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You are Invited to Global Leadership Week 2016 - Tackk
April 25-29 http://globalleadershipweek.com
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Global Education Highlights (weekly)
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Global Education Highlights (weekly)
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Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Backchannel & Informal Assessment Tools Compared in One Chart
tags: backchannel education
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Climate Change - University of Exeter
A free online course that explores climate change - challenges and solutions.
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tags: education highered future innovation
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Global Education Highlights (weekly)
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The Dragon that Roars: The imperative of online global collaborative learning
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tags: leadership education change
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Global Education as a Context for Leveraging Ed Tech in Schools - GEC Network Musings - Medium
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Reimagining Professional Learning 2016 |
Excellent post by Tessa Gray about modern professional learning for edcuators.
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A new era of professional development? |
Derek Wenmoth, Director of e-Learning at CORE Education, New Zealand shares his thoughts about PD.
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Could be useful!
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(Digital) Identity in a World that No Longer Forgets | open thinking
Excellent blog post by Dr Alec Couros last year. Recently he has shared updates on Facebook about personal stolen identity via pictures online.
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How Students Can Use Solution Fluency for Article Writing
tags: education blogging digitalfluency
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Wood Shop Enters the Age of High-Tech - The New York Times
Has tinkering become a new pedagogy - interesting article.
tags: education makerspace pedagogy
Friday, February 12, 2016
Leading from the middle - is this the direction for education?
Or read more on Steve's Education Development Trust website and download the paper from there.
The essential discussion was about leadership for change and focused on middle level development of connected, networked and collaborative leaders. The reasoning? That bottom up and top down is not working in K-12 schools, therefore we need to be supporting the leader in the middle to affect this.
Some panel comments:
Michael Fullan:
- Good collaboration reduces bad variation - A school would join a network with a goal of reducing your own variation
- Leaders who do best participate as learners with others - when they do that they are learning a lot
- Need to develop a shared sense and depth of purpose about the work - by interacting on a regular basis
- Talking about FLAT organisation structures - organised collectively en mass - also connected autonomy
- Freedom in the middle to take initiative and work on agendas to improve the learning
- Democratisation of leadership
- Robust peer review - not about proving but about improving - challenges complacency - collective voluntary accountability
- To affect the three A's - Autonomy, Austerity, Accountability - the solution is 'collective autonomy' - neither bottom up or top down, voluntary but inevitable
- Visible learning - new #1 influence - critical factor is teachers’ collective efficacy
- System-wide school collaboration
- Impact - what do we mean by this - needs some external engagement
- Network is successful when it is not geographical - school network through UNiMelb - 26 schools - finally shared their data
- Notion of collective autonomy - easy to setup, tough to maintain, but failed. Each school wanted to claim the success and not share it, and each one wanted to have their own data.
- The research base shows TEACHER collective efficacy, not LEADERSHIP collective efficacy
As moderator Tony McKay suggested four areas of action: (in my shorthand)
- Need to go deeper and further for effective leadership
- Can we think more deeply about the network systems, structures and processes?
- Accountability is a network-based system deserves a lot more treatment
- Need to be more explicit about the theory of action
My brief response to the conversations and speakers:
- Leadership can come from any level and needs to be encouraged from all levels - the role of the Teacherpreneur, Outlier and Learning concierge is important to consider here
- Systemic change will not take place until teachers / leaders have more autonomy to do what they believe is best for learning. The discussion about collective autonomy is fascinating
- Education leadership today is synonymous with the ability to network, form and manage communities, understand collaboration and enhanced learning outcomes for teachers and students
- There is no point talking about leadership without assuming (do we all assume this now?) or at least referring to the need to be an online leader - digital fluency, networked learning, connectivist approach, online local and global collaboration - building online communities that function for better learning outcomes - these are all skills a 'leader' in education must have. This goes beyond knowing how to communicate online - it is deeper than developing a PLN and joining PLCs!
- and this one by Derek Wenmoth, A new era of professional development.
Sunday, February 07, 2016
Global Education Highlights (weekly)
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New Teachers Guide for Online Collaboration and Global Projects - iEARN Collaboration Centre
Excellent downloadable book on global projects and global collaboration produced by iEARN organisation
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Reinventing Curriculum: The Underlying Challenge to Moving Education Forward -- THE Journal
Interesting start to conversations about the future of education sans the textbook and plus mobile devices by Cathie Norrie and Elliot Soloway.
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These 39 Sites Have Amazing Stock Photos You Can Use For Free — Vantage — Medium
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Nominate now! ISTE Global Collaboration PLN Annual Award 2016 - ISTE
Nominations open until the end of February! Are you a global collaborative educator? Consider nominating for the #ISTEglobalPLN award