Have You Flattened Your Classroom Walls?

On March 16th, I was privileged to see Julie Lindsay speak at the ECIS Technology Conference.  If you’ve never heard of Julie Lindsay, she is the co-author of the book Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds.  Julie talked to us about the importance of connection, citizenship and collaboration in regards to technology.  Her program allows students from around the world to “flatten the classroom walls” and “bring in the world”.  Centered in Australia herself, Julie’s projects help students from around the world connect and become global citizens through technology. 

In addition to ongoing projects, like the Eracism Project, Flat Classrooms also has yearly conference.  This conference is different than most conferences in two ways.  First, it includes both teachers and students, having real life conversations about how to increase international collaboration.  The other way that their conference is different is that during the conference you are creating and collaborating the whole time.  The conference also includes hands on creation.  Their next conference is in Hawaii.

Another professional development opportunity offered by Flat Classroom is a Flat Classroom Certification Course, which counts for 2 college credits.

I have missed the deadlines for this round of Flat Classroom Projects, but completely intend to get my students involved in the next round.  In the meantime, I am working with some other teachers at Global Teacher Connect to flatten my classroom walls through our collaborative projects.  Please feel free to join us in our pursuit of collaboration.

Check out her Julie Lindsay's keynote here:

Leave me a comment about your thoughts on ways you can flatten your classroom walls and feel free to stop by next Sunday for more information the other presentations from the ECIS Conference.

ECIS–Technology Conference De-brief

What an amazing weekend this has been!  I arrived in London – actually Cobham, 40 minutes outside of London - on Wednesday (March 13th) for the ECIS Tech Conference titled: Learning to Love the iGeneration, and it’s been a whirlwind of activity and thinking for me ever since.  Here is a brief overview of what I’ve been doing:

Wednesday – We got in late, so we stayed around the hotel and ate fish and chips at the local pub – The Fairmille.

Thursday – I didn’t have meetings, but my colleague, Jen Kadiri, went over the first day of leadership meetings.  I will have a full report from her in a blog post coming soon.  While she was in meetings, I walked to the train station and went into the city where I got to walk around and see some of the key monuments.  Here is some of what I saw: 

  

    

 

Friday – We began the conference, which was located at ACS International School in Cobham.  (I have collected so many ideas and suggestions that it will take me MONTHS to give you everything I learned.  So, each Sunday, I will be posting a Conference debrief with further details on one of the speakers I saw.)  Here are the speakers I saw on Friday:

 

Morning Keynote:  Marc Prensky, author of the book Teaching Digital Natives.

 

Breakout Session 1:  Speaking their Language – where I learned about some cool programs to use with students who are language learners

Breakout Session 2: ME!  This is when I presented my workshop on Using Technology to Create Community.  It was well attended and went very well.  You can see what the participants had to say about the 16 websites HERE, and what your fellow blog readers had to say HERE.  By the way, if you are one of those who took the time to critique the websites before today, check our e-mail box for an e-mail from TransferBigFiles, as you will ALL  be receiving the 12 teacher resources in the Goodie Bag Giveaway.

Breakout Session 3:  A panel discussion on how curriculum should change to include technology

 

Afternoon Keynote:  Chandran Nair, a key spokesman for environmental and economic issues in Asia and author of the book Consumptionomics.

 After all of the exciting learning, we attended a wonderful dinner at a local winery and spoke to teachers from Germany, Doha, Italy and England.  We also learned about the fabulous world of geo-caching, so look for a post on that soon!

Saturday – We headed back to the conference full of excitement from the first day’s activities.

Morning Keynote Speakers: 

Jeff Utrecht, who spoke about how students are using technology to change the world and author of the book Reach: Building Communities and Networks for Professional Development

Julie Lindsey  who is a founder of the Flat Classroom movement

Breakout Session 1:  Sorting to Searching with Jeff Utrecht, an amazing session on how to teach kids to use Google to the full of its worth

Breakout Session 2:  Using iBook in your classroom, an example of using this program to create a book about the Olympics

Breakout Session 3:  Flipping the Classroom and Differentiation, a session with Heather Martin, who creates amazing videos and posts them on her YouTube channel in order to flip her classroom.

Afternoon Keynote Speaker:  Caliean Hargrave from IBM, who spoke about the technologies that IBM are creating and the programs they have to work with kids

 

As you can see, this has been an amazing amount of information.  I have provided links to each of the people I have links for, feel free to check them out, but also feel free to stop by each Sunday for more detailed information about each presentation.