Ghost Dimension PR- Hotel Intercontinental Part 1

Education in Singapore: When Number 1 is not enough

Education in Singapore: When Number 1 is not enough

http://asiancorrespondent.com/121664/education-in-singapore-when-number-1-is-not-enough/

http://gizmodo.com/this-browser-extension-lets-you-see-any-linkedin-users-1556138847

Looks like someone finally found a use for the LinkedIn profile you've been sitting on for the past five years. Thanks to a new browser extension, you can now reveal the email address of any one of LinkedIn's roughly 260 million users—whether you're connected to them or not.

The extension, Sell Hack, was first uncovered by Yahoo Tech and is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. While it's not the first email database mining tool to pop up, it is undoubtedly the most convenient we've seen. Simply install the extension and head over to LinkedIn, and a innocuous little "Hack In" button appears on any user's profile page, allowing you to extract that user's email in under a minute.

Unfortunately (at least for those of you looking to get devious), at this time, the extension is apparently experiencing an overload of new users. Installing the extension and clicking the Hack In button will give you this:

SEXPAND

The extension isn't without its downsides. As Yahoo Tech notes, Sell Hack watches where you go on the site and slurps up the data of any page you visit. How exactly it's using this information isn't explicit, but more likely than not, it seems like a nice little bundle to sell to spammers.

Technically, nothing Sell Hack is doing is illegal (at least as far as email mining goes). Rather than stealing LinkedIn's private data, the extension is simply using what's publicly available, comparing it to other information across the web, and coming up with the most likely email address. An email address that, at least according to Buzzfeed, is pretty damn accurate. As Sell Hack explains:

The data we process is all publicly available. We just do the heavy lifting and complicated computing to save you time. We aren't doing anything malicious to the LinkedIn website. We think browser extensions are the best way to personalize an individuals web experience. We love LinkedIn and are trying to make it better for the community.

LinkedIn is aware of the extension now, and to say the least, it is not pleased. Its legal team has issued Sell Hack a cease and desist, but since the extension isn't technically a violation (as far as we're aware), it would seem that there's not too much LinkedIn could do to stop it. [Buzzfeed]

“American Educators Find Surprises in Helsinki and at Home in the United States”

Dr. Hunter O’Hara and Dr. Merrie Tinkersley visited Finland, and this is what they learned: “American Educators Find Surprises in Helsinki and at Home in the United States” On the basis of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores, Finnish public schools have ranked at the top, or very near the top in the world in the areas of mathematics, reading and science. Seven teacher education seniors and three teacher education faculty at The University of Tampa traveled to Finland to determine the nature of Finnish success with public education. We visited three public schools; 1) grades K-8, 2) grades 1-6, and 3) grades 9-12. We also visited Metropolia University and the University of Helsinki. At U.H. we had an extended conversation with a teacher education professor. Prior to our visit, we understood that Finland prides itself for creating school equality across the nation. During our visit, we felt we were able to develop a realistic perception of Finnish public schools. We also spoke with Finnish students, teachers, administrators and parents. We expected to see extraordinarily dynamic, innovative teachers and pedagogy. We anticipated being dazzled with Finnish approaches to instruction, teaching strategies and techniques……such was not the case. We observed examples of group inquiry/investigation, interdisciplinary thematic instruction, content-driven flexible conversation as well as the use of film for instructional purposes. Approaches such as these are not novel and are modeled, taught and practiced in multiple teacher education courses and internships at The University of Tampa. In terms of teaching strategies, nothing we viewed seemed visionary, extraordinary or new. Rather we noted that some teachers were using very traditional methods such a lecture/question and answer. What Is Different About Finnish Schools? Surprisingly for several of us, we did not see technology used in classrooms at all. We saw no use of standardized testing. In fact, we verified that there is no standardized testing in Finland unless the classroom teacher requests such a test for her or his own diagnostic purposes; but never for accountability. Progress is monitored, but the design and timing of exams are left up to the classroom teacher. We saw an egalitarian curriculum that includes substantial coursework in the fine arts, social sciences, the humanities and physical education in addition to mathematics, science and reading. High quality learner-created artwork adorns classrooms and all hallways. Not unlike the United States just a few decades ago, pianos are found in elementary classrooms. We found that learning environments are noncompetitive. Instead of competition, the focus is on group learning pursuits and class multilogues. Physical education courses focus on fitness rather than competitive gaming. Finnish students do not even compete in inter-school athletics. Finnish Culture and The Classroom We did see significant cultural identifiers that directly impact the functioning of the school community and learning pursuits. Finnish learners are afforded a great deal of autonomy and freedom. Correspondingly, significant levels of maturity are expected of learners. Learners are trusted and expected to complete tasks without policing. Starting in first grade, students are expected to serve themselves at lunch and breakfast (free of charge) and to clear after themselves- regardless of their developmental level. Learners spend a significant amount of time in the out of doors pursuing projects and play regardless of temperatures (for Finns, there is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing). They know how to manage their frigid climate well. Learners act autonomously on a frequent basis and are free to take their time during transitions and while they are engaged in various projects. For example, there is no lining up and single -file –silent- walking between locations at the elementary level. Just as cold temperatures predominate the weather, mutual trust predominates Finnish human interaction. As teachers trust learners, learners trust teachers to have their best interests at heart. School administrators trust teachers and learners, and Finnish communities trust teachers and principals to do their jobs well. Just as teachers trust learners, the Finnish government trusts Finnish teachers to structure facilitate and maintain successful learning environments. One principal shared, “I trust that teachers are going to do their own work in their own way.” Another principal indicated to us, “The focus is on trust, instead of accountability, and there are no high stakes tests. What happens in the classroom is up to the teacher.” Schools are never ranked and teachers track their own students. Finns trust their teacher credentialing process. Unlike many United States charter schools, Finns who have no credentials in education do not meddle in school affairs. Due to the prestige and free teacher preparation at the universities, Finland is able to admit only ten percent of the applicants into the teacher preparation programs. The Finnish government does not police schools in terms of learner performance, and the national standards for the various content areas are a succinct few pages. All Schools Equal in Finland There are no charter schools in Finland, no school vouchers, no “grading” of schools and no magnet schools. Unlike the United States, the intent in Finland is to assure that all schools are of equal quality. Again, that quality certainly does not owe it’s success to test driven instruction and curricula, nor does it have to do with “teacher accountability” campaigns as they have been called in the United States. Such approaches would have no place in a trust -centered nation like Finland. As has been made clear by their world ranking, Finnish schools are successful without the above questionable practices. Finnish teachers are highly respected and their prestige ranks with that of doctors and lawyers. Again, Finnish teacher preparation is paid for by the Finnish government. All teachers are prepared traditionally through a five year university preparation program. There is no alternative teacher certification in Finland. Finnish teachers are fully unionized and they earn decent wages. We learned from faculty and administrators in Finland that there is no place for a scripted curriculum if administrators hire well qualified, traditionally prepared teachers. Moreover to be effective in their profession, teachers must be afforded professional autonomy and academic freedom. Many of these essential, teaching success-inducing components have been eroded in the United States over the past few decades. Naturally, as educators we found Finnish schools to be very attractive, and yet we never lost our faith in the American public schools that had prepared us- the very schools to which we had also dedicated our professional lives. Quite plainly, the successes we saw in Finland should occur in the United States. Not only that, we were made aware that the entire design and implementation of the Finnish school system was based on American education research! As a matter of fact, the United States generates eighty percent of the research in education worldwide. If American education research is a good enough to base the design of one of the very most successful public education systems in the world, why is it not good enough to use in the United States? Furthermore, if we had the answers in the United States, why were we traveling to Finland to find our own answers? Return to the United States Not long after we returned to the United States, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools was published. Diane Ravitch’s carefully researched book contradicts the rabid negative mythology that surrounds American Public Education. Ravitch is a research Professor of Education at New York University and was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by President Bill Clinton. In short, she reveals that American Public School high school dropouts are at an all-time low, high school graduation rates are at an all-time high and that test scores are at their highest point ever recorded. In fact, when compared as a nation “the states of Massachusetts, Minnesota and Colorado … ranked among the top-performing nations in the world” (p. 67). Further, “if it were a nation, Florida would have been tied for second in the world with Russia, Finland, and Singapore” on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (p.67). Not only that, “American students in schools with low poverty-the schools where less than ten percent of the students were poor- had scores that were equal to those of Shanghai and significantly better than those of high-scoring Finland, the Republic of Korea, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia.” (p. 64) Most significantly, Ravitch confirms that the single biggest source of low academic achievement is poverty. Poverty impacts learning in dramatic ways and for learners to transcend that barrier, they must first overcome the overwhelming and debilitating effects of poor nutrition, poor health care, inadequate clothing and housing. Child poverty in Finland is 5.3 % but child poverty in the United States 23.1 % according to the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Report Card 10; the highest rate of poverty amongst all of the advanced nations in the world. It should also be noted that unlike the United States, many PISA high scoring nations do not school learners in an egalitarian fashion past certain ages; which is to say that, in those nations, by the time students take the PISA, underperforming students have already been “weeded out” or eliminated. Ravitch is justified when she asserts that American public education is an extraordinary success. In light of Ravitch’s meticulous research, one can only wonder why seemingly sinister forces have conspired to stigmatize American Public Schools. Not to be forgotten, however, is the role that American Public Schools have played in the success of this nation. When we act to stigmatize or to condemn that bulwark, we are actually working to condemn ourselves. If the American people allow their public schools to be undermined by powers that have only their greed and self interest in mind, we do so at our own peril. If the day arrives when public schools are lost, the middle class will surely be lost as well. We must all value, support and protect American Public Education. Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of Error. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The Edtech Trinity: Time, Training, and Tools MARCH 30, 2014 BY ANGEL CINTRON JR.

The Edtech Trinity: Time, Training, and Tools MARCH 30, 2014 BY ANGEL CINTRON JR. LEAVE A COMMENT Edtech Trinity Edtech tools will never replace teachers, but teachers who use edtech tools will replace those who don’t. There’s absolutely no denying that edtech tools are changing the teaching profession. As a result, I’ll argue that the edtech trinity in education must include time, training, and tool searching. As the edtech industry grows and becomes more advanced, every teacher will have the following choice to make: either get ahead of the learning curve or fall further behind. Time Regardless of your education reform perspective, the classroom teacher is, and always will be, the true agent of change. Even though teachers may feel powerless, at times, they must remember to assume responsibility for what they can control. Therefore, when it comes to edtech, there’s no substituting time and knowledge. Teachers need time to “play around” with edtech tools. This cannot be in the form of a “one-off” meaningless professional development presentation. A one-hour training session on the benefits and features of a particular edtech tool isn’t going to “cut it.” Yes, less tech-savvy teachers will need exposure to the edtech landscape, but, more than anything else, they’ll need an ample amount of time to learn how to effectively use these tools within the classroom. Training & Support In addition to time, teachers need a safe space to risk successful implementation. Every teacher navigates through an educational field filled with competing interests. For example, teachers face pressures from education policy-makers, district staff, school leaders, parents, and students. Therefore, to maximize teacher buy-in, teachers need to feel supported throughout the transitional period. Put simply, teachers who risk success need technological and pedagogical support from the entire system (i.e. from the district superintendent/chancellor to the school’s administrators). With time and space established, teachers must show a willingness to learn new instructional delivery systems. Undoubtedly, edtech tools will change a teacher’s role from a “sage on the stage” to a “face-to-face (F2F) facilitator.” Since “change” isn’t always an easy process, school leaders must focus on recruiting and selecting teachers who have successfully demonstrated self-reflection and risk-taking abilities. Let’s not view edtech through rose-colored glasses. Some teachers will not spend the necessary time, especially outside of the school building, to learn how to leverage edtech within their classroom. So, instead of focusing solely on “scaling up” as fast as possible, school leaders must appoint certain teachers to serve as the school’s edtech guru. This way, fellow teachers can observe an edtech classroom and learn from a colleague, and not a district appointed “expert in a suit.” Tools First, let me start by dispelling a popular twitter-verse myth: edtech tools aren’t the Bill Gates, et al., Trojan horse. Although private companies are forming partnerships within the American K-12 public education system, we need not fear ALL edtech. Are some edtech tools designed by big companies? Yes. Are some edtech tools costly to use? Yes. With that being said, there are an abundant amount of tools that are neither designed by private companies nor costly to use. In fact, many of the edtech tools I’m currently using within my classroom are teacher-created and FREE! So, again, not all edtech tools are part of a grand plan to end public education. As long as you view them through this lens, you’ll surely miss the opportunity to “step up your teaching game.” Since I have only five-weeks experience, and counting, using certain tools, I highly recommend using edSurge and Graphite to search for edtech tools. edSurge allows you to set “search” filters, including subjects, platform requirements, and costs. In my professional opinion, edSurge is 100% teacher- and administrator-friendly. I’ve attached a screenshot of its “Edtech Index” page for your review. Image Graphite serves the same purpose, and offers a filtering mechanism as well. However, to experience the best results, you’ll need to create a free account by signing up first. I’ve attached a picture of Graphite’s educator search page for your review as well.

Venezuela: taking the counter- out of revolution IVAN BRISCOE 30 March 2014

Venezuela is politically polarised and so is much of the coverage of it. But just as the violence is now kaleidoscopic the international response must become more complex. Clash in Caracas between protesters and police Fractured society, fractal protests: a street clash in Caracas. Flickr / Andres E Azpurua. Creative Commons / No derivatives. “Before, we wanted to change the world. Now we’re going to see if we can pave a few roads.” This epithet of José Mujica, avuncular president of Uruguay and former urban guerrilla, sums up the hard-earned wisdom of the Latin American left in power—in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere. For the last 15 years, however, Venezuela’s government has read the message in reverse: forget the roads; change the world. Wilfully eccentric and, on occasion, deeply flawed economic, social and foreign policies—none more so than vis-à-vis food and basic security—have resulted in a monumental challenge to the government of Nicolás Maduro, elected successor as president to Hugo Chávez. The protests, driven by students and whipped up by opposition leaders, have been classified by viral-media reflex as another instalment of popular revolt, centred on a basic middle-class wish for decent, effective, open government. Fractal protests A close reading of the violence that has claimed 37 lives since February 12th would suggest something different. A mass national polarisation has assumed fractal form—small, side-street sub-plots of irreducible antagonism, with contrasting accounts of who pulled the trigger. According to the opposition, 20 have been killed for demonstrating. But attributing responsibility is phenomenally hard in a society where no security or judicial institution is independent and most victims seem to have died in a chaos of reckless urban crossfire. One centre-right Argentine news outlet gave this breakdown a few days ago: “23 died due to firearms; five after hitting or avoiding barricades; two with their throats cuts by barbed wire; two accidentally; one after being beaten by the police; one knocked down.” Take two deaths reported on March 6th in a suburb of Caracas. The Associated Press and others said 100 members of pro-government, paramilitary, motorcycle gangs (colectivos) had arrived in the neighbourhood of Los Ruices to dismantle an opposition street barricade (guarimba). They were greeted by wolf-whistles and pelted with bottles. According to AP, “In the melee, a 24-year-old motorcycle taxi driver was shot dead ... a 25-year-old sergeant was shot through the neck and killed.” It would be easy and temptingly cathartic to see the events as world punditry would have you see it: university kids against a tongue-tied tyrant, youth versus age, liberty versus oppression. But recent history cannot be blotted out. The 37 dead are not the classic fallen martyrs; nor are the protests a wave of the disenfranchised. Rather, they mark the most recent manifestation of the long and intransigent resistance to the low-income electoral juggernaut of chavismo. What began as a failed coup in April 2002 morphed eight months later into a general strike against the government; a recall referendum was essayed and lost in 2004; mass electoral abstention followed a year later. A new and seemingly effective means of campaign has been chosen, in which both moderates and radicals in the opposition can find a purpose. Mass urban protests and civil disruption are the methods. To beat the left in power, the resistance to chavismo has borrowed from the now-pragmatic guerrillas: take the “counter-“ out of revolution and man the communal barricades. Sources of discontent It is difficult to begrudge the opposition their discontent. Statistics on poverty and public welfare confirm the gains made under Chávez through his social reorientation of oil revenues. But idiosyncratic and populist economic policies have done much to paralyse the most basic market flows. Anecdotes abound of four-hour queues in state-provisioned supermarkets and missing toilet-rolls. In January, scarcity stood officially at 28%, meaning over one in four goods was unavailable. According to the Venezuelan Pharmaceutical Association, 40% of medicines are out of stock. Neo-fascist hoarders and dark conspirators of the right can be blamed, if wished. But the satirical depiction of government policy by the reputed pollster and moderate critic of President Maduro, Luis Vicente León, seems far more credible: “We’re going to close the businesses that close and control the prices of the goods which aren’t there.” Nor is economic failure the inevitable fate of a left-leaning Latin American government. Comparisons between the trajectories of Bolivia and Venezuela show the popular benefits of the chavista regime but also the waste of its oil fortunes. Unlike Bolivia, Venezuela has spent its windfall and whittled down its foreign reserves. Argentina, under its profoundly Keynesian economy minister, Axel Kiciloff, has in the past two months skirted dire, Davos-like predictions of devaluation and ruin by giving free reign to a technocratic Central Bank governor. No such checks apply in Venezuela. The economic malaise—the shortages, closures, 56% inflation, the latest devaluation this week—is much more than a minority, middle-class concern. Likewise, fear of crime touches all in Venezuela. Amid polarised government and independent estimates, the most distinguished expert on crime, Roberto Briceño-León, reported more than 24,000 killings last year—next to Honduras in presenting the world’s highest homicide risk. The authoritarian drift of the government, whether in deploying armed militia, packing the Supreme Court or taking TV channels off air, garners the greatest international opprobrium and the most irate domestic opposition. And it has treated chavista hate figures—General Raúl Baduel, Iván Simonovis and even, on a lesser scale, a Financial Times freelance—with exceptional viciousness. Excuses are available, yet futile: a bombastic government represents the majority of its people with neither gentleness nor grace. But successive election victories and consistent polling data underline that chavismo will not be defeated on the agenda of constitutional virtue. Economics and crime are what motivate mass popular discontent. Yet the past one and a half months tell a story not of a shared public platform, and an eventual if reluctant state response, but of a social dissolution into teeming individual claims, each in search of a protector. An extraordinary film made by pro-government media in Mérida, the Andean town that has become a protest heartland, tells the story of two communities living along a main road. One, reportedly the richer, has set up a barricade, where hooded, darkened shapes lurk, catcalling and menacing the poorer neighbours, who find it hard to get to work or even go shopping. The poor shout insults back at the rich, calling them mantenidos (spongers). The first woman to appear in the film, Gisela Rubilar Figueroa, has since been shot dead. This is not mass protest so much as atomised class war, an iteration of grudges and rivalries emanating from the brain stem of an oil state. Pulling to the extremes How genuine discontent with a new government turned into a zero-sum conflict shattering to the micro-scale is the core question. Some protesters, notably the students of the Central University of Venezuela led by Juan Requesens, maintain a genuine mobilisation in the public interest—some have even led proselytising missions in the shanty towns, a peculiar reversal of the Peronist Youth’s doomed popular-education programmes of 1970s Argentina. Requesens and colleagues want political prisoners freed—there are 85 in jail for their part in the protests, according to the NGO Foro Penal—and the militias disarmed, plus a live, televised meeting between President Maduro and the opposition. Last year’s losing presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles, holds similar convictions; so do many of the more enlightened opposition figures. Public opinion broadly aligns with these demands. The usually reliable polling agency Hinterlaces has recently found people worried over their economic futures, although 87% have no faith in barricades or violence to extract them from chavista mismanagement. Belief that Maduro should be kicked from office, in the manner of a number of Latin American presidents at the turn of the millennium, has receded quite quickly—with fear of what might take his place looming large. This hefty bloc for moderation should in principle act as a brake on recourse to violent protest. It is still possible that this majority middle ground, whose shift to Capriles almost handed the opposition an astonishing victory last April, will be assisted by mediation by Latin American states in the UNASUR bloc (whose foreign ministers conducted a successful visit to Caracas last week), and possibly the Catholic Church (which proved vital in the resolution of Argentina’s crisis in 2002). The sudden eruption of peace should never be discounted, as Venezuela and Colombia memorably showed in resolving their border tensions of 2008. The obstacles, however, will be immense. Talk of clearly definable sides, of the sort which backed Maduro or Capriles last year and which each enjoy huge numerical legitimacy, is no longer so pertinent. The opposition is manifestly divided and its main propulsive energy comes from the leaders who have adopted the salida (exit) strategy—the plan to topple the president through street agitation. Leopoldo López is in jail; María Corina Machado has just been stripped of her parliamentary immunity. Seeking to lock both away appears to have redounded to the president’s benefit but this leaves the radical protest wing in place--just criminalised, localised and leaderless. Maduro is a weak president, with a 1.5% margin of victory last year and little political capital to expend. There is much speculation in diplomatic circles, and evidently in the US military, over how far the loyalty of the Venezuelan armed forces and the ruling PSUV party will stretch if the violence worsens. Should Maduro be scrutinising his support network for rogues and turncoats, it is unlikely he will feel sufficiently assured to hand any major concessions on policy or political participation to the opposition. It would suit him in the short term instead to engage in direct, winnable battles with the most radical diehards. Arguments can be twisted into unusual shapes by the tangles of received wisdom. The government engages in the usual US-baiting rhetoric, laced with attacks on local fascists and some turgid chunks of Gramsci. The hard left consumes ideas such as those of the German Marxist Heinz Dieterich, who chides the government for its “fear of using state forces firmly and rapidly from the start to dismantle violent groups”. The opposition’s extremes are no better, refusing to recognise any merits in 15 years of chavista government and finding their convictions richly fulfilled by the riot police who greet protesters in Caracas or Táchira. One implacable statement of hostility, the Mérida Manifesto by a group of students, refers to how “the Castro-communist regime with its paramilitary groups and the National Guard have killed, tortured and harassed comrades”. The informal paramilitarism we are seeing on both sides is the product of a society besieged by criminal violence for two decades. The Guatemalan ethnographer Tani Adams argues that long-term exposure to chronic violence causes each citizen to assimilate a quota of fear into normal life, as “many people face both the challenge of multiple traumatic experiences in the past as well as the likelihood of continued traumatic experiences in the future”. One result is the severing of social bonds beyond immediate family and friends, as well as the corrosion of empathy “when people are constantly spurred by survivalist motives”. The pathologies of the Venezuelan psyche under the influence of criminal violence help explain the fanatical tensions that have surfaced between neighbouring communities. And no doubt pro-government militias and community self-defence groups recruit locals used to handling firearms for other purposes. Through this admixture of political and criminal violence, the road to civil war in Venezuela lies. Supporting moderation Avoiding that outcome is not made any easier by the tendency inside and outside Venezuela to see the crisis through the filters of self-interest and prejudice borrowed from the era of high Chávez. The left-leaning governments of Latin America are intent on preventing any precedent of presidential overthrow—hence the paralysis of the Organization of American States. Cuba and the Caribbean dread a stoppage of cheap oil. Washington would be happy to rid itself of an irritant, while the liberal press and the digital spirits egg on the cause of middle-class revolution. Arguments can be twisted into unusual shapes by the tangles of received wisdom. Noam Chomsky denounces any use of repressive state power while his followers applaud a crackdown in Caracas. Opponents of Maduro wail over the militarisation of their cities, even though for many this would be their preferred solution to violent crime. And according to reliable sources the Green Party MEP and hero of May 1968, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, has dissented from his own party’s pro-chavista instincts, insisting he would never fail to support a student revolt. Partial truths and worsening polarisation will do little to pull the country out of its confrontational logic. Nothing is more important than for foreign governments and organisations to provide moderates on both sides with support and reassurance. Just as Capriles has preached against violent protest, parts of Maduro’s government have proved themselves sensitive to criticism: the attorney general, Luisa Ortega, has said 60 investigations of police officers for alleged human-rights violations are under way. A common ground of dialogue could be found, were Latin American states, the European Union and neutral bodies to support it, on economic stabilisation and security reform. Talk of sanctions against government figures would have to be shelved and political prisoners released, with all parties accepting the schedule of forthcoming elections. The self-righteous on any side would not be satisfied. But no one seems to have a clue as to the road ahead for Venezuela were its president to totter.

Tear Down That Wall: Joining the Global Classroom Community to Instill Global Citizenship

Instilling "global citizenship" in students is essential to prepare them for our rapidly changing world. Being a global citizen goes well beyond simply traveling or living in another country. It refers to a more holistic view of the world, understanding the commonalities we share and recognizing our responsibility to help our fellow man and safeguard our planet's future. Schools have grappled with how best to facilitate this skill set, but a model has recently emerged thanks to some forward-thinking global collaboration projects that incorporate digital tools and a fresh perspective to break down the walls of the classroom. By focusing on pertinent social issues and cross-cultural understanding, students are able to learn about these other cultures and also become activists as they collaborate with other students from around the world to become global citizens and achieve positive change.

We can all agree these are welcome advances, but the question is how can schools -- each with its own budgetary constraints, time issues and tech limitations -- hope to achieve these lofty goals? Fortunately, a number of web-based platforms and educational programs have emerged in recent years that were designed with these goals in mind.

International Education and Resource Network

One of the most prominent of these platforms (composed of 30,000 schools and youth organizations in more than 140 countries) is iEARN. They offer a wide range of global projects for students from elementary through high school based on different subjects, such as science, social studies and math. Throughout the range of projects, one central question always remains part of the dialogue: "How will this project improve the quality of life on the planet?" iEARN's 15-week Learning Circles project is the most comprehensive of their offerings. These highly interactive, project-based partnerships bring schools from around the world together to address educational, environmental or social issues. The teams work together to focus on media creation and then present their findings to the other schools. iEARN also offers face-to-face and online professional development courses for educators interested in becoming comfortable with these types of projects.

Going Global

Another major player is TakingITGlobal for Educators. TIGed uses technology and social issues to engage students and connect them with other schools through international learning projects. In doing so, they seek to empower classrooms to understand the issues and collaborate to find solutions for some of the world's greatest social issues. Through their online portal, TIGed assists teachers to incorporate technology to "create transformative learning experiences for their students." All of their educational resources are free for teachers, and these platforms bring diverse perspectives on social issues into the classroom. Teachers can also enroll in free e-classes that allow them to create lesson plans and connect with international learning projects, electronically uniting schools from around the world. In order to create globally aware students, TIGed focuses on three strategies:

1. Global citizenship
2. Environmental stewardship
3. Student voice

They currently draw upon almost 65,000 students in 4,500 schools in nearly 150 countries. One of the benefits of TIGed is the way they not only unite schools, but also add exclusive content to the dialogue through live webinars with guest speakers, virtual classes with graduate school mentors and international video conferences with experts in the field. Their Global Encounters projects, DeforestAction and Sprout (Social Innovation) are just a few of their fantastic programs.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/tear-down-wall-global-classroom-adam-carter

Learning While Doing

A newer addition to the game, but no less impressive, is Flat Connections, created by Australian educator Julie Lindsay, which unites schools from around the world to participate in global collaborative projects. In some cases, each school forms its own team, like their Global Youth Debates, which can be asynchronously conducted between schools around the world. Their Global Project, on the other hand, creates heterogeneous teams of students from different schools that are able to collaborate instead of competing against each other. Each of these six-month projects focuses on current events or real-world topics. Teams do their own research and create ongoing blog posts that include audio or video components and forum discussions. Using tools such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking sites and media creation programs and apps, they then develop a written collaborative eBook as well as a personal multimedia response to the theme. Flat Connections also offers professional development courses for teachers to become versed in the tools and techniques needed for implementing successful global projects in the classroom. In addition, they offer conferences where students and teachers can come together and practice their collaboration.

All of the programs mentioned here are free to participate, and while access to basic classroom technology is required, in many cases, a simple Internet connection with access to blogs, wikis and Skype is sufficient. These programs can be integrated into present curriculums (as part of science, IT or social studies classes, for example) or designed in an extracurricular space. Once students become connected with stimulating projects that reach around the globe, they become more engaged with the learning process and gain a valuable understanding about the world as a whole and their role in a global society.