ED 408, or Issues and Trends in Educational Technology, provides learners with an in depth instruction about the technology used for instruction all over the world. For this course, The Global Educator: Leveraging Technology for Collaborative Learning and Teaching by Julie Lindsay was used to guide and inspire us to become global educators. Throughout this course, students learned what is means to be a global educator, how to flatten the classroom and global connections, gained resources to connect with other educators, and even read case studies about different educators paving the way towards global collaboration. After equipping themselves with these resources, students were responsible for creating and designing their own Global Project similar to the ones showcased within the course text.
What is a Global Educator?
A global educator is when an educator adopts practices that include technology-infused and network-flowed habits to connect learners with the world and connect learning approaches from local to global. Global educators connect and share, "flatten" learning, encourage and model global citizenship, collaborate, use online technologies, and design futuristic learning environments to connect with the world. Global educators understand that learning can happen anytime and anywhere. They use social media to connect with other educators and are inspires by their colleague's success. Global educators are very thoughtful in how they craft their presence online and interact with others.Along with social media, global educators contribute to global discussions, blog, share forward thinking ideas, and use these sources to curate relationships. Global educators are forward thinking, driven, and are inspired by the world around them.
Check out this video of Julie Lindsay, a global educator, introducing her book The Global Educator!
How Do We "Flatten" Learning?
Throughout Lindsay's work, she often refers to global educators flattening learning. What does this mean to flatten learning? Flattening learning is when global educators learn with and from others in a global capacity. Flattening learning is all about global citizenship and breaking through stereotypes to accept others as equal learning partners.Through flat learning, student-centered learning and personalized learning is a natural outcome. To flatten learning, global educators use Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, wikis, and video, along with social media to connect, collaborate, communicate, and co-create. Global educators flatten learning by becoming the bridge to global journeys.
Case Studies
Throughout the course, students had the opportunity to read through several case studies about global educators who are flattening learning all around the world. My favorite case study from this course is about Karen Stadler and The Traveling Rhinos Project. The Traveling Rhinos Project, or TRP, started to bring awareness to rhino poaching in South Africa. Stadler had five unique rhino stuffed animals that were sent out to five different countries to reach classroom around the world. These rhinos were sent to classroom and schools and also brought a journal with them for each class to contribute to. These journal entries would later be added to a wiki page created for the project. Currently, rhinos are in the following countries: USA, China, South Africa and Australia. Since December of 2012, the rhinos have visited over 100 classes. The project was originally suppose to be a year long, but has been extended due to high demand.
Global Project Design
After learning about global educators, how to flatten global learning, and read through inspiring case studies, the final project for the course was to create and design our own global project plan. The project I created is the Country Class Website.