TEDxEnola: Get Connected

Get ConnectedTEDxEnolaLucy Gray

February 1, 2012

1Wednesday, February 1, 12


Happy Digital Learning Day! How appropriate as I’m going to be discussing my work in educational technology with you today.

Why Change?


Change is in the air, and this word tends to cause some anxiety in educators.

Why Evolve?


I prefer to use the word evolve. Those of us working in the field of education need to be mindful of continuous improvement. We can’t simply rest on our laurels or accept current conditions if we truly care about preparing all students for modern society.

Another Nation at Risk Moment ?

How do we improve teaching and learning?

How do we assess students?

What’s Truly Innovative?


Perhaps never since the publication of “A Nation at Risk” in the 1980’s has there been as much dialogue and polarized views in education. We’re wrestling with many questions including:

How do we improve teaching and learning?

How do we assess 21st century skills?

What’s truly innovative?

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills


We’re talking 21st century skills which means that artful teaching is more important than ever. Content is still king, but we need to infuse other kinds of skills into core content.



“The Highly Connected Teacher”

The National Educational Technology Plan


The Horizon Report K12 Edition


New and emerging technologies also play a role in today’s changing educational landscape. The Horizon Report K12 edition is a useful document to help plan for effectively using technologies in school settings.

Horizon Report 10th Anniversary Summit

Megatrends

The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative.


I’m on the advisory board for the K12 edition and last week, we gathered in Austin TX for a Horizon Report summit. A forthcoming report will be issued in the next few months based on megatrends that our group identified.

Megatrends

People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to.


Megatrends

The Internet is becoming a global mobile network - and already is at its edges.


The numbers of cell phone users and those with broadband access continues to skyrocket. We are global and mobile.

Megatrends

The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media.


Think YouTube and Facebook.

Megatrends

Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world.


Authoritative sources are losing their importance; increased need for validation and curation.

Megatrends

Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. The very concept of ownership is blurry.


The cloud is blurring these lines.

Megatrends

Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. Access to learning in any form is a challenge in too many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments.


Solutions that scale are very important. Look to other parts of the world for innovations in this area.

Megatrends

The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy.


Think Henry Jenkin’s New Media literacies. Traditional literacies are not enough.

Megatrends

There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged in many arenas.


Politically, socially and intellectually. Traditional authority is also being challenged in academia.

Megatrends

Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Look to libraries, colleges, and the publishing industry.


Everyone is re-thinking their missions.

Personalized Learning

Mobile Technologies

21st century skills

generational Diversity

Learningenvironments

Design Thinking

Cloud Computing

Textbook Revolution

CuratedLearning

New Media Literacies

FlippingThe

Classroom

Global Connections


That all said... these are some of the buzzwords that I come across in my work as a consultant. I’m in a unique position to get a sense of trends because of the broad spectrum of my work.

For the remainder of this talk, I want to focus on the idea of global connections.

Connect Now!22Wednesday, February 1, 12

My name is Lucy Gray and my passion is connecting people.

It’s time to connect your classrooms to the world, I’d like to share some of my experiences that have led me to call for action.

I believe in technology, professional generosity and global connectedness will help modernize education.


The Global Education Conference that has taken place during International Education Week for the past two years has been the most profoundly challenging, exhilarating, rewarding, and exhausting professional experience of my life to date was this event. I never thought Steve Hargadon and I would pull this off.

How many of you saw a session?Any of you present?

15,028 Unique Logins

Archived Presentations from 62 countries

400+ Free General Sessions60+ Free Featured Keynotes

The 2010 Global Education Conference

5 daysAround the Clock


The Global Education Conference that has taken place during International Education Week for the past two years has been the most profoundly challenging, exhilarating, rewarding, and exhausting professional experience of my life to date was this event. I never thought Steve Hargadon and I would pull this off.

How many of you saw a session?Any of you present?

2010 - Brian Mannix


The back story is a little fuzzy in our memories, but to the best of my knowledge, Steve first approached me at Educon 2010 about creating a significant education event leveraging our respective online communities, the Global Education Collaborative and Classroom 2.0 as well as Elluminate (now called Blackboard Collaborate), a video conference service for which Steve is a consultant. He asked me what we could that would be BIG, taking advantage of the collaborative properties of Elluminate. My response was that we should do an online conference, similar to the K12 Online conference, but entirely in Elluminate. Our idea stagnated for awhile, until Steve attended the CoSN conference that March and was inspired to start moving on this project by CoSN Executive Director, Keith Krueger.

Called it the Global Education Conference, our intent was to facilitate a collaborative and world-wide community project designed to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities.

Steve and I coordinated our event to coincide with International Education Week 2010. From the start, we wanted this to be as inclusive as possible and we ended up with over 400 sessions and 60 keynote presentations taking place around the clock for five days. Presenters hailed from over 60 countries. All of this content is archived and freely available to anyone with an internet connection. We expect stats to be about the same for the 2011 conference as well.

About 6 months beforehand, we started to build this event, enlisting the help of hundreds of volunteer educators worldwide and an advisory board was led by Julie Lindsay, an international school educator currently based in Beijing. We also partnered with over 100 global education organizations who were charged with submitting presentations and for spreading the word.

Behind the scenes, our plans were developed using Wikispaces, Google Docs and Forms, Sites, Calendars and a clever tool called You Can Book me which allowed our session presenters to book their presentation slots directly on a Google calendar. The resulting schedule let you see sessions in your time zone at any given time.

Teachers and students discussed their projects and show examples of student work.

Brian Mannix told about using the novel and movie Pay It Forward to inspire his student to do good works via organizations such as Kiva and Heifer International. He even brought the author in to speak to the conference attendees, and representatives from Kiva and Heifer in addition to his students.

A Polar Bears International scientist presented from a tundra buggy near Churchill, Manitoba.

A private school in Portland, Oregon, explained how they went global on their campus.

In 2011, many more sessions inspired me including keynotes by Pam Allyn of Litworld, Greg Jacobs of Louder Than a Bomb, and the Shoah Foundation.

2010 - Polar Bears International


2010 - Catlin Gabel School• Program Information


2011 - Pam Allyn - LitWorld


2011 - Greg Jacobs - Louder Than a Bomb


2011 - The Shoah Foundation


Steve Hargadon


By the time the conference closed the first year, Steve and I were a bit punchy to say the least as we spent the entire week glued to our computers.

It’s hard to describe the feeling in a virtual room, but the closing session vibe was remarkably jubilant. People shared their experiences and suggestions, and it was really rewarding to hear these stories.

Some people may brush off technology as a de-humanizing force in our world, but I can assure you of the opposite. This event bonded people and given the locations of participants, I don’t think this would have been possible without technology.


In 2010, my then 8 year old came home from school shortly after the conference ended, and I announced happily that my event was over. He pointed to the blue armchair in our living room, and said, “Now you can leave that chair!”.


This is some of the feedback we received that justified my feelings.

Reactions to the conference have been really positive, and it’s also been interesting to hear how people took advantage of the conference. I recently heard that one school in Los Angeles devoted a classroom and projected various sessions continuously through the school day. Teachers could stop by during their prep or lunch periods to take part in the conference.

I have truly enjoyed this experience. I've been able to get the benefits of a conference- collaboration, brainstorming, samples of work amidst the regular workday. And there is something to be said about sitting with a cup of tea from your own kitchen while listening to new ideas.

Listening to presenters made me proud to be a teacher. They are so clearly professionals, and teachers in the US have been pummeled lately. So it was wonderful to remember why I teach, and to "be" with like-minded teachers.

It really makes the world feel small.

This conference brings the world to a developing country where teachers work against huge odds with few to no resources. Their determination is exemplary. Without such conferences their story would be missed by many.

Wow - what an incredible concept! And, at the same time, why isn't all learning like this?!I think this is the future of professional development!


This is some of the feedback we received that justified my feelings.

Reactions to the conference have been really positive, and it’s also been interesting to hear how people took advantage of the conference. I recently heard that one school in Los Angeles devoted a classroom and projected various sessions continuously through the school day. Teachers could stop by during their prep or lunch periods to take part in the conference.

Lessons Learned Along the Way


So, how did I get this place where I had the good fortune to participate in such a rich event? I’ve thought a lot about this and for me, The Global Education Conference was the culmination of lessons learned over the past few years. These lessons are:

•Time is of the essence.•Our children (or grandchildren or kids we love) are our litmus tests.•Professional generosity benefits everyone.•Our physical, emotional and cognitive boundaries need to be extended.

What are we waiting for?

Text


The Global Education Conference was the pinnacle of a relatively new journey I’ve taken in education. Because of various experiences, I’ve arrived at a place where I believe that global connectedness plays a very important role in modernizing education.

Let me preface this by noting that I am not the savviest world traveler, nor a speaker of many languages, nor a real expert in global education. My passion is for connecting people and educational innovation; global education is a part of that.

For me, it starts with Julia and Henry. My school-aged kids don’t have the luxury of waiting for change. Via my travels as a consultant and through new media, I interact with people all over the world, listening to their stories about what’s happening in their classrooms and secretly hoping my kids will have the same opportunities in their classrooms. My role as a parent needing information on best practices underlies all that I do, and I can tell you from my experiences that we have a long way to go in this country in terms of raising global awareness.

Practice professional generosity.


One factor that fuels my work is what I consider my moral obligation to be professionalgenerous. Sharing what I know leads to learning from others and these mutually beneficiallyrelationships lead to change. I think it’s especially important that we all practice professionalgenerosity as teachers are currently under close scrutiny.

Several years ago, I complimented a colleague on her groundbreaking work in educationaltechnology, and suggested that she blog about her experiences so that others could learnfrom her. She replied, “That might be how you do things, Lucy, but it’s not for me. I get 25emails a day from people asking me questions, and they can learn it just like I did. RTFM.” Ivowed at that moment to never develop a similar attitude and this professional generosity hasbeen an underlying theme in all of my work.

Through the Global Education Conference, I’ve seen this concept come alive. We had a virtualconference lounge where people could come for help and volunteers gathered there to beassigned sessions to moderate. These moderators often jumped in to fill holes in ourschedule. My favorite story was when my friend and mentor Larry Anderson stopped by tocheck out the conference and was so moved by the sessions that he viewed the moderatortraining video and started helping out around the clock.
















Push your boundaries.36Wednesday, February 1, 12

During the course of my work, I have also learned, too, that it’s scary to push beyond one’s own comfort zone, but the rewards are worth it.

This picture of barbecued stingray in Singapore reminds me of this... I am not one of those people who relishes new foods, but I know that I’m going to miss out if I don’t take a bite. That’s how I feel about global education... if we don’t connect schools, our kids are going to miss out on rich and authentic experiences.

See the world and understand.37Wednesday, February 1, 12

In 2006, a trip to Berlin, Dresden and Prague with Apple Distinguished Educator colleagues also influenced me. We were charged with creating a global awareness curriculum using digital artifacts from our experiences and I came to the very basic realization that given the state of technological advances, at least here in the US, there is no excuse for NOT connecting.

How can we can we expect students to understand the world without seeing it in person or through virtual experiences? How can we expect students to engage with the world unless we model it? How can we truly understand others if we never interact with them?

http://globaleducation.ning.comThe Global Education

Collaborative & Conference38Wednesday, February 1, 12

In 2007, inspired by the success of Steve Hargadon’s Classroom 2.0 social network whichnow has over 50,000 members, I decided to create a similar community focused on globaleducation. The Global Education Collaborative has a members of approximately 10,000 peoplefrom over 100 different countries. Anyone with an interest in developing projects, sharingresources, and bringing attention to global initiatives is welcome to participate. Our goal is toserve as a central location for connecting and finding resources that promote connections foradults and students alike.


As I started brainstorming for this presentation in late 2010, I serendipitously received a tweetfrom New York educator George Haines. He put me on the spot for a 140 character answerand my response was:

It's because we have urgent problems that need to be addressed and in order to prepare ourstudents to work on these problems, we must connect them globally. We must teach themhow networked learning leads to networked problem solving.

I think often of Jean-Francois Rischard’s work, High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years toSolve Them and he makes it clear that these pressing issues are not going to be solved inisolation. Solutions lie beyond borders and the global community must rally.

@oline73: Can you distill why globally connected classrooms are vital in 2010? (More than say, 30 years ago)





@oline73: Can you distill why globally connected classrooms are vital in 2010? (More than say, 30 years ago)

It's because we have urgent problems that need to be addressed and in order to prepare our students to work on these problems, we must connect them globally. We must teach them how networked learning leads to networked problem solving.





Need Further Evidence?40Wednesday, February 1, 12

If you need further convincing, look at just what has happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain andLibya. Consider the role of technology in informing and empowering the voices of many whowould have been drowned out 30 years ago.

During the Egyptian protests, my friend Atif who teaches in Cairo sent me this tweet. At first, Ididn’t quite get what he was asking because I think everyone in the US generally knew of theevents unfolding. It occurred to me later that the news is heard here, but I wonder how wellpeople listened and truly understood the perspective of people living in Egypt. I think thedesperation I read in Atif’s tweet came from years of experiencing partial truths and inactionagainst injustice... he was really saying, I think, was, “Make people listen and act”.

I also think that because of social media, our students will continue to be exposed to globalevents as they unfold, and it’s up to us as educators to prepare them to analyze andparticipate for these situations.


I took this picture of an arbor of trees outside the Berlin Jewish Museum in 2006 when I visited Europe with my ADE colleagues. To me it represents my global awakening. I realized that it’s never been easier to connect with others using the technology tools at our disposal. If I can reach out and connect with others around the world, so can you. It’s your obligation to do so with your students.

I’m going to pretend that I won the TED Prize and here’s my wish for you.

Get connected and come join me on this journey in the Global Education Collaborative and at the 2012 Global Education Conference which will take place November this year!

Lucy Grayhttp://lucygrayconsulting.com

Slides available at:http//lucygray.org

Twitter: elemenousEmail: [email protected]

2010 Global Ed Conference2011 Global Ed Conference
