A global classroom collaboration

Over the last month or so my students have been participating in a global classroom collaboration. This has been an exciting foray into my first proper collaboration of this sort, and was initiated via a Twitter conversation with a colleague, Jodie, in the USA. 

A screenshot from the Flipgrid web app.

The plan for the initial lesson can be found here. Briefly, we each had our classes do research about our respective local biomes, surroundings, and cultures. The students then developed clues relating to their research. I had my students write the clues out as scripts which would form the basis of video messages they recorded using the Flipgrid app. The students in my colleague's class then viewed the videos, and my students viewed theirs. The students then submitted written questions to each other using Padlet, with which to try & glean more information in order to guess the location of each other's school. The great thing about this approach is that it can be done asynchronously, avoiding any difficulties arising from being in very different time zones. 

I was very impressed with the level of engagement my students showed during the development of their clues, and they put a lot of thought into them. Since they are English language learners I assisted them with the development of their scripts, mainly just to remove words or phrases that would give away our location too easily.

The next lesson I had students download the free Flipgrid app onto their smartphones and enter the hashtag for our collaborative grid. This had been set up previously by Jodie, using her paid Flipgrid account. Once the grid has been set up, anyone can be invited to upload short video recordings to it via the app. These subsequent users do not pay any additional sign up fees. We experienced no problems downloading the app or accessing the class grid. 

I let my students find somewhere quiet to record their videos, and made sure they used areas where there were no distinguishing features that would have given their location away. They rehearsed their scripts briefly, then recorded and uploaded their video messages to Flipgrid. This was a very straightforward process, with no technical difficulties presented by using the app to record the videos. 

My students spent a number of periods working on this project, and were very engaged and actively participating throughout. Overall, their feedback from an evaluation questionnaire they completed following the project was extremely positive, as exemplified by the following comments (verbatim):

• I learned a lot from the Flipgrid project, one of them being to not use the country or places you live as a barrier for your learning
• I learned about biology in other country, such as climate and biomes. I also got to know their culture and lifestyle which is very interesting. 
• I learned both of biodiversity in Thailand and Texas that I've never known before.
• This project should continue. I really enjoyed it and I'm sure other students will enjoy it too.

The one drawback to this project was its timing, in that we began just before the Christmas/New Year break, and one of my students noted in their evaluation feedback following the project that this had had a dampening effect: 'May be not to use during the holidays? It was so exciting at first but then they had their holidays followed by our breaks so we kinda forgot about it'. This was a fair point, but as we all know the reality of school schedules means that we can't always fit things in where we would like. In the future, though, I would try to avoid spreading an activity such as this over an extended break. 

I have seen some educators criticise global classroom collaborations as being undertaken simply because technology now allows this. However, based on my students' own comments, together with my observations, this approach does seem to have positive learning outcomes. I feel that the main content-driven learning occurred during the initial lesson, when students were developing their clues relating to their local environment, such as which biome they are located in. The learning which took place in subsequent lessons related more to language skills, for example my ELLs trying to understand native English speakers talking at normal speed. It also offered students in their different countries cultural insights to see what their differences were and also their similarities - would the US teenagers have guessed that Thai teenagers' favourite foods were pizza and pasta for instance!

Overall, I feel that this was a successful activity, both in terms of the content learned and the level of student engagement. I would be happy to hear others' views on this, or similar undertakings that they have done. 

Education towards global competence in the 21st century

Background

Last week saw the inaugural education conference at my school's parent university, the first Srinakharinwirot University Conference in Education (SWUICE). The theme of the conference was 'Education towards global competence in the 21st century'. 

The keynote speech on the first day was given by Professor Roger Moltzen, Dean of Education at Waikato University, New Zealand. Professor Moltzen gave a very interesting address, outlining what he considered to be the necessary elements for an education that would provide learners with the opportunity to become globally competent citizens. Although there were some other interesting speakers and sessions at the conference, in this post I would like to reflect on Professor Moltzen's keynote address, because he touched on some points that I think are at the heart of a number of debates in education at the moment. 

Professor Moltzen outlined what he considered a globally competent citizen might look like. Some of the attributes of a globally competent citizen which he identified are I suspect attributes which many educators have been instilling in their learners for many years. However I think there are some ideas, especially those relating to globalisation and technological advances, which are going to become increasingly important for learners in the 21st century. Therefore I think it is worth reproducing his ideas here. 

What does a globally competent citizen look like?

• Can understand and appreciate, but also critique, their own culture, language & history
• Is informed & engaged with matters of social justice equity & inclusion
• Looks for and finds purpose in their lives
• Their disposition towards learning is more important than their hard knowledge due to rapid changes in knowledge & information
• Is prepared to take a stand & take a road less travelled
• Is opinionative & prepared to be contentious (we should be actively encouraging students to develop their own points of view)
• Is able to make appropriate decisions about when, where & how to express their views & act on their convictions
• Is ethical, behaves with integrity & takes responsibility for their actions
• Is aware, curious & interested in learning about the world & it's peoples
• Is committed to environmental sustainability, both locally & globally
• Understands the why, not just the how, of social, cultural, ethnic, linguistic & religious diversity
• Is cross-culturally sensitive, informed & confident
• Speaks at least two languages
• Has well developed people skills - emotional intelligence (how do schools deal with this?)
• Thinks & acts critically, creatively, & caringly
• Has well-developed problem solving skills, & approaches tasks innovatively & laterally
• Is open to new ideas & seeks out multiple opinions, perspectives & approaches
• Listens & observes
• Can accommodate ambiguity, recognise complexity & is able to suspend judgement
• Realises that they can make a difference
• Is community-minded with a service orientation
• Understands the world through disciplinary & interdisciplinary eyes
• Is resilient 
• Identifies & creates opportunities for personal or collaborative action to improve conditions

Professor Moltzen further suggested that education is increasingly no longer about the right answers, but about asking the right questions. He described an example of an assignment he sets with his students, where the students submit a question of their own, which they then have to answer. The assignment is then assessed both on the quality of the question and of the answer. He stressed the key factor for him when assessing these assignments was the need for original thinking in the development of the question and the way in which it was answered. He also noted that students had initially liked this approach (thinking it was easy!), but as they moved into it more deeply, became aware that it wasn't as simple as it might have seemed at first. 

He finished with two key questions for us as the audience:

• How well do we as educators model global competence?
• How do we develop the attributes that produce globally competent citizens?

Analysis

A number of interesting points appear in this list, but I'll focus on two that stood out for me. The first is the idea that a disposition towards learning will become increasingly more important than storing knowledge within the individual. This resonates with connectivity theory, a theory of learning proposed by George Siemens in 2005 which incorporates both individual knowledge and knowledge contained within networks. As knowledge and information continue to increase exponentially, learners cannot possibly store these data within themselves, but need to know how to access, evaluate, and analyse them. 

The second point I found compelling was the idea that an interdisciplinary orientation will become increasingly important. This is something that various approaches in education are seeking to address, for example project-based learning and STEM/STEAM initiatives. However, with the confines of national curricula and high stakes examinations it is not always easy to incorporate these pedagogies. 

Summary

I think that in his keynote speech, Professor Moltzen identified some of the key issues that many of us as educators are increasingly thinking about. I certainly found myself agreeing with the attributes of a globally competent citizen which he described. The question I find myself asking, from a classroom practice perspective, is how to reconcile the need for content knowledge, curriculum requirements, and examination-style assessments, with the need to enable learners to become globally competent citizens. Are these two approaches even compatible, and if they are, in what ways can we best help our learners become globally competent citizens? 

Using citizen science to support global learning connections

Last week's #AsiaEd slow chat on Twitter discussed how we as educators can help our learners become globally connected citizens. As a follow-up I will outline what I think is a great way to do this, which is by encouraging students to get involved in citizen science. I have written previously about how I have introduced my students to citizen science, which is essentially science carried out by amateur, non-professional scientists. In this post I will outline various citizen science projects and websites which offer opportunities for students to participate in citizen science. I will also explain why I think these kinds of projects are useful for helping learners to become globally connected citizens. 

Dr Lin Chambers from NASA has a videoconference with students who participated in the S'COOL project.

NASA


NASA has a number of citizen science projects, for example the CloudSat and S'COOL projects. Students participate in these activities by making careful observations of the sky conditions - cloud cover, cloud types etc - then uploading these data to the respective project web sites. One of the aims of these projects is to reconcile surface observation data with observations made by sensors on satellites, in order to try and improve the accuracy of the sensors. By taking part in these projects students can make connections on a global scale. This includes making connections with the science, for example the global nature of climate science. It also includes making connections with a global community of both citizen scientists (other schools who are engaged with these projects) and professional scientists, for example NASA climate change specialists. Students at my school have participated in videoconferences with NASA scientists and with a school in the US which also participates in the S'COOL project.

A student presents some data for the NASA S'COOL project videoconference.

SciStarter

SciStarter is a very useful website which contains links to a large range of different projects in which volunteers can get involved. Their website has a search function that allows you to select and search for a variety of topics and activities. There are links to many different projects across a range of fields. 

Zooniverse

Another great website which has a variety of citizen science projects across a range of disciplines is Zooniverse. Projects include Snapshot Serengeti, where volunteers help to classify animals in photos taken by camera traps, and Asteroid Zoo, where work is conducted to identify near Earth asteroids. 

Journey North

Journey North is a website dedicated to monitoring wildlife migrations and seasonal change. It also has a number of resources for educators, such as activities, slide shows and teacher guides. 

Project Noah

Project Noah is an online tool for documenting biodiversity around the world. Anyone can join, and once signed up members can upload photos of wildlife they have taken, along with details of the organisms they spotted. This information can then be used by ecologists in various ways, for example to track the spread of invasive species, or to determine if climate change is having an impact on the geographic range of a species. 

Summary

Citizen science affords students the chance to make global connections between what they are learning in the classroom, and the community of practice of scientists. It also provides them opportunities to become globally connected with other learners around the world. There are many different citizen science projects with which learners can sign up to and get involved. By encouraging our students to engage in these kinds of activities we can provide fantastic opportunities both for learning about real science in an authentic fashion, as well as affording rich experiences for learners in a globally connected environment.