Sunday, February 07, 2010

Across My Desk (weekly)


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, February 07, 2010 0 comments

Outside my Window: Beijing Feb.7, 2010

Snow again last night! A blanket of white to greet us this Sunday morning. Taking a few pictures before cars and feet and shovels destroy its serenity. Current temperature is -5 Celcius.

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, February 07, 2010 0 comments

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Saturday, February 06, 2010

'Pandora's Box' - Presenting the Flat Classroom project 10-1 Keynote

The Flat Classroom Project 2010-1 is well under way. We have over 200 students from 10 classrooms across 6 different countries. The online Press Release provides more details.

So far, students have been connecting with their team members via the Flat Classroom Project Ning, and also starting to edit the collaborative wiki topic pages.

A special feature of every Flat Classroom Project is the addition of a keynote video that participants can watch, discuss and interact over. For FCP10-1 we are very excited to announce the Keynote, 'Pandora's Box: Fresh Start in a New World' has been delivered by Judy O'Connell, Head of Library and Information Services at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in Sydney Australia. More information can be found on the Keynote wiki. I love the way Judy has made this video accessible to teenagers and encourages them to be proud of their status in the world as leaders of new ways to work and collaborate and show us all how to use emerging technologies and 'flat world' ideals to our advantage.
Thank you Judy!

Here are some guiding questions to get you thinking about how to respond and start a discussion or foster an existing discussion:

  1. Is global collaboration using emerging technologies a pandora's box? Why?
  2. How can we best prepare the '17 year old Internet/connected world' to mature and grow into 'adulthood'?
  3. How has the flat world impacted on you as a teenager? as a teacher?
  4. What place do immersive worlds and virtual realities have in education?




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Posted by Julie Lindsay at Saturday, February 06, 2010 0 comments

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Thursday, February 04, 2010

Announcing the 2010 Net Generation Education Project

Applications invited NOW at NetGenEd Application

Net Generation Education Project: Call for Classrooms

Written by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay
http://netgened2010.flatclassroomproject.org/

Award winning author, Don Tapscott, and award winning global collaborators Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis (co founders of the Flat ClassroomTM Project) are excited to announce the 2010 NetGenEd Project, another global collaboration to envision the future of education and social action by inspiring today's students to study leading technology trends and create their vision for the future.

This is the second NetGenEd Project collaboration between the two organizations with the 2009 project announced at the Flat Classroom conference in Doha Qatar 2009. The 2009 Net Generation Education Project was the replacement for the Horizon Project and included 10 schools with more than 300 students. The application process is now open for schools who wish to participate in the project in March - May of 2010.

In this project, students will study and "mash up" the results of the 2010 Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium and Educause and Tapscott's book Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. Students will study the current research and create wiki-reports with their student partners around the world analyzing current trends and projecting future happenings based upon this collaborative analysis. This project is managed by the students who assume roles such as project manager, assistant project manager, and editors of the various wikis.

After compiling their wiki reports based upon current research, and encouraged by "expert advisors" (subject matter experts in the industry), students will then create a video in one of two strands. Video strand I competition will be the NetGenEd Challenge where students are asked to envision the future of education based upon current global technological trends. Video Strand II Competition is the Macrowikinomics Challenge where students envision the future of global social action based upon their research in current global technological trends. The video challenge will be also be open to the public for submissions beginning March 1st.

"We are particularly excited about this year's project because we're not only asking students to envision the future of learning and the classroom but also how this media can be used to impact and improve society itself. This generation is the Net Generation and they are uniquely suited to speak for themselves in casting a vision for their own future," says project organizer, Vicki Davis.

This project is unique in that Tapscott will interact with students in forum posts throughout the project as they discuss Tapscott's research into NetGen and also current research as being compiled for Tapscott's forthcoming book (being written with Anthony Williams) MacroWikinomics. Additionally, he will keynote the project via a Youtube video released in March along with a student keynote to be recorded at the Flat ClassroomTM Mini-conference at ASB Unplugged in Mumbai, India in February.

Additionally, the Discovery Educator Network is going to host a series of webinars demonstrating how to tell a compelling digital story as well as leading a book club group for educators related to the NetGenEd project. The Flat Classroom Projects are global collaborative projects organized by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay and sponsored by Elluminate.

If you are ready to have your students collaborate globally and follow the best practices as used in the award winning Flat ClassroomTM, Horizon, and Digiteen projects fill out this form before February 9th and apply now!

NetGenEd Application

2010 Timeline


  • 2/1- 2/12 - Application process for classrooms
  • 2/12-2/18- Selection Process (classes will be notified as soon as they are selected)
  • 2/15 - Ning, wiki, and google group are "live" by this date
  • 2/18 - Final announcements of Classrooms
  • 3/5 - Greeting from Don posted to the Ning via video
    • Weekly- discussions posted to the forum
  • 2/20-3/5 - "Handshake process" - Students join Ning - post introductions
    • 3/1 - Teams announce
  • 3/15-4/10 Research phase of project
    • 4/10 - Wikis complete
  • 4/1 - Student Keynote
  • Some time in March, there will be a live session with Don Tapscott
  • 4/10-5/8 - Movie Artifact phase of project (note that there will be some overlap between Research and Movie Artifact)
  • *Storyboarding
  • *Outsourced video requests posted to the Ning by 3/10
  • 5/10 - Final Deadline for All Movies to be posted
  • 5/10-5/20 - Post project reflections, student summits, awards

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Thursday, February 04, 2010 0 comments

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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Across My Desk (weekly)


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, January 31, 2010 3 comments

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Across My Desk (weekly)


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, January 24, 2010 2 comments

Create the Future!

Last weekend 50+ educators from 8 schools in China and beyond came together at my school, Beijing (BISS) International School, for a 2-day workshop called 'Create the Future'. Co-presented by me and Kim Cofino, and sponsored also by EARCOS it was a chance for exploration and networking. The wiki portal described it like this:

"Embrace Web 2.0, 1:1 and online learning in conjunction with multimedia for your classroom through this project-based workshop. A hands-on approach is emphasized with opportunities for learners at all levels to explore, discuss and model 21st Century pedagogy using digital tools. Break out sessions will include personal learning network and digital portfolio development, digital citizenship best practice, and Web 2.0 toolbox. Participants will also work in teams on 'flat classroom' objectives including Web 2.0 skill building, global collaboration and project management.
This workshop is designed to open doors to new modes of teaching and learning and focus on the learner (teacher and student) as a communicator, collaborator and creator."

Create the Future Opening: Julie

What did we do?
The workshop schedule shares the format and intention of this event. Essentially we wanted participants to UNDERSTAND and PARTICIPATE in the following:
  • Connectivity and how it can build a PLN (Personal Learning Network) that feeds into everyday needs as a professional educator and learner
  • Collaboration and how students can be collaborative within the class and then how local and global projects can be designed to extend this collaboration further
  • Creation and constructivism and how through 'doing' rather than passively 'listening' to others better understanding is achieved
  • A 'Project Challenge' where each team designed a collaborative project that could potentially be implemented in the ear future
Sessions included presentations from Kim on PLN development, 21st Century education and global collaboration during which there was time to reflect and discuss. This open presentation style Kim uses is excellent for allowing people to react to what they are seeing and hearing in order to better digest and make sense of it. Breakout sessions provided hands-on exposure to Web 2.0 tools, including VoiceThread, and creating an online community using the Learning Confluence Ning. Over the 2 days we developed a thriving online community and for many it was the first time they had experienced this networked connectivity or written a blog post.

All participants were put into 10 teams and each team had a wiki to use for sharing resources and final ideas. Each team had members form at least 2 different schools. Each team generally had a curriculum bias e.g. mathematics. arts. We explored wikis as a tool for authentic collaborative work using third-party publishing tools e.g. slideshare, as well as the discussion area for team communication.

The Project Challenge was based on the ideas and concepts found in 'The World is Open' by Curtis Bonk, and involved:
  • Brainstorming ideas for embedding global collaboration into the curriculum and creating a 'pitch' for the chosen idea
  • 'Pitching' this idea to other teams in a rotation format in order to get feedback and refine ideas further
  • Preparing a final multimedia presentation with refined ideas detailing the collaboration in terms of connecting, collaborating, creating, timeline, etc.
Why was it successful as a 21st Century professional development model for K-12 education?
  • Working on an authentic idea that has the potential to be implemented into the classroom IS the key to success for this workshop. In addition, combining educators from different schools meant that the 'global' collaborative aspect was already guaranteed.
  • Teams had a real chance to discuss school situations, curriculum needs and other possibilities while working face-to-face, thereby fast-tracking into something workable much quicker than if doing this via other networking modes e.g. email, Ning
  • Teachers are busy people! Why spend an entire weekend working on the hypothetical? This workshop provided the infrastructure to actually 'create the future' through discussion and development of peer-reviewed ideas alongside learning about new (largely Web 2.0) tools and methods for implementation
What were some of the project outcomes?
There are other great ideas as well, but some teams did not manage to upload their final presentation or explain on their wiki page. It is SO important to do this so that we can all go back and explore and reflect on what emerged from the weekend. I know that some of these ideas will be implemented this year, and others will be picked up again next academic year. I also know that all participants now have the skills and resources to continue with this and make it work in their own curriculum. There are already reflection and ideas to move forward in the educational community developed on Learning Confluence.

What Kim and I stressed throughout the workshop is that the concepts and practices used are not 'add-ons', they can be embedded into the everyday practice and curriculum. For this to happen a change in mindset is needed and an openness to the advantages of being a connected educator willing to connect and collaborate and 'flatten' classroom walls to 'open education' for all learners in the school.

What Next?
Readers of this blog post (especially in South-east Asia): Would a 'Create the Future' workshop be applicable to YOUR school? Do you have professional development days ear-marked for next year and want to embed collaboration, Web 2.0 and 21st century learning into your school? Kim and I are interested in running this workshop again in other schools next year and would love to talk to you!





Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, January 24, 2010 1 comments

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Outside My Window: Beijing Jan.24, 2010

Winter's day: Clearing snow

Christmas has come and gone (Bali was great as usual!) and we are well past any new year resolution ideas....or are we? Life has been so busy lately since our holiday in Bali, with a trip to Cardiff and an IB ITGS curriculum design meeting, a full weekend workshop, Create the Future, co-run by Kim Cofino last weekend, followed by Technology Week at BISS, that I have not blogged properly for weeks!

So, starting this week I want to start some serious sharing and ideas-based blog posts in addition to this new idea I have of sharing one picture each week taken from my study window.
This morning is crisp, cold and sunny. Workers on our 'compound' called 'Capital Paradise' here in Shunyi, Beijing, are continuing to clear the snow that was dumped on Beijing 3 weeks ago.

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, January 24, 2010 3 comments

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Sunday, January 17, 2010

Across My Desk (weekly)


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, January 17, 2010 4 comments

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Across My Desk (weekly)


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, January 10, 2010 2 comments

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Across My Desk (weekly)


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, January 03, 2010 1 comments

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Across My Desk (weekly)

  • Stones into Schools

    "Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan was released on December 1, 2009. Over the past sixteen years, Greg Mortenson, through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI), has worked to promote peace through education by establishing more than 130 schools, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. "
    Excellent sequel to 'Three Cups of Tea'! Loved every word! A MUST read.

    tags: flatclassroom, education, acrossmydesk


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, December 27, 2009 1 comments

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Across My Desk (weekly)


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

Posted by Julie Lindsay at Sunday, December 20, 2009 3 comments

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