Dot Learnt

Where in the world are the globally minded? The Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning is headed to New York City June 29-30 to host its fifth annual Partnership for Global Learning Conference. This two-day event connects the business-minded with the academic-minded and the policymakers with the resource providers to dissect best practices and enhance global partnership in education.

The conference looks to create a platform where policies can prosper that ensure the upcoming generation of leaders are capable of managing an interconnected world. It’s an ultimate one-stop shop for those seeking to learn from top-ranking education innovators, leading teachers from high-performing countries and policy makers who plan on sharing their models of success.

This year’s key note lineup boasts world-renowned journalist Dan Rather, Lucy Gray, co-chair of the Global Education worldwide conference, Steve Hargadon (Web 2.o Labs/Global Ed Conference), Lucy Gray (Global Ed Conference), Julie Lindsay (Flat Classroom Project) and other avant-garde ed-thinkers. (more…)

About a month ago, I talked TED – with the advent of TED-Ed, I was super pumped to hear the voices of brilliant educators around the world.

I decided to check back in on the site a few days ago, and to my delight, the site was up, running and transforming education as I have come to know it.

I clicked on the first lecture that caught my eye: The Power of Simple Words.

The 2-minute micro lesson starts off with Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz chanting, “No coordinates exist like one’s domicile,” (get it?) to drive home the point that, bigger words does not necessarily mean, better.

We are currently in a day and age where we are competing with a whole world of distractions, “constantly fighting for space in an attention span that’s continuing to shrink across generations,” as the animated film points out. It got me thinking … are educators getting the message, that short is sweet?

Upon completing the lecture, viewers are guided through an online mini-curriculum.  A “Quick Quiz” tests you on the material in the video, “Think” issues a critical thinking question, while “Dig Deeper” provides a community project and additional resources that expand on the subject matter.

It is important for educators to know their audience. In a world where students are increasingly teched-out, teachers should speak to students in the language that they know. It was only last week that our Literacy Research Resident, Nelly Elzayat introduced us to a teacher’s assignment that had students summarizing Shakespearian passages into a text message. Check out the full post, Trading a Tweet for your GPA.

For more on our thoughts on TED, check out Bon Education’s Co-Founder and CEO – Anna Batchelder’s piece on educators and mass marketing in Coke is it! Why all Educators should be Mass Marketers.

So I guess I am here to say two things, keep it simple and

Keep Calm and Learn On,

Nora

Facebook 

Twitter

The world’s problems have become our problems with the advent of social media. Collaboration between problem-solvers and idealists span the Web, pooling together ideas, funds and strategies to alleviate the world’s most daunting challenges.

In an effort to inspire human-centered design, HCD Connect has emerged as a platform for individuals to build off of empathy, observation and listening in order to design solutions for anyone out in the world who needs it. Think of it as a sort of Facebook for do-gooders.

The HCD Toolkit, available in a hard copy form or digitally online for free, provides nonprofits, social enterprises and people who work with low-income communities around the globe with a problem-solving guide.

It is the social aspect of the site and organization that really caught the attention of my tech-seeking eyes. The website offers a social network for those interested and engaged in a cause, as a means to share stories of their work and for potential collaboration. By simply inputting your location and interests from a dropdown menu, you find others participating in a similar context.

Looking to connect with people in Asia working on environmental projects? Abrar Hassan – a filmmaker and social entrepreneur working in Karachi, Pakistan on issues at the nexus of community development and the environment – popped up on my search.

(more…)

Desmond Diggs, part of the Teach for Liberia Initiative, weighs in on bringing the Teach for America model into a post-conflict developing context. Find out what tech and teachers are doing for the first African country to experiment with the TFA model.

0 – 10 Seconds: Tell our readers a bit more about what inspired you to get involved with Teach For All? What led you to your decision to become an educator?

I left Liberia over 20 years ago as a result of a civil war that lasted nearly 14 years. I’ve always known that I wanted to return and use whatever skills and talents I had to help in the rebuilding efforts, even though I was unsure of what that contribution looked  like.  I saw firsthand so many of the success stories that came out of Teach For America in the face of seemingly impossible odds, and Liberia posed a context that was just as challenging. More importantly, I came to understand how education was the foundation for any country’s revitalization, and that Liberia needed a program like Teach For America to dramatically alter the paths of kids.

10 – 20 Seconds: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced upon implementing the Teach For All model in the post-conflict developing context of Liberia?

Teach For All has implemented successful models in twenty-three countries in the last ten years, but a model has never been adapted in Africa to date. As I was repatriating and familiarizing myself with Liberia after twenty years, I also had to be sure to navigate the unique challenges of the African context.

Across the network the vision is the same in every country: “one day all children will have access to an excellent education.” However, in Liberia the majority of students struggle with challenges as basic as access and attendance. Moreover, because the country is post-conflict, nearly every basic social service is being built from the ground up. Figuring out the best way to start and how to navigate these deep challenges has caused lot of setbacks, but has also been a daily learning experience.  (more…)

Today, we pass the digital pen over to our Literacy Research and Education Outreach Resident, Nelly Elzayat. Currently based in Cambridge, MA and a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Nelly is studying and working extensively in the realm of international education. In today’s post, Nelly shares with us her latest research on digital literacy and it’s integration into curricula both domestically and globally. You may read her report in it’s entirety by checking out Using Digital Literacy to Enhance Adolescent Literacy.

Today’s adolescent reader is engaged with digital texts that range from electronic books to websites to mobile phone texting (Larson, 2009),  yet our middle school and high school classrooms do not reflect this component of adolescent life. Textbooks continue to be predominantly in print, and the main mode of communication between the teacher and the student is face-to-face interaction that occurs mostly in the classroom. Nevertheless, some educators have managed to capitalize on the predominant technological aspect of adolescents’ lives to raise student motivation levels, and in turn enhance their literacy skills.

Sheelah Sweeny (2010) describes a US literature teacher who sent her class an assignment to summarize a Shakespearian passage through a mobile text message, and required the class to respond in the same way. Another teacher required his students to post a minimum number of tweets each week. The result was a strong sense of community among members of the class. (more…)

When big names like Harvard University and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation get together, you know things are going down. Edtech things that is.

Last week the 2012 Hewlett OER Grantees Meeting took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, bringing together key stakeholders to address powerful questions regarding Open Educational Resources and open education.  With 6 main goals in mind, the conference sought to understand and address the following:

1)    Deepening the understanding of OER systems and the factors that influence accessibility

2)    Identify ways to increase OER’s impact across cultures

3)    Communicate field-wide goals

4)    Increase visibility of OER projects among grantees

5)    Enrich a community of practice through conversion

6)    Develop an action-oriented roadmap to leverage OER’s impact on education (more…)

Abu Dhabi’s “least visited facilities” in government schools are getting a makeover. Libraries are turning into Learning Resource Centres. The once-drab destinations will be equipped with class facilities, activity and research centers and a library of over 3,000 English AND Arabic books, magazines and newspapers – all with a multimedia glaze.

A study conducted by the Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research found that around 70% of Grade 12 students enrolled in government schools had rarely or never set foot into a library. Meanwhile, an Emirates Foundation-funded study found that half the 350 Emirati boys surveyed had fewer than 50 books at home.

(more…)

News on the street last summer was that the government of South Korea would be making moves to replace all hardback textbooks with electronic readers and their digital equivalents by 2015. With a $2.4 billion price tag, the Ministry of Education reports that they would be raising and teaching students who would be “equipped for the future.”

In recent days, the government has had some second thoughts, spurred by resistance to the program from South Korean educators.

In a world that is becoming increasingly teched out, why are some governments backing out? South Korea – one of the world’s most wired nations – is starting to think that digital devices are becoming too pervasive and that, “young students won’t have as much time to experience real life and real things.” (more…)

TED has always had a knack for capturing learning on the edge, exposing the world to game-changing ideas and speakers. Their latest initiative, TED-Ed, is an online video-lecture site meant to amplify the voices of brilliant educators across the world.

Working in a partnership with Youtube, top-notch educators will sync up with talented animators to craft a collection of question-inducing videos. These recorded lesson plans will explore a wide range of topics, enabling life-long learners around the world. (more…)

As a Literary Advisor at Bon Education and an Educational Diagnostician, Sue Ogden weighs in on the role of literature, language acquisition, and creativity in a tech-enhanced and infused world. Her work with literature and language has taken her from helping out in literacy programs in prisons to working in international backdrops to enhancing reading skills amongst students on movie sets. For the low down on how her experiences working with urban communities inspired her work in emerging markets, read on. 

10-20 Seconds: What’s the deal with being a Literary Advisor. Share with us your story on how you got to where you are today.

I went to school to be a High School Social Studies teacher. I found the field was flooded with lots of excellent teachers, and there was little room to be a true problem solver in these affluent schools where I taught.

I found a greater need for content rich teachers to support reading instruction in urban communities. It was here that I found that the problems that children in urban communities in the USA face are similar to the problems that students in emerging markets face, and thus decided to pursue the path of becoming an expert on literacy acquisition.

20 – 30 Seconds:  The ideal title of an e-book regarding your philosophy on life, literature and education. 

“The Five People I met in Prison”- I have met some of the most interesting people in prison, and they have all helped me find joy in the smallest snippets of life. They truly find joy in the little things, a colored pencil, a black pencil, being able to mop the floor on their birthday as a way to get out solitary for an extra hour. They get so excited about the smallest things. This makes it hard for me to come home in a bad mood, as I am constantly surrounded by a need to be grateful.  (more…)