take us through the origins of schooling as we know it, to the dematerialisation of institutions as we know them. Thirteen years of experiments in children's education takes us through a series of startling results - children can self-organise their own learning, they can achieve educational objectives on their own, they can read by themselves. Finally, the most startling of them all: groups of children with access to the internet can learn anything by themselves. From the slums of India, to the villages of India and Cambodia, to poor schools in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, the USA and Italy, to the schools of Gateshead and the rich international schools of Washington and Hong Kong, Sugata's experimental results show a strange new future for learning."tags: sugatamitra education learning futureofeducation technology Internet Consumption Around the World tags: Internet education infographic statistics research The Brainwaves These are "The Brainwaves" of education. Here you will meet the thinkers, dreamers and innovators; some of the brightest minds in education. This series is meant to inspire and engage the viewer to dig deeper and learn more. In the words of Georges Melies, (The Invention of Hugo Cabret) "Now sit back, open your eyes and be prepared to dream." Recorded by @bobgreenbergtags: viralvideo education innovation Theresa Allen - The Flat Classroom/Flat Connections Theresa Allen is a technology coordinator and teacher at Cathedral of St. Raymond School, Joliet, IL. She is a global-minded educator who strives to use connections and collaborations to learn about technology and people around the world.tags: flatconnections digitalcitizenship education A Great Poster on The 6 Questions Critical Thinker Asks ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning tags: education actionresearch criticalthinking inquiryPosted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration