“We are forging new pedagogies.” (Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds)

After completing a 12-week course that taught me how to flatten my classroom walls and design successful global collaborative projects, I am now a Flat Connections Global Educator (I think that’s the correct terminology?)!

In this course, I met a very supportive cohort of wonderful educators from around the world, as we were encouraged and cajoled by the inspirational Julie Lindsay. Julie is a wonderful teacher and she takes great delight in sharing her knowledge and helping others learn. She has adopted a mentoring role with me and she and I will be co-presenting on ‘global competence’ at ISTE14 in Atlanta.

In the course, I really enjoyed the focus on student voice and choice, digital citizenship, learning spaces, and the celebration of learning milestones. I found the co-created project for teachers challenging, as my competence with video is low, but it was sure worthwhile to see how my students might struggle with assigned tasks, and also how I could construct tasks more tightly.

My final project design idea was for a World War II History project. The aim is to record people’s memories of what it was like to live during World War II and to compare and contrast these memories across different countries. I am particularly keen to establish contacts with countries that Australia has a contested history with, like Japan or Vietnam.

My aims in undertaking the course were firstly for my own learning, but secondly to help prepare me for the 2014 Flat Connections Conference, which we are hosting at my school in Sydney. Educators and students will be coming together from across the globe to learn how to lower classroom walls and connect with the world. The theme of the conference is ‘What’s the other story?’ and it will explore alternative learning approaches, share stories that break stereotypes, and generate new thinking towards more interactive and collaborative approaches. We hope to see you and your students at the Flat Connections Conference 2014