 Hi, my name is Steve and I'm from Cape Town in South Africa which is pretty much based at the southernmost tip of the continent and I would like to share my journey of global collaboration with you and I'm hoping that after you've heard some of the stories and you've seen some of the photos and videos that you'll be utterly and completely convinced that global collaboration is the way to go and it all started with a school in a remote village in India called Chaitanya Gurukul and my colleague Shandrakant Singh was teaching via Skype to students and I saw an article about it and I wanted to do it too so I made contact with him and Literally after that, I thought well if I could teach in a remote school in the middle of India Why can't I teach in schools all over the world? And I embarked on a journey to try and teach over a hundred classes in less than a year So the journey took me to many classrooms all over the world and here you'll see some examples of some of the classes that I taught in many from Europe, Asia South America Australia Some of these classes were taught at 3 a.m. in the morning. This is a class in New Zealand a small little school here's one in Malaysia and of course It's fascinating to get to meet children from different countries learn about their cultures Do cultural exchange where our kids got to compare what was in their lunchboxes with kids from other schools? And learning from teachers and the different teaching styles and and the way they approach various topics So from a cultural exchange and an educational exchange point of view it is absolutely Fascinating, but I think that the best way to experience it is to perhaps watch a little bit of footage of One of the sessions where I did some problem-solving and you'll get to see how the kids try and solve problems Okay, they were born on the same day Five minutes apart from each other to the same parents in the same hospital, but they were not twins How is that possible? Well, I want to know how it's possible that they can't be twins should he they must be twins Somebody else would go Okay I didn't I didn't The same year they were born in the same year five minutes apart from each other on the 31st of January They were Yeah South Africa correct, do you know where that is? Uh-huh. Where is it? Well done well done that is excellent sure I'm impressed. How did you know? Not a And and how many South Africans do you know that you could have worked out my accent? That's a very good kiss That's correct good thinking I like your thinking well done give him a round of applause that was excellent Global collaboration is a fascinating exercise. It enables teachers to connect with each other it enables students to connect with each other and enables teachers and students to connect with each other and Not only that but depending on how you communicate you can also bring experts into the classroom and hopefully I'll show you some photographs of where we've brought experts for example astronauts we've had astronauts speaking to Assemblies we've had astronauts speaking to kids in classrooms. We've had authors Talking to students about their books we have had scientists talking about weather and Coming up this week It is World Space Week So we will have the chief NASA scientist who is going to be communicating with us and we get to ask about current issues What is going on with the fact they've just discovered water on Mars? What does that mean for us as a people as a planet and we also want to find out what NASA's plans are and How they seem to operate and who they work with and and all those burning questions that you would normally not have access to We can now bring These people to us and the best part is we get to share that With people all over the world when I do my interviews. I invite teachers with their students into the actual hangout and that enables the students to ask questions and They get to engage Scientists and prominent people who they would not normally have access to and of course just as exciting is the interaction the camaraderie the the learning that goes on when students connect with their peers and they learn how similar They actually are their interests the music they taste in clothing and then of course We also learn how different people can be when it comes to different cultures Classical example is a game that I play with the middle schoolers and the high schoolers Called cafe dilemma where I have groups of children sitting at a table and each table is given a menu and on that menu they get five or six topics which I call food for thought as opposed to actual food at this cafe and They pick one of those topics Let's say for example. It is capital punishment the death penalty and Then the waiter or waitress comes over and presents the death penalty with five compelling points for and five compelling points against and Each table it is their mission To decide whether they are either for or against it Now the points are so compelling for and against that This is going to lead to debate and discussion What I always find fascinating is that when you play this game in different countries You get very different results in certain countries that are quite religious The death penalty becomes an obvious choice In other countries that are a little bit more liberal and a little bit less religious Death penalty is an absolute no-no so what I do Try and tell teachers is that When you interact with schools around the world It's important to also have an open mind and respect other people's cultures and other people's viewpoints because the whole point of exchanging ideas is to learn other Sides of the coin you need to actually know what other people are thinking and I think that is a skill that Helps children when it comes to debating when it comes to discussions when it comes to forming a worldview or an opinion That you make an informed choice based on both sides of the argument Let's run through some of the projects that I've done This is a view from the school in America and you see me on the other side of the screen in This particular photo. I had a colleague of mine reading stories to the kindergarten kids, which they thoroughly enjoyed Over here. We ran a maths evening and we had a whole bunch of families and kids all solving problems And of course we invited two of my teacher colleagues who were actually at a teachers conference in the US and They joined us virtually and they got some of the teachers at the conference to try and answer some of the questions on the worksheets and Some of my special needs kids We love introducing them to kids from around the world and they found this lesson thoroughly exciting Here we have more kids from Different countries Communicating and I think it's so important to get kids to actually ask questions about other countries and Maybe learn one or two phrases in their language, but it just it makes the whole Lesson so much more exciting another group over here from Vietnam talking to the kids and and Just tell them a little bit about where their country is and the types of foods They like to eat and the music that they like to listen to In this case I sent a care package to Denmark and the kids got to open it up And you'll see they are wearing some of our t-shirts and they've got some of our local sweets and chocolates And even our flag and they were very very excited to open up that parcel And those are the photographs of them Actually at the unveiling of the parcel here We did some cultural exchange where kids played some music for each other and the receiving school did some dancing Jeremy Gilley the founder of peace one day got to engage with some of our high schoolers Which was an absolutely fascinating day And of course teacher workshops the best way to introduce global collaboration through an actual Collaboration with teachers at these workshops and the teachers get to ask the questions, which is always an amazing thing And of course the Canes arcade the YouTube viral video that went around about a young boy who made boxes out of cardboard We have Nirvana filmmaker and Kane himself And we got him and Kane to judge some of the Wonderful creations of kids made at the global cardboard challenge And here you can see some of the kids actually talking to Nirvana and Kane Which was a very very special and rare opportunity Our kids in the townships in Google Air to very very impoverished area talking to students in America and I often get to run assemblies or do a math show while the kids are actually at school in their assembly and you just quite simply set up a projector and a laptop with internet access and There's no reason why we can't do that anywhere in the world You know some of the students in some of the other countries Just general photographs of the kids interacting and getting quite excited about problem-solving and the kids have been very receptive to having I Wouldn't call it strangers, but Different people entering their classrooms over the internet. This is my colleague. Mr. McNulty and his middle schoolers that love doing interview skills Another assembly that I did at Parklands one of our schools And it was lovely to show the kids the the impact that an assembly could have My friend Katie Coleman who is a NASA astronaut. She got to speak to the girls at Okos girls and here they were in assembly listening to Katie speaking about her experiences and they got to ask her questions as well Here we have Jamie Katchen from the jet propulsion labs and she was talking about how they got the Mars rover on to Mars I've also been asked to judge Fancy dress competitions in the US and you can see some of the creative outfits that came out of that And of course we have the students from Austria The high school students who love asking questions and we have middle schoolers there from the US and It's always amazing to see that you know some of them are just discussions or we play mystery Skype This in particular was a fascinating exercise of teaching young Danish kids to improve their Danish And I don't speak a word of Danish So I read them a story in my very very poor Danish and then I set them a word search And they got to correct my story and find all the words from the story in their word search They had no idea that I was actually helping them to improve their Danish And of course, you know every class and every exercise is different sometimes we do math activities Sometimes we do history sometimes we do politics here the kids in Boston They were joining all the regular classes that I have I normally invite a group of kids from different schools to join in And while we actually run our regular lesson the kids from different countries are able to Participate in the classes and we have our girls from Durban girls college and of course the kids from Boston And it's always nice to have a mix of children There's even my friend from India, Sebastian taking part in the activities and Sometimes we have up to six or seven classes all taking part simultaneously During one of our regular lessons which we do every week. My good friend Don Thomas is also a NASA astronaut I got him to speak at my daughter's school and they had him in class and they got to ask him all about his adventures in space And it really was amazing that kids could have an expert like Don Appear in their classroom This is a wonderful opportunity to have a teachers conference and invite teachers from around the world to join in These are the lovely Greek kids who are practicing They are not English first language speakers and they practice their English by interviewing and asking questions and I get to correct them So for them, it's just very exciting and they don't realize they're actually improving the English and these are the kids from our Townships who don't have access to very much at all and they are completely Overwhelmed at the fact that we can speak to kids in other countries here I ran a teacher's workshop in at the science center in Johannesburg I often get asked to judge events and this particular event a group of teachers from around the world watched oral presentations and then we rated the oral presentations on Google form and then the teacher gives the kids feedback After they've done their presentations. We often get asked to present at international conferences And we do this by getting a whole bunch of teachers together in a Google hangout Explaining what globally connected learning is all about and what sort of software you can use to actually connect with people and How effective you can be as a teacher when you connect globally? This next picture I did an interview with a very interesting guy who was making things out of cardboard very realistic things Out of cardboard. I mean that that lizard looks very realistic and it's all just made with cardboard and glue incredible talent Here one of my past students Kaylee is also a recipient of the international children's peace prize fascinating interview One of my students Unfortunately was diagnosed with leukemia and couldn't come to school So we managed to convince the school to allow her to join classes virtually and here's Jamie with her beautiful Pink wig and I'm pleased to report that she's now back at school. Here is Kaylee and her colleague from the street store. They started something that is now international all over the world For world peace day. We got to speak to Livia who wrote a Magnificent book about all the Nobel Peace Prize winners called being noble Here's a lovely hangout with NASA and a whole bunch of astronomers from all over the world To allow people to find out more about the comet that was coming that night And here is my friend Nikki Abdonore who drives around Cape Town without any arms And she got to explain to kids how she solves everyday problems that we take for granted and It doesn't matter which country you go to here We have kids dressing with cardboard in and and taking part in a parade here We have kids in a dragon's den trying to present a business idea and the business idea of course Needs to either be bought or not and they had to convince our panel of judges and it was nice to have an International panel of judges to be there my friend Kaylee Coleman when she was actually in Cape Town We had her presenting at the Cape Town Science Center and of course we invited schools from around the world to join in So now you've seen a large range of activities that have been done where we collaborate with other schools and get students and teachers excited about learning and If you go to our website and you look on the menu under resources You can go to global collaboration and I will put a Google document there with loads and loads of Wonderful tips on how to get started which programs to use and of course you are always welcome to contact me I would love to hear from you I would love to share some of these resources and connect you with other teachers because at the end of the day if You are connecting globally We're gonna make this world a much smaller and much better place. Thank you for joining me