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Azhar's Reflections: Twitter in a new dress! I love this reflection from Azhar Youssef, an EFL teacher in Egypt who is so passionate and excited. This is what MOOCs are all about - connecting the world and finding the best wherever they are. Hat tip to my friend Lee Graham of #diffimooc who let me know about Azhar's work. This is her introduction video that she used for the Mooc work. I think that all teachers in the near future, are going to need to have an introduction video. Like a resume, you'll need it to use to introduce yourself when you participate in elearning projects. Do you have an intro flyer or video? Isn't it time? I love her smore flyer. (via Azhar's Reflections: Twitter in a new dress!) tags: teaching flatclass news mooc edreform highered all_teachers ...

Thoughts on Education I love this reflection from a teacher using the Flat Classroom 15 challenges as part of her coursework and studying the book Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. I love how the teacher reflects on learning and what it means to be in a network of learning. Look at the conclusions the teacher draws while comparing learning to other students. This is the kind of learning we need to do! I left this comment: "I Love it! "I am sold." Well, I'm here, and I wrote the book. Here's another benefit of what you're doing. By sharing openly, you connect with others around the same topic. One tip. I use Google reader and if you use it, you can go into settings and create a "bundle" and share it with others so they can subscribe to the same feeds too! ;-) Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for mentioning the name of the book so I could find you and respond. I subscribe to a google blog...

Add Read It Later to Google Reader’s Send To Dropdown – Updated « Pocket Blog If you want to send to Pocket from Google Reader, this is how - it is called read it later, but I'm pretty sure it is going to send to Pocket. tags: news productivity How To Make Content Creation More Efficient: Use An Idea Dashboard This article about brainstorming blog content is written for nonprofits but applicable to anyone. If you have a team brainstorming blog content, you should read and share this article. Journal and keep an idea list of what to blog about. tags: news education blogging Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

The Feedback You Need to Be Giving The idea that only positive feedback is needed is WRONG and this new research demonstrates the importance of positive feedback and criticism. This is worth a read and sharing between teachers. "Confusing, isn’t it? Thankfully, brilliant new research by Stacey Finkelstein (Columbia University) and Ayelet Fishbach (University of Chicago) sheds light on the seeminlgy paradoxical nature of feedback, by making it clear why, when, and for whom negative feedback is appropriate. It’s important to begin by understanding the function that positive and negative feedback serve. Positive feedback (e.g., Here’s what you did really well….) increases commitment to the work you do, by enhancing both your experience and your confidence. Negative feedback (e.g., Here’s where you went wrong….), on the other hand, is informative – it tells you where you need to spend your effort, and offers insight into how you might impr...

From left to right (seated): Father Zahm, Rondon, Kermit, Cherrie, Miller, four Brazilians, Roosevelt, Fiala. Photo taken in 1914. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I'm reading a completely engrossing account of Theodore Roosevelt's expedition up the River of Doubt in South America (See  The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey ), where he almost died, but made incredible strides forward for science. I've been soaking up biographies of great men and women since my friend Angela Maiers challenged me to find my "dream team." "You become most like the five people you ponder the most, who will those people be?" she said. When set back, Theodore Roosevelt always went into nature to meet some great challenge or danger. But not only did he go and hunt (as he did in Africa), his purpose in South America was to advance science. I think that there is a big lesson to take from "Teddy's" life. When beset by struggle and setba...

Facebook Partners With Suicide Prevention Group for Research Project In an interesting, but somewhat uncomfortable feeling research project, Facebook will partner with save.org to look at social data of those who committed suicide to see if there were warning signs. Of course, the question is... when they know, what do they do with it? If you see someone is likely to commit suicide - what do you do with that data? This is a question full of ethics worth debate and discussion. tags: news suicide facebook trends tumblr Facebook Wants to Answer Your Privacy Questions You can ask Facebook's CPO (Chief Privacy Officer) your questions. If you discuss digital citizenship with your students, they might have good questions to ask. tags: ...

eracism - Press release 13-1 ""The use of Facebook by students around the world to communicate with one another does more harm than good."" This is our topic for the Eracism 2013 project. You may wonder - why did we limit it to Facebook - well, after much-- yes, --- debate-- on our end, every good debate topic should have compelling topics on both sides - we wanted to have compelling discussions around social media and keep with the original spirit of the 4 students who envisioned this project. They wanted to debate topics of importance to promote cultural understanding. If you want to sign up, this is linked to the 2013 press release that will tell you how to enter a team from middle up to high school (there are 2 brackets). We debate asynchronously in a method we call "simulated synchronous" until the finals, when we have a synchronous live debate in blackboard collaborate.  tags: ...

Taming the Elephant: Awesome Evernote Tips and Tricks | Mactuts+ This post has some excellent tutorials on advanced features in evernote. I use saved searches all of the time in evernote. Some great tips here if you use evernote. tags: news productivity evernote Europe opens its online education to the world | Ghanamma.com Colleges and universities are entering an era of global competition with k12 schools not far behind. While I think it is likely that lower grade levels that require face to face contact will require more in person schools, it is likely that online elearning platforms, particularly for students who are disciplined and can learn in this format, will increase. Language learning, history, and more will be transformed as classrooms flatten and merge in ways we cannot begin to understan...

Project-Based Learning: Integrating Technology I had a great conversation led by Rae Pica and with Dr. William Bender, Suzie Boss, Anthony Cody as we briefly discussed project based learning. It was an enjoyable conversation (but a fast one). If you want to pick up some quick conversations about important topics.BAM radio is a great one to add to your podcast lists for the ride to school. I'm finding a lot of gems there. tags: pbl teaching best practices differentiation Mrs. Obach's Grade 1 Blog: Evernote: assessment, e-portfolio, notebook, organizer & more! Twitter conversations lead the most interesting places. Leah Obach is a first grade teacher who uses evernote to keep an efolio for each student. She creates templates and each child has a stack including p...

I hope you'll forgive the posts about upcoming projects in the Flat Classroom family but so many things are getting ready to start and some of you may not have heard about some of these projects. The Eracism project was invented by students at the first Flat Classroom conference in Doha Qatar and was voted up by the world of educators and students as being most needed. They were so right! Last semester we ran 4 brackets (2 middle school and 2 high school). The debates begin by debating on Voicethread and the finals are synchronous in Blackboard Collaborate. We're excited to be working with ObaWorld as a result of meeting Yong Zhao at ISTE this summer. We'll be beta testing this platform for use with future projects.  So, I copied an email that Julie Lindsay just sent out to our mailing list and am inviting any of you who would like to do this. It doesn't take a lot of time, but you do need to help students prepare to field a team. My classroom actually won the first c...

http://eagleeyecamera.wikispaces.com/ Aaron Maurer, a Flat Classroom Certified teacher, has started the Bald Eagle project that we are incubating. At Flat Classroom, our goal is to help foster and create powerful online learning projects. While our premier projects are run by teachers and require a small fee, the incubation projects are being incubated and supported by our other projects and efforts,so you can apply and join in. Here's information on the project. Aaron is top notch. tags: education history_teacher edtech elemchat news flatclass Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

I get tweets and emails asking "what is this Flat Classroom thing?" When you flatten your classroom, you remove the walls. You connect your students to others around the world in a level playing field where they collaborate, work together and learn from each other. The first project was based on Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat when Julie Lindsay was a teacher in Bangladesh and I connected my classroom in Camilla Georgia to co-create and co-author a wiki on the trends in the book and make videos that have contributors from the other side of the world.  After the first project won ISTE's Online Learning Award, and Friedman included us in the update to his book, teachers from around the world started joining in. It has grown into projects from Kindergarten through 12th grade and now we're working with preservice teachers as we look to see what that will look like. Teachers discuss how to connect globally on our Flat Classrooms Ning, open to any educator.  ...