4. Getting Started with Global Projects
Find like-minded educators
Design Outcomes
Select Tools
Manage for Success
5. What is an Effective Global
Collaborative Project?
An educational project that flattens or joins
classrooms and people from geographically
dispersed places within a technology
infrastructure built for a common curricular
purpose.
Interactions foster cultural understanding and
global awareness in the process of learning.
Local identity is maintained and celebrated.
6. Am I willing to redesign my
curriculum to embed a global
project into what my class does?
“Designing a global
collaborative experience
involves transcending the
obvious real time linkup,
fostering higher order thinking
and providing opportunities for
cultural understanding while
usually making a product that
impacts others in a positive
way. ”
7. Challenges of Embedding
Global Collaboration
Going
Beyond the
‘Wow’
Engaging
learners and
leaders
Shifting
traditional
pedagogies
Having
realistic
expectations
17. Two types to sustain a global project
Communication
Traditional
Classroom
Separated by
Location
Separated by Time
Flat
Classroom
Unified by the
Internet
Unified by
asynchronous
communication
tools
SYNCHRONOUS and ASYNCHRONOUS
Julie: We describe global collaboration in stages. GC 3.0 = more emphasis on co-created multimedia products, use of social media tools for communication, high expectations to connect in an ongoing manner, student-centered learning
Connect yourself, connect your school, connect your students!
Being connected to a Personal Learning Network or Professional Learning Community is a 21C skill for all learners. This is not about social media as such, but about using networking tools in responsible and thoughtful ways to support learning objectives. This is about using the technology to make sustained and meaningful connections. This is about professional use of social media for teachers and students.
Connection is about using ‘Pull’ technologies to bring the information and updates to you – syndication and aggregation as a form of organisation.
The Global Connection Taxonomy we developed shows a hierarchy of five levels of possible connection scenarios.
Step 2: Communication. In the 21C it is important to develop communication skills and be able to relate across timezones and cultures
Two types of communication methods are needed to sustain a global project: Synchronous and Asynchronous. The traditional classroom is separated by location and separated by time. The Flat Classroom is unified by the Internet and unified by asynchronous communication tools.
Step 3: Citizenship. Although technology is used in communication, digital citizenship is still squarely about relating to people.
This definition by authors of Digital Citizenship in Schools, Ribble and Bailey, continues to resonate here: “…the norms of behaviour with regard to technology use”
Are your teachers and students globally competent and globally confident? We must be providing opportunities to learn with and from others around the world in order to foster deeper understanding.
Our Enlightened digital citizenship model encourages all learners to avoid the fear factor by knowing how to connect and collaborate online.Expect and foster responsible and reliable and in fact professional collaborations during a global project – and as part of a flattened classroom. Note the Areas of Awareness that ask learners to consider not only technical, individual and social impacts of the use of technology but cultural and global as well.
Step 4: Contribution and CollaborationWithout contribution collaboration cannot take place
Students and teachers must develop technopersonal skills that give them confidence in collaborating synchronously, as these students are doing. The student on the left is working in a team during a Flat Classroom Workshop in Mumbai, India while one of her team members is connecting via Skype from Japan in real time.
Asynchronous collaborations via a wiki show two teachers communicating as they create an information page about Tablet Computing in their classrooms.
This screenshot from a wiki history shows true co-creation in a text-based environment. The red is where the second student deleted text and the green shows what was added instead. This raises the question – where do we learn how to do this? Most of us are very precious about our own content and ownership of ideas. The exam-based system we usually learn under has made us this way. So my questions to you related to technology-scaffolded collaboration are:How do teachers learn to collaborate?How do students learn to collaborate?What are the best tools?How do YOU teach collaboration and co-creation?
Educational networks are for community building and collaboration.Wikis are for disruption and collaboration
Educational networks are for community building and collaboration.Wikis are for disruption and collaboration
Educational networks are for community building and collaboration.Wikis are for disruption and collaboration