 Welcome on behalf of the K-12 online conference. This year's conference has taken a new form. We're delighted to be hosting the first of a series of panel discussions based on the keynote presentation, or should I say, presentations for the conference. Julie Lindsay created the three-part pre-conference keynote, Global Narratives Collaboration on the Edge, which we will be discussing today. Feel free to put comments and questions in the chat. I'm Susan Van Gelder, part of the organizing committee, and I'm joining you from Montreal and Quebec, Canada. On our panel, we have Julie Lindsay in Ocean Shores, New South Wales, Australia, Amy Jambour and her former student Lauren Bayer from Wisconsin. We have Lee Zites from Iowa in the U.S. Sonia Van, now I've forgotten how to pronounce your name. From Auckland, New Zealand. Thank you. We have Ann Merchan coming in any minute now from Hawksdale in the province of Victoria in western Australia. We have Sherri Williams from Ohio and Lucy Gray from Illinois. So I will turn things over to Julie to start and feel free, everybody, to chime in when you have comments, questions. We'd like to keep this as informal as possible. Thank you, Susan. That's great. And it's wonderful to be here with such an illustrious group of people, an illustrious group of global educators and global collaborators. And I'm very honoured, actually, to have this opportunity and for us to talk. And of course, it's not going to be just me talking. We're going to have lots of opportunities for everyone to have a chance to say what they would like to share. And I must say I did have great pleasure putting that trilogy together. Of course, typically me, you put up your hand to do things and I just love working with the K-12 online people. Thank you so much Susan and Karen and Wes and everyone. But I sat there last week thinking it's not going to be just one video. I think this has to be three because my husband's going, you've done it again. You put your hand up. But there's so much to say, isn't there? There's really so much to share and so much to say. But what we want to talk about now really is how is this working for us and we're in different places in the world. We've got levels of our careers and we've actually got one student with us at the moment. We're hoping to have another one. And we're pushing global education, global collaboration in different ways. And I think one of the important questions that I asked during the keynote was, what is online global collaboration and how do you talk about that in your own learning environment? And is it a pedagogy? Is it a curriculum? Questions around this. So who'd like to chip in first? Actually I'm going to go to Lee first. Lee, can you give us some thoughts? Because you're at the higher education level. What are you doing in terms of explaining online global collaboration? Thank you, Julie. Yes, I'm a professor of instructional technology at the University of Northern Iowa. And global collaboration is something I try to do in a number of my classes. I must admit that it isn't done a whole lot at the university level. I think that's really unfortunate because we are a global society. I mean, some people speak of isolationism and I don't like that idea. But the idea is we are a global society and we have to be building global citizens who get the opportunity to connect with one another. Interesting thing that I, if I can share a little story, I just last night, or no, I'm sorry, Tuesday night, I had a project where I was going to be working with another person in another state. And this person was going to be, we were going to do something, it was going to be an intercultural project where we were going to compare how they do things at that state compared to what happens here in Iowa. And this person had like 40 students he was going to deliver for us and we were all going to do a Zoom project and all that. And we were really excited and unfortunately one of his students showed up. I had about 18 other students and so I said, well, we'll just have to do something else. Well, I just received an email from one of my students today saying, you know what, why don't we just go contact all those Connecticut students and we'll make it run even though you don't have to, Dr. Z. So in other words, my students took over the whole process and what they want to do is they want to make that connection. That's the attitude that we want to see in our students and our future teachers. And we're seeing this in K-12 as well and there's a lot to be said about higher ed if we've got time today, but that bypassing the reluctant teacher, bypassing that war or jumping over that wall, if the teacher or the school's not going to make it happen, make it happen yourself. So I'm going to move to Amy, what are your thoughts? You're over there in Wisconsin, USA, what's happening over there? Yes, you know, global collaboration is really exciting having participated in it now for several years. When I started doing it eight years ago, it was, I'll be very honest, a little overwhelming, challenging, there was a lot to experience and learn. And I think the consistency and the commitment to global collaboration is incredibly important and I think the energy that comes out of that between teachers and students is incredible. I also feel that it just offers incredible relevancy as I talk to, I mean, I have taught several different courses in my career with students primarily between the ages of 15 and 18. And this is one piece of their work in school that they are not just learning about something off in the distance or something that's somewhat theoretical, but they are participating in it. So it's so incredibly authentic. And I will say this, I have, and it just happened again, I've had students who have been involved in global collaboration come to me afterwards and talk about how they don't feel as connected in school as when they were working globally with other students and teachers. I just had a student last week reach out to me, a student I had a couple years ago, asking me for a letter of recommendation, actually, and said, I certainly do hope that you are still working globally with your students. That was one of the best experiences I ever had. So I know that not only do they enjoy it while they're in the experience, but they see how incredibly important it was after. And even students who leave me in my classroom will talk about how that experience, they brought that in other conversations at the college level in applying for work experience. And maybe Lauren can even speak to this. Lauren has just left high school and is now at the university and can speak to what that experience is for her having been in the high school and now college classroom. Thanks Amy, and let's move to Lauren. Now Lauren, your experience in the Flat Connections Global Project was featured in part two of the keynote trilogy. And I did a bit of a top and tail on your wonderful award winning video. Actually you got the first place in the video awards last semester. But I'm just wondering, chair your experience, did you understand what online global collaboration was before you went into the project and how do you feel now? Over to you. Sure, thank you Julie. Hi everyone, my name is Lauren. I am currently studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Yeah, so I had worked on a couple different teams before I worked on the Flat Connections Project. But I will say that global collaboration is a completely different animal. I thought I had a pretty decent understanding of what global collaboration was. I think it's pretty self-explanatory but then at the same time there are a lot of things that you don't really take into account like little things like syncing up your team. And I had the opportunity to be a student leader for the team that I was working with for the project and I think that really did expose me to a number of other challenges like coordinating my team, schools were on different breaks at different times. We had different time zones completely. And just these little challenges that really kind of pushed us to work in more innovative ways. I thought to accommodate to everybody from all over and I mean there's the cultural side of it. We're all coming from different backgrounds so I appreciated that exposure and that sense and then that challenge. And I have used that experience a number of times. I've applied for a number of positions since I've come to school at UW-Madison and I've been able to draw on my time with Flat Connections a number of times just talking about the challenges that I faced but then also what I learned working with these teams and it was valuable at the time and it's continued to be really valuable and I mean like Amy said it was a really valuable experience that I do. I'm very glad that I was able to participate. So Lauren in your experience when you've graduated now you're in university so how do we get the message across to other teachers that this is important? How do we explain online global collaboration to others in all levels of education? Sure. I mean I think the soft skills that you gain from working globally they're so valuable. I mean I did learn a lot with the research project that I did. I was working on the project based off of the Horizon Report and I learned plenty through the research but I would not say that that was the biggest takeaway for me. I would say that it's that teamwork and that's something that you take into any job and I think the point of education especially at the earlier stages is to prepare students for college and then for the career and yes I remember the stuff that I learned from textbooks when I was in middle school and high school but so much more than that is like the experience that I gained from working on a team and I think that that's the focus for that should be the focus for educators is really preparing students to work on other teams because that's where the education comes in I think if you're trying to convince teachers that this is valuable for students to participate in kind of unconventional programs like this that's what you play off of the skills that you don't find in a textbook or you don't get through working on a worksheet in the classroom. Yes so it's those collaborative skills isn't it? Absolutely. And so the focus, I'm just trying to think whether we need to rename this I'm sort of thinking out of the box here online global collaboration still isn't getting enough traction in my view of course and of course these sessions help us to get the word out but so I'm going to move to Amy. Now Amy your students, I grabbed that video that your students produced a couple of years ago and put that into part two of the trilogy. Now they talk about similar things to what Lauren's just shared with us so what's your take on this? What are you doing to explain online global collaboration? You mean to my colleagues or you just to the students where I teach or? Sorry Amy I meant Sherry. Oh that sounds good. I mean throw to Sherry. So I'll ask the same question. Do you mean colleagues, students, both? Anyone, do you walk down the corridor saying hey I'm doing online global collaboration I'm just about to go to my class. How do you start a class when you enter a global project? How do you first introduce it? So what are your tactics? How did you inspire those students? I know Amy you were at the same school at once so that's why. You could jump in and answer this as well but we'll give Sherry a go. How did you inspire those students to actually, I know they came to you and said we want to create this video to share our experiences during the project. So how did you do that? Yeah in the very beginning we described what we kind of envisioned it to be and then we let them start talking to us about some things that they were experiencing some things that they wanted to experience possibly and we just start really sharing with them almost sometimes dreaming with them possibilities and then they just took off with it which was great that's the students. At the staff that do the same thing with our school they all know that we're doing global collaboration but that's because we're sharing I share a lot about different experiences students have had or described different things happening and they, you know it's interesting they think it's interesting they think it's really good they think it's very valuable but a lot of them have very reluctant to come in and join. Amy was one of the good ones that I got to work with. We started the journey together and it's been just a great thing to be able to walk through that and experience that collaboration and Amy I don't know if you want to share some things about that class too. I think what was exciting for the students too was their ability to feel like they had voice and choice right that they when you really tapped into what does this mean to you where do you see yourself applying this you know five ten years down the road and what did this experience really mean for you they were excited to share that it gave an opportunity for them to reflect on the experience and then to really recognize the fact that it was really them driving the whole experience of global collaboration I mean there were there were structures in place and there were guidelines but at the end of the day it was them. So we did have a guide line or structure started but we did give them the freedom to kind of take that in a few different directions as their interests or maybe the discussions their teams had those teams and the student leaders we tried to give them that freedom that they could take it in the direction that they wanted to as a team. So that was really important. Interesting. Lee I think I'm going to throw to you so now you had you had a bit of a comment or a question there based on. Well I had a question for Sherry and that was does this mean that I mean the way you talked about how you had the students kind of help generate the idea what does this because you simply had them generate the idea and you went out and tried to create something like that or did you have a pretty good idea in your eye in your head and you were trying to get them to steer them so that they would come up with an idea that would fit into what you already planned out. We had a base and then now I didn't really have a preconceived idea if they wanted to go somewhere we tried to let them go there but we did have a base to start from a place to start a starting point. Can you give an example of that? I mean it sounds like what you did is they came up with this idea I'd like to talk to somebody in Belgium and then you went out and you tried to find someone in Belgium. No this was actually within the flat connections project so we let them investigate for example different topics at the time when we started we were using different topics but like investigate the topics and then from there they developed their knowledge or they had to create a project together we let them decide what that would look like actually quite a few teams at one point wanted to do different projects and we let them have that choice so it was more of that type of thing I gave the ownership in the way in which they were going to accomplish what they were planning to do overall. That's right. The connections in the classrooms and the teachers were already connected we didn't have that base so what they did with that was their choice. So it's making those connections is so important first and then it's moving into that well what are we going to do with this connection and I know Lee that's what you work on as well at the higher ed level and the others in K-12 education work on that and then it's really I talk a lot about design designing that learning outcome and designing it so that it is meaningful I want to throw to Sonja over in New Zealand who's in a it's a bit like Hawaii isn't it because you're right on that edge of the time zone over there so it's quite unique in terms of how you interact with the world because it gives you a whole different perspective I think but Sonja is working at the primary level primary school level Sonja what are you doing in your school in Auckland? I'm Kia ora Julie and hi everyone and welcome for the opportunity I'm at Newmarket we are this year we've joined our junior school have joined a flat connection project with Julie and we've got children working with students in America and in Australia and again that time zone is interesting because we're struggling to get the three classes in the same time zone we don't have a window where they can all come in at the same time however we're just our teachers with the change in daylight saving we can do but at our school recently we've made connections with China using WeChat as a tool because we know that some of the tools that we generally use in our school won't work over there but WeChat does and so we connected with our sister school in Ningbo and we've connected with a local kindergarten school using WeChat and that was incredibly successful so that's our projects are about just making connections first but about really pushing that next level of collaboration and co-creating of something and experimenting with tools is so important isn't it and this is where the whole if you do want to collaborate with China you can't use Google you've got to find a way and that's so important for anywhere really you've got to find that set of tools that each partner or participant in the collaboration can work with and be involved in building multi-lingual education, global competency aren't you so you have a lot of things happening in your school particularly because New Zealand is also very multi-cultural Yes I was just explaining to the team before about even us at Newmarket School our interesting mix of where our students come from and often I think with global collaboration we are in a way because our children are so multi-cultural and have speak so many languages so it's great for our teachers to develop a greater understanding of that and to develop a greater understanding about where our children come from develop empathy for how they learn and a bit about their background that's what global collaboration does for us Yes so it strengthens understanding of who you are, where you've come from and then similarities and differences with others that's great there's a couple of questions I believe from our audience one is are more female teachers involved in leading global collaboration projects and classrooms than male teachers well that's a really interesting question and I know my doctorate research that I'm halfway through at the moment I've basically collected my data into that sort of data presentation and analysis mode everyone I've interviewed has been a female teacher and a lot of them are in their latter part of their career, second half of their career perhaps a little older but so that's and this is just one tiny piece of research so we need a lot more on that but I'm going to throw it to Lucy I know who's there with the global education conference and Lucy sees a lot of global educators and a lot of things happening there through the conference and through all the activities that the global education conference do so Lucy what's your take on this what would you like to contribute to this at the moment are you with us Lucy maybe she's not with us yeah so if you're trying to talk Lucy we can't hear you so try and mute again perhaps but you know it would be good to do some more extensive research actually in terms of you know people say to me oh it's the young teachers who must be picking this up but it's not it's not actually the young teachers who are picking this up it's the older more established teachers, teachers in their 50s and 60s who've been in the classroom for 25 to 35 years or at least 20 years who are really picking this up because I believe they have a deeper understanding of the pedagogy can I say something you know what I really think it is I think it has to do with empathy for students and your desire for what I mean what we're doing I mean I'm 63 I'm going to be around at this a little bit longer longer but the idea is that I mean it isn't about how old I am it isn't about you know what it is it's about my philosophy I'm here for the students and the way in which they're going to succeed in life is if I connect them with the world if I make it so that we're doing things where they are you know they're student related we empower the students and it isn't a matter of looking at stupid standards and tests you know and if you think about it the things that we can do and the things that the students learn like those students who just said we want to take this over so it'll work I mean that what greater compliment and excitement can a teacher get when the students want to take over your job and so I really think that when we take a look at this you know teachers have problems collaborating just door to door but the idea is if we can get it so we can connect and if we can you provide learning situations where the students are achieving and they're taking control of their lives and the things they learn that's what it's all about I climb off the soapbox there's another question that came through related to this of course are there personality factors that play into being successful global educators and you know we could start to build a case perhaps that women have more empathy as a rule with generalization here in terms of building communities collaboration etc and as a general rule perhaps male teachers have more empathy with you know coding all the other bits and pieces that are out there in education at the moment so just before anyone jumps into that a message from Lucy she's having trouble connecting she's lost audio so we may not have Lucy contribute she's trying to connect anyone else like to contribute to that that thought that perhaps the personality is it a more female type personality well I think there really needs to be the first thing that comes to my mind is flexibility and you know that can vary and I think about that new teacher and the expectation that oh this is something that's kind of taking off and it's new so it must be newer teachers and I do kind of believe that teachers who have been teaching for a while and are feeling comfortable and confident in their profession are really ready able to and anxious to tackle something that they know has such great importance and perhaps our younger teachers are a little bit overwhelmed by all of the things that they're learning and a lot of conversation around standards and learning targets and expectations in that regard I do sometimes unfortunately perhaps think that global collaboration or global project are seen as well that's one more thing I can't take on but in fact you can naturally embed that in the things that we teach and I have multiple certifications in the states teaching, reading, writing and the social sciences as well and there isn't a class that I teach that global collaboration does not fit in beautifully with the curriculum in addition to addressing and I would challenge multiple standards as far as teacher expectation absolutely and it's really getting to that conversation about the mindset isn't it so you know we can talk about gender based we can talk about age, we can talk about those things but it's really that mindset to be able to jump in and see a global opportunity pretty much in every educational setting Somya what do you think? I think that when the teachers come together and started the global collaboration I focus on the product but as I've developed with my own learning I realise it is about developing empathy and developing relationships with others and that is really the key for what is happening when we make connections and also for our children to do the same I think that as our children and our teachers across the time zones, across the ocean they learn about each other and they develop they develop an empathy and a clear understanding about humans human relationships anyone else? okay so just swinging back around to we've talked a little bit about global projects and of course this is this question now is it a pedagogy, is it a curriculum? and if you blend those two ideas then it becomes an infrastructure basically so that your class is run as a global classroom your school is run as a global school, it's not just about the project it's about the opportunity to connect and the student centred learning and all of those things Lucy can hear again now she's just telling me at this point, are you with us? no, I think she can hear but she can't jump in I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, sorry so here's one thing that that might be relevant to the conversation I think we just lost you again so we're from the 7th I'm accepted I'm going for proposals oh no is this in me? we're getting your audio a bit choppy so it might actually be better if you don't put your video on okay I've got my audio right here, can you hear me? that's better Lucy, go ahead so we're preparing for the conference right now and we're getting proposals a lot are really on target in terms of promoting the idea of developing global competence and teachers and students but there are a lot of people who also don't either read the instructions or fully understand what it means to be globally competent in a school and I continually have to go back to people and say I really need you to tie your proposal to our admission and with some people it's been a struggle to help them understand what it means so I think one of the problems that's facing us is that people don't understand what global competence is, there's no general common at least here in the United States acknowledged, you know, recognized definition that people are using and they should be, I mean there are definitions out there that they couldn't be using for instance the Asia society's work but they'll understand this, it makes things a little difficult for people to evaluate I think so I just wanted to point that out that there's a lot of work to be done around developing a common understanding of what this is all about yes so the building that infrastructure I mean people are doing a lot of talking about building global programs in schools and that's looking at all different things from different schools I don't know, I'm going to throw back to Lauren on that one, Lauren what's your understanding of global competence and did you speak about this when you were going through high school what influenced you or I would say in high school we did not have a ton of conversations about global competence but I think Sonya made an excellent point earlier for students to be interacting with people from all over the world I mean it's like having a pen pal like when I was in first grade I had a pen pal and he wrote a couple letters back and forth and then it kind of died down but how valuable to be able to offer this to young students and say here's somebody from across the world and you can interact with this person and you can work with this person because when you grow up that's exactly what you're going to do like that's where business is going that's where just the world in general everything is becoming more global and it's so important to have that competence since coming to school here I mean my university is a very diverse university but there are also a lot of people here from small towns who have never even had conversations about diversity and I think that while global collaboration and diversity are kind of two separate topics they do tie into one another because you're working with people that are not like you and I think that's something that to see global collaboration grow it would be really awesome to focus on growing that diversity within teams because I recently did a case competition about how diversity within teams increases productivity and it's just all around better for businesses but in order to work with these teams you have to have an understanding of how to do that and to start that at such a young age I think that's so valuable and then it's not something that's learned or when you enter into the workforce all of a sudden you're working with people completely different if you start as a young student that's something you've been doing your entire life and I think just to really ingrain that in students from the get go is very important so I would say to answer your question Julie my conversations regarding that kind of collaboration have grown a lot since I've gotten to school here but I think high schools and earlier schools have worked to do when it comes to talking about topics like that collaboration and diversity That's excellent Lauren I'm just wondering, I'm going to throw this Sonya again because she's just put something in the chat here about her global competence raising when she was 12 having a pen pal in Canada tell us what you're doing more about what you're doing in your school in terms of raising global competence and do you have a definition for it in your school over to you Julie exciting for me is this year I've managed to convince my principal to take part and learn more about it and we have identified it global collaboration and global education as part of our structures for next year so these are exciting times that's something I've been going on about but I know you have to work both from the ground level and top down to see it really embedded across the school so that's exciting for me across our clusters in Auckland is that we're working across schools which is also something new that our ministry is trying to push and a lot of our schools have not even contemplating working across schools and a lot are still learning about it so for me these are exciting times that it's I'm not such a lone voice anymore pushing about working across schools and working across countries so I'm excited message from Anne she's going to be joining us in about five minutes or so Sherry I'm going to pass to you again you're in the Berea district and I know Berea district of have conversations about building global awareness tell us a bit more about what you're doing and is this global competence is it becoming a priority and how are you starting to how is your district starting to manage that we did our curriculum and we included ISTI standards and those had the global collaboration and global and so I remember when I first started it was a big stretch for me to even put that into my classes and so we have been working on that about five years now and the teachers that the computer teachers have come a long way and in the process and we've helped the students and our curriculum director is actually really supporting that and being a part of that and then in the curriculum department also our tech coach so she's really they what they started doing is taking that just from the high school curriculum and really spreading that across all ages pulling in other teachers and other ages of students trying to have that thought and that cultural sensitivity and really helping the teachers see they need to be connecting outside of their classrooms how important that is and those skills that the students be involved in that so we're in the process it's always a work in progress but I feel like we've come a long way in the last five years and we continue to work on that and Amy I'm going to throw to you again how do you help teachers and students understand that it's much bigger than just learning about cultures so how do you prepare for that how much do you teach up front what do you teach up front and we can sort of connect that with technology as well I suppose well absolutely I think there a huge piece of it is skills with 21st century technologies but we also have a lot of conversation around just the ability to communicate and work in a team so when we go out and we talk to business leaders in the community we say what are the skills that you're really looking for what are some of the most important things that you want to see out of students who are going through their education and graduating and they said I need them to be able to work in a team I need them to be able to work with others I need them to be able to problem solve how do we tackle conflict how do we resolve those things how do we do it together how do we have this idea of mutual respect and understanding how do I say things in a non-threatening way how do we build consensus these are critical skills that students need to have and then you add to that the fact that they are now it's just not about their and I work in a relatively small community that their world is now so much bigger with the modern technologies their exposure and access to other people in places is so much bigger and better than it's ever been before so really developing those very critical skills that are definitely expectations for them as they go on in their education and professional careers and then how do they handle that in a very global environment go ahead is someone going to jump in there Lee I'm going to throw a few in terms of taking risks students taking risks and your students are learning how to become teachers or they may already be teachers upskilling a bit so how do they face this how do they what sort of risks are they taking oh I think the risks are that they're going out they're connecting with other people they're working with people who are of different cultures actually moving away from the teaching I'd like to share a project that we've been working on called the global forest link and it comes from the global school net and by the way anybody who's out there including those people who are on the board right here this is something where you might want to get connected with it because what it is is the students actually go out and they take a look at the forest that are in the nearby area and they take photographs of them they learn about the history of finding out about why they're having deforestation but the real important thing is they then take all those materials and they upload them online and this last project that we had we had students that were in China I'm sorry in Russia we had some in Moscow we had some by Siberia we had some in San Diego we had here in Iowa and the thing was that they were actually having sessions where it was a face to face session where they were translating from English to Russian and vice versa and then the kids actually got to ask questions like who's your favorite band you know musical band and then the thing was it was bringing about a connection between people in different cultures and realizing that they're just like me and this is going to be they're actually working on a project let's see we're in November so I think they've already started it but they're doing it like every quarter and if you go to global school net net.org and they have the project coming up they're going to have connections with China Russia I think it's Honduras and Brazil and San Diego and Iowa again so there's a whole variety of things there and it's really active mm-hmm sure so one of the challenges that we have across our different countries represented here today is perhaps the inability of the education system in itself to support what we're doing and one of those challenges we have of course is finding the tools that are unblocked to allow us to connect finding that support to build it into our curriculum etc and there's just a question in the chat here about could we say something generally comparing Australia and New Zealand and Sonya with the USA or North America I know Anne's going to jump in any minute now hopefully before we finish I know that it seems to rely on people who are what I call teacher or outliers who tend to go out there and make sure these things happen it's still not becoming very much widely known as a district initiative or a university department initiative or school initiative so the Australian education department for example there is actually there were all different states but there is now a national curriculum which focuses on intercultural understanding but it still tends to segment ICT skills and digital learning and doesn't seem to look at that interdisciplinary integrated approach as much as they should but I would really love Anne to give us her thoughts about that as soon as she gets herself settled there I see she's almost ready there but in terms of a you know the value put on global collaboration as far as I can see it's still sort of a little bit left of centre and not valued as much as it could be or should be for the reasons that we're hearing today when you listen to Lauren saying how valuable it was to her when you hear teachers talking about how valuable it was they've seen their students and how they grow as learners Anne are you with us? Yes I'm with you now Hi Julie, hi everyone Good to see you Anne we're asking you to start with some comments about what priority is the Australian government or the Victorian government you're in Victoria what's happening in terms of the education system in Australia your point of view you're in the state system are they putting in any priority on developing global competence and global collaboration Well it's very interesting Julie it wasn't obvious or transparent but sometime this year they actually published a document encouraging the global collaboration we've actually got an emphasis on cultural understanding so there are some teachers being skilled and working with us in terms of work out for cultural understanding and digital citizenship and our Australian curriculum has a focus on engagement with Asia and because that's in our immediate time zone we're to look at teaching our subjects with that emphasis so the real time global collaboration will work really well with them So Anne tell us what you're doing in your school what are your priorities priorities are personally to actually connect my students globally we're geographically and culturally isolated school we have very few cultures represented so I want my students to know what the world is like you know the problems of the world are becoming global they socialise globally now so I want them to be skilled in the appropriate way of working and collaborating and to learn a little bit about the world from the people who actually live there And what challenges have you had in the last 5 to 10 years what battles have you had to fight to do this I have not had to fight with my leadership at all because they've been very very supportive of it but it's been time zone challenges it's been because we're in Asian time zone which is a first language so if we want to do things in real time we have to cope with accents cultural misunderstandings if we connect with the Middle East we need to make sure that we don't show our bare arms et cetera so I think time zone challenges are always our biggest ones because I think Australia and maybe New Zealand is one of the hardest countries in the world to find common times because you work right across the school don't you you support global connections right across the school what's happening right now in your school well as students wherever we can we try to use web conference into bringing global experts to us so I have a gaming elective so yesterday we had the games designer for call of duty actually speak to us from Los Angeles and he talked to the students about what the day looks like encourage them on certain subjects et cetera he was actually from India so his accent was very pronounced so the students had to cope with that and try and work out and understand what he was saying but you know for us to get an expert speaker into our school at no cost and within no effort it's rather amazing the students are trying to connect as much as possible with a teacher in China sorry in Taiwan because it's so hard to get the Chinese teachers through the firewall but she's helping them with their Mandarin Chinese they're speaking of it Mandarin Chinese teacher is new to our school so she is actually learning doing extra study with a teacher from China so they use web conferencing facilities to do that we're not actually working on a global project at the moment but we've got involved in the international dot day project where the students drew the dot but they tried to show what Australia looks like in the dot oh my year 19 girls are actually working with a grade 5, 6 class in America and they're trying to work out where each of them live so the first set of clues had to be using video because we can't do it in real time and they had to set up a video with about 6 questions that gave varying degrees of difficulty as to where we live the American students did it too and now we've given them the same sort of feedback created a video exactly where we live like within Australia so is that a bit of a snapshot it is and you're always so active you're always amazing how many different things you've got going on there we've had a bit of a conversation today about teamwork and we've got one student with us from Wisconsin Lauren who was the award winner for the Flat Connections project last semester and you might remember Lauren's video on BYOD and so Lauren talked a lot about teamwork now Lauren and students were in that project so you might remember some of her students from Australia and I think Vesna she's just logging on now so Vesna was part of that project so just give her a minute to log in Right so the importance of teamwork building those teamwork skills and supporting students as they do that Lauren what did you think about what were your thoughts about the time zone between where you are in Australia and connecting with students in that project I think sure it did kind of pose a challenge and I saw a question on the sidebar related to any challenges that we kind of expected to face going into the project and anything that we were I guess a little bit nervous about and I think working with any team at least for me I'm always nervous like is my team going to follow through are they going to actually do what I need of them and that's always kind of it's not a source of anxiety for me but it is something that I'm always a little bit nervous for and especially in working with a team when I don't know anyone and so I think being in this team where I wasn't even meeting with these people face to face that was definitely it was a challenge and it was kind of nerve racking because I wouldn't like in past teams that I've led I've been able to meet with people and I've been able to get a really physical sense of where we're at on a project but this is just completely different and that we kind of I think there's a lot more trust in global collaboration and everybody that was on the project was obviously perfectly capable but I think it's a nice exercise and trust and kind of realizing that everybody will pull their own weight but with the time zone differences I believe I correct me if I'm wrong I think it was one of the schools in Australia that was actually on a break during the time that we were doing the project and was that was at your school and? Yes it would have been. It's always at the crucial time when the video request is coming through. Yeah so that was it was kind of a challenge and I know within our classroom we had conversations about like how do we reach deadlines and how do we work around this and so there were and everything obviously worked out fine but I think that again we keep talking about that teamwork and that's in any situation that you're ever going to be in things happen and so it was it was a nice challenge and it was definitely interesting to accommodate different schedules and different breaks and thanks Lauren. So I'm going to throw to our second student who's just joined us and we're running short of time but best know welcome we're delighted you're here and we know that you were in a global project the same one as Lauren actually last semester so tell us a little bit about your experience in that project I found it quite a lot of fun to be able to communicate with people on the other side of the world and how everyone can join in on one particular thing but it was quite challenging with my class in particular as a lot of people were some were behind on different projects and some were ahead so it was a bit difficult but overall it was really fun and I would definitely do it again. So were there any new technologies that you used in the project? I'd never really done much with film making and adding things together and editing videos so that was a new thing for me and I found it quite interesting and it's actually maybe want to pursue a career in film. Oh that's interesting that's really interesting. So what was your favourite part of the connection and the collaboration and would you recommend that other schools jump in and make sure they do things like this? Yeah totally it's such a great opportunity and it's something that you'd be able to in a few years time be able to say yeah I've connected with kids all over the world it was amazing and sorry. So how are we going to encourage people? talking to a million students out there what would you say to them if their teachers are saying look no no you can't do this we're not doing this in our school what would you say to them to try and encourage them to do it? I don't really know just more or less it's an amazing opportunity and that it can create so many things like it builds teamwork within the students and you might have contacts with someone around the world so if I end up going to America if I keep in contact with someone that I previously talked with on the project I have someone to meet over there. Someone else have you done in your school apart from we were talking just about one project but you've probably been involved in some of the other things in your school having you two that connect you with other people around the world I've been lucky enough to be in a lot of mismatches classes and she's always been able to connect me with someone and most recently was someone who speaks fluent Mandarin which is the language we learn here and as I've been doing that for about about ten years I was able to speak and improve my Chinese That's excellent. Does anyone else on the panel connect their students for language or for any other purpose that isn't so much project based but is really meeting a need within the school through a global capacity? Sonia are you doing any external sort of language work at this point? Yes we are. We're going to be doing a bit more of that next year I hope so because our school year is coming to an end and I'm interested in hearing about it is wilderness school isn't it Anne is that your school? No. I was trying to see the logo on the uniform but our school is a lot of our children speak Chinese and with Australian New Zealand so close together we might do better with the time zone with our children to practice their formulaic expressions for each other or for our kids to teach your kids, your children. Also we're working with our secondary school who are also Mandarin, they have Mandarin as a language because that's one of our government initiatives is for more Asian languages and that's something I'm involved in so I can see much more across school work and across country work with languages particularly if we're all in the same time zone. And there you go you've just made a connection because I know you two haven't really worked together yet but so Anne's in Victoria, Hawksdale P12 College, you're only two hours apart, there you go great things will happen, we'll catch up with you when you make great things happen I know Susan wants to jump in there I think, do you know where to jump in? Yes I will jump in, this has been an amazing discussion I have to say I've been part of telecollaborative projects since the late 1980s, it's wonderful to see what's happening now. I want to thank all of you for being part of this and for just encouraging your students to look beyond the walls of your classroom and into the world as a whole, I think it's so important to break down those barriers. I will suggest that the conversation can continue through our Voxer channel at bit.ly slash k12 online like our hashtag slash Voxer and chime in there, also your tweets will be sent into our slow chat, which you can also see at bit.ly slash dot com slash k12 online chat we really need to continue the conversation, it's so important what you're all discussing, so keep watching k12onlineconference.org for information about our upcoming many conferences the next one will take place the week of November 14th the theme of learning spaces and I certainly see the world as a learning space, I hope it's not just about the actual classroom but beyond the classroom. The keynote speaker will be David Jakes, a panel discussion will take place on November 17th and of course you'll be getting more information so thanks for joining us, good evening or good day to all of you and from the free conference you can always keep coming back to this chat this conversation will be archived and can be accessed later so thanks all. Thanks Susan, thank you k12online thanks everybody thanks everyone