This was blasted to everyone earlier tonight:
Greetings, GEC members -
Talk about going global! I had the pleasure of visiting Maris Stella High School a year ago while visiting Singapore, and recently, the opportunity arose to return the school's hospitality. A team of 12 teachers and administrators from Maris Stella visited the U.S this month with the intention of exploring possibilities of collaborating with U.S high schools. I helped link this team with a few schools in Chicago, Maine and New York, and it's going to be exciting to watch the results of their efforts. For more info, take a look at this blog post.
I still am marveling at how these Singaporean educators value collaboration and connecting with others globally. Clearly, it is a priority if they travelled to the U.S in order to start their projects. And, this experience has also reinforced my belief that face-to-face interactions are still key and are not going away, even with the plethora of technology available today. The Maris Stella team knows that for their work to be successful, they must build relationships first.
On that note, read on for more Global Education Collaborative news and remember that the GEC is a space for starting the kind of relationships that support successful collaborations.
-Lucy Gray
Community Update
Over 2500 members
New members in October and November hail from the U.S, the U.K, Canada, Spain, India, Nigeria, Moldova, the Philippines, Lebanon, Bahrain, China, Australia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Portugal, South Korea, Austria, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and Colombia
38 interest-based groups within the GEC
470 posts within the discussion forum
296 individual blog posts
109 submissions to our project spreadsheet
Projects and Requests
I recommend that you post projects to the discussion forum AND to the GEC project spreadsheet.
Some projects that you might be interested in:
Paint the World with Light - an art project for high school students
Holiday and Traditions blog - for second grade students (ages 6-7 approximately)
Winter Wonderland Online project - for K-3 students (ages 5-9 approximately)
2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics project - mainly 5th and 5th graders (ages 10-11) but open to other grades
In other news...this project is probably near completion, but probably worth following: Anne Smith's This I Believe . Also, Valerie Becker is looking for schools with Native American students to partner with on a project. There are many other partner requests posted in the discussion forum ranging from fourth graders in the US to 7th/8th grades in the UK. Please take a look!
Web 2.0 Resources
Check out our related resources and networking tools!
GEC LinkedIn Group *new*
GEC Facebook Fan Page *new*
GEC Diigo Group (social bookmarking)
GEC Member Map (add yourself)
Twitter feed
List of GEC members on Twitter *new*
Future Plans and Special Requests
Thanks to everyone who has joined and contributed to this growing body of resources. Please take the time to invite others who might be interested in the GEC. We need more members representing countries around the globe.
I also would love for organizations and individuals to post events in the Event section of the GEC. I know there are conferences and webinars going on out there! Speaking of conferences, if you attend a conference, share what you've learned. I'd particularly be interested in hearing more about happenings from these two recent conferences: WISE 2009 and the Education Project.
I'm still intending on hosting more chats related to global education topics. This will probably happen when I have more time after the new year, so stay tuned.
Also, I'm looking for a few people (maybe some of the current advisory board members) to really take ownership of some GEC areas. If you are interested and our a GEC member in good, ACTIVE standing, please send me a message in the ning.
Thanks again for your support. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Lucy Gray
elemenous@gmail.com
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