Preparing Future Teachers to be Connected Educators

Friends,

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I have a challenge and I am turning to my PLN to try to address it.

As you know, I teach Instructional Technology at the University of Northern Iowa.  We teach both undergraduate (future teachers) and graduate (present teachers) about how to use technology to support learning.  It is much more than technology.  It is about building a mindset to use teaching/learning strategies that optimize the opportunities available through technology.

We need to develop Connected Educators.  Our undergraduates are connected through social media, but they don't see how this can be used for a professional purpose.  They are unaccustomed to connecting with people around the world to learn from other practitioners.

Our challenge: We are trying to trying to develop learning activities where they will actually engage with other educators through social media. It has to be something more than connecting with other students in the class because they see them face-to-face a couple of times per week. It needs to be more than following hashtags.  Experiencing a globally collaborative project is good, but I am looking at changing a mindset. It needs to be something where they are experiencing this type of connection in such a way that it carries on into their professional lives.

This is where I am calling upon the greater knowledge base of the many. YOU.

What do you do with your students and teachers?  How do you, as a connected educator, connect with other professionals as part of your daily routine.  What are some suggestions that you might have for activities/experiences that we might use with our future and present teachers to foster them toward being Connected Educators?

Thank you for your response.

Leigh Zeitz

Please forward this to your colleagues or others you believe would have an idea about this.

Have You Seen the Taxonomy of Global Connection?

In their 2012 book, Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time, Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis created a Taxonomy of Global Connection that shows a hierarchy of 5 different levels of online interaction.  It begins with connecting students in a class using Web 2.0 tools and ends with students managing their own global connections with other learners across the world. 

The interesting part of this hierarchy is that it isn't just about the technology.  It has multiple strands of complexity:

• Geographic Location: This strand begins within the classroom and then extends into the school/district and finally traverses the globe.
• Project Management: The second strand involves who is in control of the interactions.  The bottom two levels are local interactions controlled by the classroom teacher.  The middle level involves an online global collaborative experience that is managed by an external educator or group of educators.  The top two levels involve student-to-student connections in an effort to achieve agreed upon goals.  Level 4 is managed by teachers who manage, facilitate and monitor the project as well as managing the timeline.  Level 5 uses teachers as facilitators but the students are actually running this peer-to-peer project.

This is a fascinating way to look at global learning.  How does it fit your collaborative projects or your idea of how global collaborative projects should be organized?

Z

Telecollaboration: Connecting Classroom Across the Globe

I was just reading Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, where he is asking for resources in connecting classrooms around the globe. Telecollaboration is an important opportunity that enables students to talk and write with other students in other cultures. Sometimes it even involves monumental activities like when classrooms from around the world follow an explorer who is trekking to the north pole.

My favorite site for finding telecollaborative projects it the Global School Network. This organization in southern California has been sponsoring and connecting telecollaborative project around the world for over 2 decades. The originators, Yvonne Andres and Al Rogers were pioneers in the technologies that connected classrooms even in the 1980 (e.g., FrEdMail).

Tonight, I am fortunate enough to have Yvonne Andres skyping into my classroom (in Iowa) from San Diego. She will be sharing her visions and experiences with us.

I will also be announcing the beginning of a Telecollaborative project that my class will begin with another class in Poznan, Poland. This is the GLEX project. I will be sharing our GLEX project with you as time progresses.

Share Your Ideas

Dangerously Irrelevant is asking for sites and if you know of any, please add them to the list.

I am interested in whether or not you have been involved in a telecollaborative project yourself (or know of anyone who has done this.)

Here are some questions that you might want to use to help guide your response.

• Have you been involved in a telecollaborative project before?
• How did you find the other classes that were part of your project?
• Did you originate it?
• What did you do?
• What ideas do you have for a telecollaborative project (even if you have never done one.)
  

I look forward to your comments.

Z