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

For week 8 of #TeacherTuesday we are in New South Wales, Australia. This is now where I live, along the northern coast area, just below the Queensland border, below Brisbane - see the map below. In physical terms the school featured this week is relatively close to where I live - see the red marker on the map for the school location.The teacher is Russell, and the school, Ross Hill Public School, is in Inverell in the northwest. It is a New South Wales country town. It has a population of about 680 students from kindergarten to year 6. 5 - 12/13 year olds. Out of the 680 students there are 125 Aboriginal students. The school is situated on Traditional Aboriginal land and this is acknowledged at all school functions and meetings.  Russell is Gamilori (Aboriginal) person as well. Out of the 30 teachers, there are 4 Aboriginal teachers and also 2 Aboriginal education officers at the school as well.   Russell teaches Grade 6. He describes his school and students: At my school they are all English speaking and we currently we have a new curriculum coming which should have Indigenous language in it which means we’ll have to teach it to our kids at school. Last year I had one boy in my class who could speak five languages. But we predominantly teach in English.  We have 18% Aboriginal students at our school.    Poverty draws a line in the sand. You’re on one side or the other. It’s hard. That’s why I don’t set homework on a computer as I know some still don’t have computers at home, and that’s disadvantaging them. I accept it on a piece of paper. I don’t mind how it comes back as long as it comes back! Aboriginal kids don’t necessarily live in more poverty than Non-Aboriginal kids. It depends where you live I think. These all tie into what the union was fighting for - an education review to get all schools to be funded to the minimum level with extras added on for low socio economic kids, children with disabilities, Aboriginal children. That’s started and is being built into our schools at the moment. The battle’s still going though. The money doesn’t always come. It’s supposed to be over a six year period. I am actively involved in lobbying for this. I am an Aboriginal Councilor on the New South Wales Teachers Federation. It was the biggest educational review we’ve had for an age.   A lot of the class sizes are big - kindergarten should be 20 students - it’s big! You learn not to sit down! You don’t have a chance to sit down! And as they get older, the classes go up. I can have up to 35 kids in my classroom. So you need teaching aids - specialized teachers who can take a group of kids to give them a boost in literacy or mathematics. About Aboriginal people he shares: The challenges Aboriginal people face are still there today and we need to recognize these as a whole society, we as a people are still not recognized in or own constitution as the first peoples of this country.    When I was at school it was sometimes difficult going to school with non-aboriginal people as if I was in a classroom and someone didn’t want to sit next to me, I could be asked to move place. That was in the 70s. Now, some of those Aboriginal children have children of their own and in their mindset, education tormented them, so it’s hard for us to get these parents into school. Some aren’t exposed to the written form of English before they go to school - books and that sort of thing. They hear the spoken language but they’re three steps behind before they start. They’re playing catch up from day one. Some Aboriginal children don’t go to preschools. I’d say you’d be lucky if 50% of your Aboriginal children had been to preschool.  A lot has changed over the past couple of years a lot of the teachers have changed even. Their attitudes have changed. A lot of teachers still find it hard to teach Indigenous  children in the classroom. Not because they don’t know what to teach, it’s that they’re afraid to do the wrong thing - to teach something incorrectly when it comes to the Aboriginal perspective on something. They’re nervous. They want to do the right thing but they don’t want to offend someone. If they describe a country or a land and name it wrongly or the history of the country, for example. When it comes up in the media it’s actually really hard in the classroom. Because the kids know the media half the time faster than I do. They’re linked into everything! So as a teacher we need to keep up with all events and technology. A lot of Aboriginal students don’t even finish high school. They get side tracked. I was the first person in my family ever to do a university degree. In my state, you cannot leave high school until you are 17 years old and you have to have a job or apprenticeship if you’re going to leave before then. They’ve upped that age limit from 16 years. And the high school syllabus has changed to incorporate trades in it and stuff. High school 2 days, tech school for 2 days and work for one day. So they’re working and training while finishing their schooling. Quite a good move.  About teaching he says: The way it works for teachers is if you work in certain places you build up points and the more points you get it puts you higher up the transfer ladder so when you teach at the more remote schools you get 8 points per year, compared to 1 point on the coast, so it’s worth 8 years for a job on the coast! You can get a rent subsidy in some western areas. There’s an imaginary line so if you’re on one side of that you get an extra week’s holiday because of the heat too! A lot of the western schools have a lot of beginner teachers. A lot of teachers come out here because of the incentives but leave after three years, some not all. They come straight from uni. After the 3 years out here they go to teach on the coast instead and live and retire there for the rest of their lives! So there’s a high turn around in these areas. In my last school I was there for three years and had done relieving work before then, and I was the third longest serving teacher in the school. There’s such a high turnover so the kids don’t learn to trust you. It takes at least 12 months for them to trust you. There are scholarships now as well so you have to agree to stay for 3 to 5 years or give back your scholarship money. I wanted to be a teacher when I was at school because I wanted to prove people wrong and show I could do it. It took me a long time. I was accepted into university but turned it down. I was a lifeguard for 16 years. Then I was a teacher. I’m in my seventh year now. I should have done it 15 years ago. I love it! When I was doing my lifeguarding stuff I was still doing stuff for schools - teaching swimming and first aid. Still involved but not a classroom teacher.   Aboriginal education is compulsory in teacher training, but we can chose electives which are special interests. I choose a couple of Indigenous ones there. I did a double weighted project to raise literacy standards of Indigenous boys in a small coastal town in New South Wales.  It was confrontational as I pulled apart the syllabus to say that I didn’t think it was working for those kids - they were falling further and further behind because what was being taught wasn’t interesting to them. The syllabus didn’t suit their needs. It was too regimented. These boys were more creative, not just mind wise. I got them to learn English through drama and role plays. They got up and acted it out as they didn’t like to be still. The new syllabus has better cultural references in it I’m pleased to say. It has compulsory Aboriginal perspectives in it. You don’t have to write in words, you can write in paintings now, for example. I’ve had my students pull a story apart about the drought of the basin - a big river system here - and I got them to paint it with Indigenous symbols rather than write it. They’re using a lot of terminology out of there. We have to teach music as part of our syllabus so I try to teach a mixture of indigenous music woven into rap music. As an example I use a didgeridoo artist that plays rap through a didgeridoo! I interweave Aboriginal with modern, and I do that with dance as well, incorporating both. It is important that our children don’t lose their cultural heritage.A recent UNSECO report highlights the learning gaps that persist between indigenous and non-indigenous students.On a more global basis, this graph from UNESCO highlights the learning disparities. A recent factsheet from UNESCO tells us: "The difficulty indigenous children face is one reason for the wide gaps in learning between rich and poor students in Australia and New Zealand. Though these gaps are clearly visible in student assessments, they have not received sufficient policy attention, and so have persisted for a decade and a half. In Australia, around two-thirds of indigenous students achieved the minimum benchmark in mathematics in grade 8 between 1994/95 and 2011, compared with almost 90% of their non-indigenous peer" Russell shares a real account of issues confronting education in Australia:Equality of education for rural students and indigenous students compared with urban and coastal areas Access to resources - and how schools that have a lower socioeconomic clientele need more teaching resources - human and physicalAccess to technology - similar to resources - but there are serious inequalities regarding access to online resources through inadequate levels of Internet access across AustraliaTeacher training - The need to include indigenous subjects and raise awareness. Providing incentived for indigienous teachers is also essentialTeacher incentives - as mentioned in past #TeacherTuesday posts, providing incentives for teachers to be in a rural area, and to feel comfortable teaching there, is a challenge. Russell is teaching in his 'home territory' therefore feels comfortable. Many teachers in Australia will not, unless forced, teach in the country - a familiar story in many countries. What to teach! We have the Australian Curriculum being implemented from Foundation to Grade 12. This is a major step in helping to unify the country (a state-based education system also engenders inequality) and provide a common core curriculum. It also focuses on the capabilities of 'Intercultural Understanding' and 'Information and Communication Technology'. However Russell shares essential objectives to integrate different cultures into how and what you teach, taking a broader rather than a narrower approach.One of the most powerful statements by Russell, "Aboriginal kids don’t necessarily live in more poverty than Non-Aboriginal kids."reminds us that we need positive action not only for indigenous students, but also for all students across Australia who are living in poverty and statistically are not achieveing as well. This blog post is a contribution to Week 8 of #TeacherTuesday, a UNESCO and EFA initiative. I invite you to also read from my blog: Week 7 - Bangladesh: Learning on water with solar powered technologyWeek 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

School in the Cloud Very exciting possibilities for learners across the world! tags: education SOLE global globalcollaboration sugatamitra How to Make a Twitter Collage tags: twitter education fun The Innovative Teacher: Twitter for Educators An excellent blog post about why educators should be using Twitter. tags: twitter education ETL523 digitalcitizenship PLN Code Club Australia Start a Code Club in Australia - this non-profit organisation provides resources. tags: education code About Connected Learning : Educator Innovator Network tags: connected_learning education So You Want to Do Mystery Skype? | Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension tags: education skype Twitter's New Profiles: Everything You Need to Know tags: twitter education personalbranding Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

This week's teacher is Shape from South Africa. She teaches English in a township just north of Johannesburg. You can see a video created by the BBC at South African teacher with a 100% pass rate - Shape speaks passionately about ensuring the children she teachers are preparing all the time for their futures. As well as the curriculum, she teachers them about home economics, business skills and how to apply for jobs. She also does a lot of work to make sure the children are motivated and have belief in themselves. This holistic approach to learning, coupled with a caring teacher is making a difference in the lives of many senior students as they complete high school and move into the next stage of their lives. Shape is modelling an imperative approach to teaching and learning, almost devoid of technology and modern resources.Shape shares her experiences and thoughts about teaching and learning:About teaching in South Africa: I was awarded the best teacher in 2012 for the whole province because of the dedication that I am displaying. This is my 21styear in teaching. In all my teaching I give 100% because I always take extra time. I give extra lessons after others go home. I remain with year 12 to teach them again, to make sure that those who did not understand, later do understand everything. Some of them are still struggling especially in terms of writing and pronunciation. That is why I am giving extra lessons. My extra lessons to help them catch up and to give them some things they have never been taught before.In South Africa you have to have a passion to be a teacher. Here it is not an easy job. In South Africa in most cases teachers are not seen as a people who can be rich or who can be rich because the salary is not good. You never have money as a teacher! So we need to see it as a calling. You need to compromise. It’s not an easy job. Not an easy career to be a teacher because there are too many learners to manage especially nowadays in terms of reprimanding them because you find that now and then some get involved in drugs, there are teenage pregnancy. According to the legislation we are not allowed to expel a pregnant child from school, we must take all children in school. It’s an offence to turn a pregnant child away from school. We need to be with them here at school and then we try to encourage a parent to come to babysit for them, even if a child went for a delivery after they must be bought back to school. It becomes difficult because now you must catch them up with the work they have missed. We have to keep track on where they are all the time and mark everything. Teaching must be a calling for us to do all the job.Some local issues: In this area, pregnancy is a problem because most of our learners they are children who are staying alone and some of them are orphans. Maybe in one year, in the whole year we might lose 20 learners to pregnancy out of 1,265. They drop because of pregnancy.  Most of the time there are more girls than boys in the school, by about 10%. This is just the ratio of the population because there are more girls than boys. In my class, grade 12, there are ranging from 35 to 40 learners, but in lower classes there are 50. Talking about working within the school environment and extending the learning: After grade 12, it is their final years and we need to prepare them to go to universities or colleges so I need to ensure they’re ready to face the outside world.I’m also involved in job/career experience. We invite companies that are the same as the career the learners, have chosen to come to our school and talk to them. They come to school and after we identify the children who can go to them and do some work to be familiar with the outside world. They go to work for a day as managers or whatever. When they come back they are able to tell us of the challenges, then the companies come again to give them more knowledge. There is a program called ‘take a girl to work’. We always tell them why it’s important - it’s because we’re preparing them for their future. We don’t teach each learner about computers as we don’t have enough computers, but we have ways that children can do research online, so that makes each and every one of them have a clue about computers, even if they don’t have computer classes. After school they are allowed to use computers. Our sponsor is Oracle, so each and every year we take boys and girls so they are familiar with the technology. Most of them they’re being employed after finishing their studies by these companies. We also have plenty of learners who are sponsored to go to college, who are from underprivileged backgrounds. They get bursaries. Already some from 2009 are working with those companies. Not a lot of them come back as teachers. Most go to companies. We have a number of them each and every year who are at the university who come back for training to do their practicals, but most don’t like teaching. We also teach the children home skills. We teach them how to cook and keep their houses clean, physical education, how to prepare for their futures. As an English teacher, I always make sure that when they reach grade 11, I start teaching them how to fill in forms so they can assist their community as well as their parents. I always tell them they are the eyes of the community. If there is someone struggling to fill in a form in a bank, you are the ones to help. We are taking them to orphanages so that they can go there and see how to help. We are teaching them to donate with old clothes, to make sure they assist the orphans. We also have a garden in our school, we teach them how to grow food from the soil. We teach them business skills, we have business projects. They learn how to write a business plan. We buy some products/stock and they sell them to other learners and teachers and take money. They need to learn how much money to take from people and how much to then save. People from banks come to assist them to open bank accounts so that they can save money. We are teaching them that when they leave school not everyone is going to be fortunate. Some, because of money, might not be able to leave the province, but they must do something. They can still go and volunteer because they can gain experience. I invite them to come and work at the library so they get experience to train them for their future. Some of them would like to be doctors. But most want to be engineers now, because in South Africa engineers is a good job, and chartered accountants opens doors for them. Now they are starting to follow that that profession to be a chartered accountant.Final words of wisdom where Shape reveals her true love of her students: Assure the learners they are important and they can make it. Then they start to feel very well. I want them to do better and I say ‘I know you can, I know you can.’ They start to believe in themselves.Click the following images to open a larger version to see full details: Education crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa The tenth Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Putting Education to Work, reveals the urgent need to invest in skills for youth. In Sub-Saharan Africa, over 56 million people aged 15 to 24 have not even completed primary school and need alternative pathways to acquire basic skills for employment and prosperity. This is equivalent to one in three of the region’s youth population. Around two-thirds of the population in Africa are under 25-years- old. In the world, an eighth of young people is unemployed; a quarter are trapped in jobs that keep them on or below the poverty line. As the effects of the global economic crisis continue to be felt, the severe lack of youth skills is more damaging than ever. To download the report and other relevant materials: http://www.efareport.unesco.org  Twitter: #YouthSkillsWork. This blog post is a contribution to Week 8 of #TeacherTuesday, a UNESCO and EFA initiative. I invite you to also read from my blog: Week 8 - Australia: Rural and Indigenous - Strategies to improve learningWeek 7 - Bangladesh: Learning on water with solar powered technologyWeek 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

The 5th annual Global Education Conference (GEC) will be held November 17-21, 2014. Across the world many learners involved in global education will come together to share new ideas and encourage global interactions.GEC is organised by Lucy Gray and Steve Hargadon who set up the logistics and technology scaffold for the event to take place. They do this in conjunction with many passionate volunteers who help organise, moderate, tutor, and support all aspects of the live, online and free event.As in past years students have been invited and encouraged to participate as presenters and audience. The voice of young people in a global event such as this is indisputably valuable. The ideals of connected learning determine we must be inclusive and the need for better pathways to learning dictate we must hear about new global connections and collaborations. The vision of what I call 'flat' learning is that all participants have an equally important story to tell us, and it is important we seek out these stories and give them a platform to be told.This year we have renewed with vigour our invitation for students to present at the GEC. We invite students independently and with their teachers to consider sharing activities that connect you and your learning environment with the world. This could be through a designed curriculum activity, or a student initiative, or an organisation that supports students to connect, identify issues and search for solutions.This year I am spear-heading the Student strand of the GEC and would love to hear from anyone who is interested in putting their ideas and activities and achievements in global education, global awareness, global collaboration and more into a presentation proposal.The deadline for proposals is November 15 - but I would love to hear from you before then!See more details in the poster below!Contact me at anytime: Julie Lindsayjulie@flatconnections.com Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

The Possibility Post | Piktochart On-line Collaboration tags: digitalcitizenship education Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens | Global Digital Citizen Foundation tags: digitalcitizenship education Global Education - Math Collaborative - Global education Home tags: globalproject globalcollaboration mathematics education 7 Tenets of Creative Thinking | Edutopia tags: creativity education thinking Design Thinking in Schools: An Emerging Movement Building Creative Confidence in our Youth - Getting Smart by Guest Author - design thinking, IDEO, Innovation | Getting Smart "The need for design thinking. This movement to build a generation of design thinkers could not be more timely or more relevant. We are living in an age of increased complexity, and are facing global challenges at an unprecedented scale. The nature of connectivity, interactivity, and information is changing at lightening speed. We need to enable a generation of leaders who believe they can make a difference in the world around them, because we need this generation to build new systems and rebuild declining ones. We need them to be great collaborators, great communicators, and great innovators." tags: designthinking education Design Thinking « Design Thinking for Educators tags: designthinking social_entrepreneurship education Moonshot Thinking - YouTube tags: moonshot education youtube ideas Roxburgh Homestead Primary School defends classroom Twitter accounts for children | Herald Sun Article showing both sides of the argument for letting younger students use social media (including Twitter) for learning. tags: Twitter socialmedia education digitalcitizenship Students Learn Best When You Do This Want to know what kids need in order to learn better? Ask them: Here are the first 50 answers, unedited. From a study by Grant Wiggins tags: research education learning Symphony in Education tags: music danpink education 4 Big Things Transformational Teachers Do | Edutopia tags: teacher teacherpreneur education transformation The Teacher Leadership Competencies | CTQ tags: leadership education teacherpreneur techintegration MAKE BELIEFS COMIX! Online Educational Comic Generator for Kids of All Ages tags: education comic Social Engineering and Social Networking - Your Users are a Target Social engineering and social networks can be used to manipulate your staff into performing actions or divulging confidential information. Security education and awareness training help educate your users of the risks they face and the impact on the organization. - post by toyota camry Video from my @TODAYshow segment this morning showing off the hottest of the tech I saw at #CES http://t.co/c5OxZQc5 - post by toyota camry 23 Great Sources For Free Educational Videos Online | Edudemic tags: free education video Blending Face-to-Face and Flipping -- THE Journal One of the better articles I have read about the flipped classroom or flipped learning. tags: education flippedlearning pedagogy techintegration Global Students - Global Perspectives tags: globalcollaboration education Curriculum & Leadership Journal | Skills for the 21st Century: teaching higher-order thinking tags: bloomstaxonomy higherorderthinking education curriculum leadership ECIS ICT Committee eNews - Back to School Always packed with valuable information and resources for educational technology and more. tags: ecis education What Do Schools Risk By Going ‘Full Google’? | MindShift tags: Google education lms What’s the Difference Between a Flipped Classroom and Flipped Learning? | EdTech Magazine tags: flipclassroom flippedlearning education Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Altona Primary puts NAPLAN in context tags: education Australia test Framework for State Action on Global Education - The Partnership for 21st Century Skills tags: globalcompetence globaleducation education TeachMeetNZ - home tags: teachmeet education The 2014 Horizon Report for Schools | Global Digital Citizen Foundation tags: horizon-k12 hz14k12 education emergingtechnologies Strategies for a Whole-Community Approach to Digital Citizenship | Global Digital Citizen Foundation tags: digitalcitizenship education Fantastic Resources for Teaching Digital Citizenship Education in Your Classroom | Global Digital Citizen Foundation tags: digitalcitizenship education Five Good Resources for Teaching Digital Safety and Citizenship to Elementary School Students | Global Digital Citizen Foundation tags: digitalcitizenship education HookED SOLO Taxonomy in teaching and learning tags: pedagogy solo education Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project Macarthur Foundation 2008 tags: education digitalcitizenship digitalmedia Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Rubik's Cube: A question, waiting to be answered - YouTube tags: problemsolving education ideas Google social_entrepreneurship Visible Learning, Tomorrow’s Schools - The Mindsets The Mindsets that make the difference in Education John Hattie - Visible Learning Laboratories visiblelearning.co.nz tags: visiblelearning education facilitator activator Reading Writing Responding: #GTASYD 2014 - Feet on the Ground, Head in the Clouds tags: gta education Google moonshot Skype used to teach Maori symbols | Radio New Zealand News tags: fcge14-2 education Term one - India, term two - Spain: The school where students are continuously travelling the world - National - NZ Herald News Updates about Think Global School as they arrive in New Zealand for this semester. tags: thinkglobalschool education Learning 2.014 Africa Learning2 Talks - YouTube Learning 2.014 held in Ethiopia, Africa this week produced a series of amazing talks. Educators on the cutting edge! tags: learning2 education Africa Rubik's Cube: A question, waiting to be answered - YouTube tags: google gta education social_entrepreneurship Learning Common 2 Excellent example of how to use Google sites in a school community. tags: google googlesites education gta Creating Maps - mapsenginelite tags: google maps education gta Technology Improves And The Internet Expands But School Acceptable Use Policies Still Lock Students Out Of The Benefits | Techdirt The most enlightened and relevant article I have read for a long time on how to approach using digital technologies in schools that references the work of Scott McLeod as well. tags: education digitalcitizenship safetyonline aup Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Google Thinking, Lone Nuts and Moonshots | Steve Mouldey Steve Mouldey shares his reflection on the Google Teacher Academy, Sydney.tags: education gtasyd Google Digital Learning: Google Mission Control [#GTASYD14] / Destination Moonshot! Justine Driver shares here reflection on the Google Teacher Academy, Sydney.tags: education gtasyd Google "Meetup" a let it go PARODY performed at #ACEC2014 - YouTube tags: acec education viralvideo fun Anybody can learn | Code.org tags: code education Design Thinking for Educators tags: designthinking education Google for Education: Announcing Drive for Education: The 21st century backpack for students tags: Google education googleapps Panoramio - Photos of the World tags: Google maps educationPosted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

7 Hands On Projects That Use 3D Printers -- THE Journal tags: 3dprinting education ECIS ICT Committee eNews - Heading into Fall Lots to read about and information about events to attend in Europe and beyond tags: ecis education Multi-lingual language learning and language exchange | Lang-8: For learning foreign languages tags: language education connected_learning From Lone Wolf to Hunting with the Pack - becoming a globally connected educator | Mr Kemp tags: connected_learning globalcollaboration education Lessons From Finland: What Educators Can Learn About Leadership | MindShift Very informative article comparing Finland with USA education systems. tags: Finland education leadership teacherpreneur svanschaijik: Global Digital Citizenship tags: digitalcitizenship education globaldigitalcitizen The Possibility Post | Fostering Global Digital Citizenship Ann from South Australia talks about her exploration of digital citizenship with her students. My favourite sentence, Ann, I really enjoyed reading this blog post. You have shared vital process material from your recent connection with NZ and also communicated student responses -also a necessary part of assessing the success and viability of online connection that leads to collaboration. My favourite sentence is your last one - "Global digital collaboration goes beyond research. We found out more through the learning experience of meeting and sharing knowledge." tags: digitalcitizenship blog fcge14-2 education College by Kids | where kids are the teachers tags: education onlinelearning studentcentred It’s About Learning - ACEC 2014 Cameron Paterson talks about his experiences at ACEC2014 tags: acec education Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

My first ACEC (Australian Computers in Education Conference) was two weeks ago in Adelaide. Many colleagues and ISTE friends from Australia and beyond had shared their past experiences with this reputable event, so now I am 'back' in Oz it was time for me to find out more.This event blends K-12 and higher education in quite a sophisticated way - essentially there is something for everyone. I attended a variety of workshops, sessions and of course plenary sessions. I also presented one session and co-presented another. I share my notes and ideas here with you now as a way of documenting and reflecting.Let me start with my presentation workshops!The first one, Leadership for Digital Citizenship Action was a workshop for participants to explore three areas:Our digital livesOur digital responsibilitiesLeadership for empowering global digital citizenship actionConversations about 'My digital life is like......'Open doc for participants to share ideas is HERE. It became evident to many that 'global digital citizenship' could in fact drop the 'digital' as technology becomes more ubiquitous for learning.  I was very fortunate to co-present with Cameron Paterson from Shore School, Sydney. Shore, under Cameron's influence, hosted the Flat Connections Conference in Sydney, June 2014. Cameron, as a driving pedagogical leader, brings exciting and enlightened experiences to his classes and to the school.Our workshop, Global Competence and Social Change, was an extended version of a presentation we gave at ISTE 2014. Cameron shared more extensive examples and real-life student experiences while connecting with others for enhanced knowledge a out the world - the stories surrounding his connection with Turkey and finding the real story of WWI is clear evidence of the power of 'flattened' and connected learning. I shared examples for current global projects across K-12 and the need to foster social change, pedagogical change based on new teacher beliefs and attitudes to global interaction and collaboration.Resources are available online HERE.  Plenary sessions at ACEC 2014 saw Alec Couros talk about connected and participatory learning culture, Kathy Schrock share ideas and resources for digital storytelling across the curriculum.We also heard from Google - Alan Noble and Sally-Ann Williams about how Australian schools and teachers should be picking up coding. Perhaps this is already happening - but not enough according to Alan and Sally-Ann who shared statistics and put the fear into us all about the lack of computer studies in schools (!). I always believe this approach, although coming with lots of energy from Sally-Ann in particular, does not win friends.Two real highlights for me were these workshops I attended:21st Century Learning design - Making learning relevant by Pip Cleaves where real world and problem solving was addressed. See SLIDES.Open Badge Design - Every which way by Joyce Seitzinger where as a table team we created the idea and criteria for an open badge called 'Global Connections 101' (notes created from our sketches and conversations). I have as a goal now to formalise this and extend it to be a 4-step learning course where 101 is connecting, 201 is collaboration, 301 is designing or re-designing curriculum and 401 is implementing and managing meaningful global collaborations. (Based on what I do already through teacher professional development for flat and global learning)I did attend some 30-minute presentations given by Masters or Doctorate students. I found these fascinating and being an EdD student myself have another goal to make sure I am ready to present at ACEC in 2016. It is so important to be sharing research and new ideas in this way - face-to-face where the researcher can get to answer questions and relate more closely with those interested. I encourage you to review the work of Vicky Smart from Queensland on technological pedagogical reasoning.Finally, the networking with old friends and the creation of new friendships across Australia made this conference very worthwhile for me right now. I am trying to 'get a handle' on schools and teachers in different situations here in my home land....and not being in a school right now makes this more challenging. But of course being at the ACEC, f2f conference and through following #ACEC2014 and also by being a small part of #acceln with Roland and Amanda, I am reaching out to many educators, leaders and even students with a view to working more closely on global and connected learning.Finally, I have to share this fun video created by the dynamic duo (Amanda and Roland once again) at ACEC. Many of us participated in this as the chasing crowd.....'Meetup' Looking forward to ACEC 2016 - it will be in Brisbane, a lot closer to me! Well done to all organisers, Trudy and Tina....and Jason and many others who made ACEC 2014 possible. Thank you! Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

For Connected Educator Month, October 16 2014, I was invited by Core Education Ltd, New Zealand to be a lead panelist. The theme Student Agency, was one of the global themes for this month.You will find the recording of the webinar here: Working together to reimagine student agency Guests also included Linda Ojala and Tim Gander who also shared their experiences on '...how they have redesigned learning that genuinely positions learning at the heart, enabled by digital technologies.'I was delighted to hear how Linda and Tim (at the elementary and high school levels respectively) are nurturing student independence of thinking and learning and fostering skills that will support them in future local and global collaborations. You can find more webinar recordings on the NZ VLN portal. Screenshot of the opening to the webinar with hosts Nathaniel Louwrens and Karen Melhuish Spencer sharing a Maori greeting. I assume this is a common or standard way they do their webinars. Enhanced cultural awareness from the start!  My slides - Flat Students - Global Learning shared ideas for student taking control of their own learning, finding their own PLNs and PLCs and engaging in collaborations that are meaningful and authentic, locally and more importantly on a global scale.I also did a soft launch of my Google Teacher Academy 'moonshot' (from 3 weeks ago). 'Learning Collaboratives' - still in the 'empathy' and 'define' stages, but I am looking to run a pilot starting February 2015.Stay connected to this vibrant and dynamic and dedicated educators in New Zealand for the remainder of October - and beyond! Lots happening over there that we should sit up and take notice of.@ConnectEduNZ  Hashtag: #cenz14Addendum: This blog post came through my Twitter this afternoon 'A story of agency, collaboration, music and love' Thanks Ginnie from Christchurch!Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Using Facebook in the Classroom tags: digitalcitizenship Facebook education Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: 10 Great Digital Citizenship Lessons from Google tags: digitalcitizenship education TeachMeetNZ - Prescott_helen Helne Prescott talks about SAMR and the relevance to education and educators with a focus on New Zealand as part of a #teachmeetnz hangout tags: education SAMR teachmeet CORE Education's Ten Trends 2014 | CORE Education tags: trends education educationaltechnology future Trend 8: Global connectedness | CORE Education @virtuallykaren shares enlightened ideas about global connectedness from the New Zealand perspective. This is one of TEN trends impacting education. See all ten linked from here: http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends tags: globalawareness globalcollaboration education connected_learning flatconnectionsproject Flat Students - Global Learning - CEM2014 - Flat Connections Connected Educator month New Zealand - my presentation on Flat Students - Global Learning tags: education cem flatconnections 4 Keys to Designing the Classroom of the Future -- THE Journal tags: education future classroom desig FocalPoint Focal Point Global is an international educational nonprofit that was founded by the Blake sisters in 2010. Since its inception it has connected over 80 youths in three different countries. tags: globalcollaboration globaleducation education Are boys and girls ready for the digital age? Digital and print reading statistics from 2012. tags: research pisa education The Internet Is Not Harming You. Here's What's Harmful: Fearmongering About The Internet | Fast Company | Business + Innovation tags: education Internet change :: Verdentum :: A non-profit social network, connecting the world for a better tomorrow This new non-profit social network launches on October 24. Excellent focus and goals - to join students across the world to share global issues and solve them together. tags: social_entrepreneurship education communityservice socialnetworking OpenIDEO - Fighting Ebola tags: education designthinking social_entrepreneurship Get This Pair of Free Digital Books from iPad Educators! — Learning in Hand tags: ipad free books education Canada 2015 - Join Flat Connections Live! - Flat Connections Join educators from across the globe April 30-May 2 in Winnipeg, Canada for Flat Connections Live! tags: education Canada flatconnectionslive A Wonderful Chart of Educational Web Tools to Use in Class ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning tags: Web2.0 education tools 7 Tips to Effectively Use Google Scholar ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning tags: googlescholar education Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

About a month ago I was privileged to be chosen to attend the Google Teacher Academy in Sydney. Based at the Google offices in Pyrmont, Sydney, about 50 of us as well as a team of organisers came together to explore, connect, discuss, and come up with NEW ideas and approaches 'moonshots' for improving teaching and learning.The application video that was my bridge for #gtasyd: What I really liked about this experience is the opportunity it gave everyone to extend themselves and to think once again, even more and positively 'out of the box' of everyday situations to really envisage what might be possible in the future.I am already an Apple Distinguished Educator (class of 2010, Singapore) and have had many exciting professional development experiences over the years. I knew this academy was going to be another step for me along the pathway of realisation of what is possible and to move closer to making it happen. When it was announced No Tosh would be leading the academy I was doubly excited, having connected with both Ewan McIntosh and Tom Barrett in the past I knew the quality work they were doing around the world. Hamish Curry, another No Tosh team member was in Sydney with Tom as well.The Google Teacher Academy grouped us into teams and we met online for about three weeks before gathering in Sydney. Hats off to our 'Giant Leap' (our team name) leader, Matt Ives from New Zealand who worked hard at bringing us together and supporting our ideas and dreams. What was great???? I loved the fact our team was so diverse - in how long we had been teaching (shout out to Kim Sutton, a very young and exuberant teacher!), our areas of interest and expertise, and our ideas for making the change we all need to see in education. I loved the fact we worked hard as a team for a large part of the academy, sharing ideas for feedback, re-developing, re-sharing and getting more and more excited as more concrete plans emerged by Day 2.I loved the use of Design Thinking to mold our ideas - and even though I have been using this in the workshops I run myself more recently and have a working knowledge of how to apply this - when you actually use it yourself for your own ideas it takes on a whole new meaning! I loved the fact we now all have a new network of educators to share ideas with and know these fragile thoughts will be welcomed for what they are......brave ideas in a confusing world, ready to be further tested, reshaped and eventually launchedMy MoonshotI want to start a virtual school.....but I do not like the term 'virtual school' and the connotations it has with set curriculum and exam-focused learning. So.......in line with the work I have done with Flat Classroom/Flat Connections in the past 10 years, I want to create what I am calling 'Learning Collaboratives' and put the responsibility onto the students to join these (in conjunction with teachers, or not) and become engaged and motivated through the socialisation of learning, networking and community that build collaborative learning.Planning - using 'hexagons'My hexagon after team brainstormingPlanning - the next stageMy moonshot - further planningMy Moonshot - The 'sentence'What I plan to do is pilot 'Learning Collaboratives' in 2015. These will be different to the usual global collaborative projects I run. I am putting together details on this Learning Collaboratives doc and hope to have concrete objectives available by the end of October to share and encourage brave teachers and students to come and join.Right now I am planning a 'Social Entrepreneurship Collaborative' (as on the doc.) I am also considering a 'Language Learning Collaborative' with a focus on Chinese. If you have any interest in being part of this please connect with me at any time!Team 'Giant Leap' working hard!Team 'Giant Leap' - stars of the event!The whole group - #gtasyd A little blurry - but here I am as a Google Certified Teacher!Thanks Google and  no Tosh and all organisers. This was a very worthwhile and progressive experience for me and for all involved I believe. Well done!Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

Why is bilingual education ‘good’ for rich kids but ‘bad’ for poor, immigrant students? - The Washington Post " If you follow the public debate about bilingual education, you know that there are two basic opposing views. As Claire Bowern, the author of the following post, writes, To put it bluntly, bilingualism is often seen as "good" when it’s rich English speakers adding a language as a hobby or another international language, but "bad when it involves poor, minority, or indigenous groups adding English to their first language, even when the same two languages are involved. Here is a piece about the value of bilingualism for all students. Bowern is an associate professor of linguistics at Yale University and a fellow in The OpEd Project’s Public Voices project who has been researching topics s related to language and society, including bilingualism, for 15 years. She also works as an advisor to Native American and Australian indigenous groups on language reclamation, maintenance, and bilingual education issues." tags: education language How to Make Rainbow Pasta,,http://funbase-zonefree.rhcloud.com/?p=1276 - post by siliya johns TeachMeetNZ - Lindsay_Julie My presentation for the #TeachMeetNZ October 25, 2014 tags: education jul collaboration connection How Standing Desks Can Help Students Focus in the Classroom | MindShift This is an important topic - standing or sitting while learning - what is best? Applies to adults as well! tags: learning education Are Cell Phone Bans Worth the Trouble? -- THE Journal Discussion about the use of cell phones across schools and supporting research on distraction while learning. tags: digitalcitizenship education mobiles phones The 10 Best Kid-Friendly Minecraft Channels on YouTube | Common Sense Media tags: games gaming minecraft education commonsensemedia Use Google Sheets as a Multilingual Chat Translator I love this! tags: Google translator education Virtual learning as an impetus for educational change Whitepaper produced by CORE New Zealand tags: education digitalcitizenship change leadership planning strategicplanning Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

CENZ14 - Reflection blog post Sonya https://twitter.com/vanschaijik tags: education cenz14 cem2014 globalcollaboration Landmark Games | Science math language school project classroom dialog cyberpal tags: globalproject globalcollaboration education 2014 WISE Summit Provisional Program | www.wise-qatar.org Excited to be heading to WISE 2014 and now moderating this debate on 'Exploring the learning experience through cognitive science' tags: jul education WISE2014 How to Tell a Powerful Story with Data Visualization tags: education infographic visualization data ViewPure / Videos Without Clutter Watch YouTube videos without comments, adds or distractions. tags: education youtube video How Brain Myths Could Hurt Kids - NYTimes.com tags: cognitivescience education brain TeachMeetNZ Julie Lindsay - YouTube Beyond Global Connectedness - What's next? tags: jul education teachmeet Neuroscience and education: myths and messages : Nature Reviews Neuroscience : Nature Publishing Group tags: cognitivescience education Independence : Independence Vol 39 No 2 Oct 2014, Page 1 tags: jul education publishing flatconnections How to Create Interactive YouTube Videos - YouTube Excellent live tutorial from EdTech team tags: youtube education video create Launch your own online school, create your online courses in minutes, and it is FREE! tags: onlinelearning education distancelearning elearning Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

NMC Horizon Report Toolkit > 2014 K-12 - NMC ACADEMY This short course is designed around the New Media Consortium Horizon Report and prepares teachers to understand the report and how to implement learning artifacts with their students. tags: horizonreport education toolkit CSER Digital Technologies - Foundations to 6 - Course Online course starting February 2015 specifically addressing the Australian Digital Technologies curriculum (Foundation-6). tags: education computationalthinking digitaltechnologies Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration