 Hi everyone, Julie here. Welcome back to Global Narratives Collaboration on the Edge. In the first part we put a spotlight on connected and collaborative learning and we looked at some emerging pedagogies and heard from people who are making global learning part of their everyday life. This second part really looks at the mindset and the skill set to make online global collaboration work and how important it is to move from local to global learning modes. And I call this designing for action. So I want to take you through how we use the design cycle, particularly for flat connections projects, but this can be applied to anyone who is designing and moving into online global collaborative learning in all different levels. And I'm talking K to 12 and beyond, higher education as well. So with the design cycle, we start with building that empathy between all learners wherever they are in the world. And this includes teacher meetings, it includes digital handshakes or creating artifacts that introduce who you are, where you are, what you do. It includes building online communities with whatever tool you have available or tools, whatever means you have to do that. Then it means moving into the defined stage, which is defining what it is you're going to do together as a collaborative global community. And that may involve brainstorming certain ideas, it may involve sharing ideas and defining the working parameters and expectations of the collaboration. Then we move into the ideate stage and of course this is where you really start to hone in on what is it we're going to research and what are we going to contribute and what are we going to collaborate over? What is it that is really happening here and what are the outcomes going to be? Do we agree on these outcomes? Moving into the prototype stage, we're going to put together these co-created outcomes and these may be collaborative in terms of using tools like Voiceread or Wiki or Google Docs or presentations. They may also be personal outcomes based on collaborations that have happened. So it could be a personal piece of multimedia based on collaborative research. And then there's feedback and feedback means a time to reflect, a time to share, a time to acknowledge work done, intercultural understandings made, global awareness raised. It's a time to perhaps award students for good work, excellent work. It's a time to amplify the impact of the online global collaboration. How do teachers and students make this work? What are the outcomes? Let's explore some of these. I was given the task of updating our computer science curriculum. We adopted the ISTI standards and I embarked on a new journey that transformed my teaching. I started by integrating different kinds of technology. This started stretching me as an educator but it was just the beginning. The second phase of implementation called for students to collaborate, critically think, create and communicate with others outside the walls of our school. My first thought was how is this going to be accomplished? We decided to get involved in a global project. Becoming a part of a global community has challenged me as an educator, allowed me to learn from other educators and has allowed me to model and share these experiences with my students. Through this involvement students continue to communicate, collaborate and create with students from all over the world. Furthermore, students continue to develop the critical skills needed when conducting themselves online in a professional environment. We shared research by collaborating together on the wiki. By taking part in those wiki discussions, we learned that certain actions that were acceptable on our own culture weren't acceptable on others. We were learning about ourselves and each other. The skills that I learned through this project will last me through a lifetime. I was impressed at the capability of everyone to communicate solely through internet connection. I was amazed that through blogging I could create global relationships. Students like myself got to learn and experience about new and different cultures. We used tools such as Ning, wiki and emotive. Not only did these tools help us with our project, but also in our other educational careers. When we did our video creations at the end of the project, it was very interesting because until then you didn't realize how much you had learned and that you knew how to utilize so many sources. It was exciting to be able to collaborate with other students for these outsourcing videos with the resources such as the wiki and the Ning. In the end, I'd say it was a good rap book for this culturally diverse project. During this project I got the chance to collaborate with students globally. Talking and sharing ideas with them really gave me a more in-depth cultural understanding. I couldn't get this true experience just reading a textbook. The integration of technology and global collaboration has revolutionized my teaching. Just a few years ago, the school district where I was teaching high school social studies in Berea, Ohio allowed me to pilot a one-to-one program. Over time, classes worked with web tools and I even began co-teaching with the computer instructor. Together we integrated computer skills and world studies content and created a 21st century tech integration class. It was wonderful, however, it was not enough. There was so much more we felt we should be doing, helping our students connect. We were talking about cultures and thought how wonderful it would be to learn from others outside our school and even better in other parts of the world. It was also critical that our students knew how to conduct themselves online in a professional environment. How were we going to create that authentic online space? And so the journey began and my involvement in the global educator network flourished.