Today and yesterday I have not been very well and as such have not made it into the office.
As I did not have my work PC at home I have not been able to do a lot of the things I would normally and I am taking today as a sick day. However, yesterday I was able to catch up with reading, write up notes, deal with emails and conference calls (via my mobile) and attend webinars, effectively still working a full day.
This really just confirms how flexible we can, or should be, in today’s environment. Yesterday I felt ill/tired but able to perform tasks at my own pace, today I do not have as many tasks I can do remotely and really need to rest up.
However, even though I am taking the day as a sick day and feeling dreadful, I am hoping to attend my first sessions of the Global Education Conference – albeit on the last day of the conference (notes below from any I make it to)…
1. Global Project Based Learning & 21st Century Skills are Dialectically Connected (iEARN Syria)
- Argue need to change the classroom, partly due to technology held by students.
- Showed information on local history project, one of collaborative global projects on iEARN platform. ‘Live the history’ via combining site visits with mobile technology.
- 21st Century Skills include mentality of global citizenship, including research into environmental issues [particularly interesting considering the challenges faced by Syria] youth organised and managed.
- “iEARN students are not typical students” – something for for recruiters at universities and businesses to consider.
- Project based learning way to avoid information-delivery style learning/teaching. Research, report writing and other skills developed.
2. How to Change the World (Keynote – Charter for Compassion International)
- ‘Peace starts here’ tagline for the charter with video confirming scale of global adoption (on http://www.fetzer.org/ channel).
- New to me I think, but core idea about encouraging people to be ‘compassionate’.
- Born out of idea from TED – interesting to see something come out of TED beyond simply ideas/theory.
- Have a stream of activity for chartered schools – based around 3 simpler ideas, basically about being good citizens. Perhaps this is the post-religion way to organize morals?
I have tried to attend bits of GlobalEdCon in, at least, the last couple of years. It is impressive if only for the scale, logistics and spread (for example session 1 above only had 10 people attend but they were split between the US, UK, Syria and China; session 2 was mainly North American delegates but also the Caribbean, Zagreb and me!).
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 