World Citizenship

Since a few years I'm teaching this subject in the second class at my secondary school besides geography and economics. There's no standardized curriculum and there are no basic (stated as mandatory by the government) goals with this elective subject. That means that me and my colleagues can pick whatever we think that'll fit within the region of this world citizenship thing. 

During the Global SEE Summit in Calgary I prepared the questions for the twitter chat with Rafranz Davis and the topic was Global Awareness and I guess that covers in my opinion the new subject I teach: World Citizenship (mondo as it's called at my school in the Netherlands). These were the main questions that we asked during the twitter chat: 

- How can we create lessons that better prepare kids to be globally prepared?

- What do you think is most important to teach concerning world citizenship?

- How do we maintain global awareness in learning?

During this twitter chat we tried to get ourselves and other teachers to think about these questions and come up with some answers. Even for us as teachers we need to be an example for our students and therefore it's almost mandatory that we add some global awareness to the curriculum. Wouldn't you agree? Especially with the state of the world at this moment, such as the airplane with civilians shot from the air above Ukraine, ISIS in Iraq, civil war in Syria, conflict between the Israeli and the Palestine people, Russia and it's foreign policy, Global Warming, Ebola virus in Africa, child and slave labour during sports tournaments such as the Olympics and World Championships, natural disasters in China and so on.
Due to the amount of information and access to this information, students get faced with too many different views. In that case it's importend that a trustworthy and reliable person as the teacher is able to help his students to verify and narrow down these information stream, in order to let the student be able to create an opinion of their own.

Global Awareness: people nowadays need to be aware and know at least something about it, to create an opinion of their own on these matters. Since the internet the world is connected and it's not about our own street, city or community anymore. From this point of view I think that we need to get our students globally connected. I know that I will. Not only during this new subject I teach, but also in my standardized curriculum with geography and economics. I've got a few plans to connect my classroom with school classes in New Brunswick-Canada, Novosibirsk-Russia, Rakovnik-Czech Republic, Orland Park/USA and am trying to connect to Kenya-Africa. With the classes that I teach about global citizenship we'll be joining the Global Teenager Project again and will connect with schools in Surinam, Curaçao and hopefully many more. 

This week I was asked if digital citizenship should be part of this world citizenship. I think yes, and will blog about that later this week. And would like if you shared your opinion as well. 

Getting connected with Rafranz Davis from Texas, US.

Association for Citizenship Teaching (UK): http://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk

Wereldburgerschap - kennisplatform voor mondiaal onderwijs: http://www.wereldburgerschap.nl

Canon voor wereldburgerschap/Canon for Global Citizenship: http://www.ncdo.nl/artikel/canon-voor-wereldburgerschap (UK & NL)

Global SEE Summit #smartee Twitter Chat

While at the Global SEE Summit in Calgary, Alberta two weeks ago Rafranz hosted a Twitter Chat. It was the first one that most of the attendants were in the same room while tweeting and sharing their thoughts on the questions. Last week the NA SMART Exemplary Educators did a Twitter chat and the topic was the Global SEE Summit. And this was really helping us SEEs from #SummitWithdrawals ... We all miss the summit a lot and weren't finished at all.

Rafranz created the question to review the Global summit and shared the questions with me afterwards, in order to do the same in our time zone. The North American Twitter chat was at 3 AM CEST and there weren't that many EMEA SEEs attending. So Bryony (SEE from Schotland) and I thought that we might give it a go this week with the same questions.

• Q1 We all accomplished quite a bit last week both personally and professionally. What was your greatest #smartee accomplishment?
• Q2 What one new thing did you learn about SMART NB or Amp that you can share? (nothing under NDA) #smartee
• Q3 We all made global classroom connections last week. How will you realistically get and keep your classrooms globally connected? #smartee
• Q4 What is your one big thing that you will implement right away because of the Summit? #smartee
• Q5 Share one thing that you learned from an international friend! #smartee
• Q6 If you could change or improve one thing last week, what would it be? #smartee
• Q7 What would you like to say to someone who made a great impact on your life last week? #smartee

And before we started the Twitter chat, we did some housekeeping. Nothing NDA should be shared, because we signed that agreement for the Summit and when answering a question, people should respond using the number of the question in their tweet. The questions will start with a Q followed by the number. Answers should begin with A followed by the number of question you’re answering.
The twitter chat was from 7 till 8 PM CEST, but it took at least 15 minutes more. People were enthusiastic. And before we even could start with question number 1, the chat was already running on another topic: world citizenship, digital citizenship, digital footprint, digital tattoo and what should or could be taught in that curriculum. Very nice topic and would like to do a tweet chat about that topic.

The tweets are captured in this Storify. And tweeting from tweetchat.com is very useful during a Twitter Chat, because it automatically adds the hashtag that's been used.

P.S. I would like to thank Rafranz for sharing the questions and Bryony for doing a great job hosting the Twitter chat with me! Thanks.

SMART Exemplary Educators Summit Tiger

The past few years I've had the honor and the pleasure to attend three different SMART Exemplary Educator Summits and if you count the precursor The International SMART Board forum along, than I've attended in total four professional development training camps organized by SMART Technologies in a foreign country.

My first official summit was in the summer of 2011 at the headquarters in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) and I was invited to come over and have a look at how the North-Americans did run a show like that, because together with 5 other SEEs from Europe we were going to be the peer mentors at the EMEA SEE Summit in Hamburg (or Paris) the next year. At this summit there were also about 50 SEEs from Canada and the US. This Summit was (perhaps due to the fact that it was way out of my time zone in the beautiful country of Canada) epic to me. I've learned so much and gained so many friends. My love for SMART gained a boost and was ready to adopt more technology in my classroom. This was also the start of my first global collaboration project with teachers from abroad.

Class of 2011

My second summit that I attended was in Hamburg at the local SMART office during the summer of 2012. There we're about 30 SEEs from EMEA and four from North-America (3 from the US and one from Canada) to learn from and share with each other. This Summit took only three days of professional development and I did two presentations. New friends were made and old friends were reunited again. New global collaboration projects started from here.

Class of 2012

My third summit was in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) again. The summit was a global one, therefore there were about 76 SEEs present. SEEs from Canada, the US, EMEA and Panama, Chile and Mexico. This was the one that was most epic. Different from the other ones, and I've made even more new friends and was (at last?) reunited with old friends as well. Whilst putting this words down, I'm still suffering from summit withdrawals. I'm missing my fellow SEEs and want to work even more with them. Global collaboration will be taken to a next level ...

Class of 2014

Besides the locations, amount of SEEs that attended and the latest software releases at the moment of the summits, there were some differences between them. I'll try to share my opinion on that. 

At first in my opinion we did less sharing at the latest summit, compared to the other two that I attended. All SEEs needed to prepare and bring their best lesson to the 2011 and 2012 summit and needed to show and share in smaller groups. That is definitely something I've missed during the global summit. The amount of technical details was merely the same, although was the focus on this summit of course on amp and less on Notebook. New were the hackathons and the sessions we did with the developers. That is a great benefit from the other summits I've attended. We could share our feature requests etc. directly with the developers and could actually see that a lot things were put right into action. We all loved that! Watch out for the new releases of amp and Notebook! This was also the first year that the Global SEE platform was a great part of it, which made people do and share things on that platform. As I already stated before ... after the last summit I'm suffering more from summit withdrawals, so I guess it's addictive and I need to be with my fellow SEEs more and more again. There!

EMEA and Global Summit compared

What have we gained? - Moving mountains for students

Today we went to do some sightseeing in the Canadian Rockies. We planned to visit Banff National Park, Lake Louise, Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and we got to do some souvenir shopping in the town Banff.

Panorama shot at Lake Louise.

This was indeed very nice. I've been to Banff National Park before, but never to Lake Louise and it is a very beautiful site. Even when it's a little cold and rainy. The water in Lake Louise has this typical color of water that just came from a glacier. I've taken so many pictures, but as always one cannot capture the atmosphere in a picture. I tried anyway. I also took the time to create a Time Lapse movie with the iMotion app for iPhone. How many SEEs can you spot? 

Time Lapse movie from the walk around Lake Louise.

Walking around and chatting with new friends (for life) was a very nice ending of this summit. Besides this beautiful sightseeing tour, the past four days at SMART Technologies HQ was topic of the chatting in the morning. We talked what we most liked, what we thought could be better and talked about what we'd gained and will take home or school with us.

Personally I would have loved that we shared more (lesson) ideas, worked and collaborated more with each other, rather than the in my opinion technical issues regarding SMART amp. Don't get me wrong, I really like SMART amp and am looking forward to working with this in my SMART Collaborative Classroom. I do hope that all the comments we made to improve working with amp (and Notebook) will soon be available to make it even beter to work with. Back home I will do a presentation about this trip at school and share all that I've learned and gained from this summit. Mainly it will be things that we've shared in between, such as the outcome of the twitter chat and during the Global Collaboration workshop. We all made new friends and contacts this summit and those I will take with me and either me or one of my colleagues is willing to do a global collaboration project with SEEs from abroad. I also like the Kermit style video's, and that another thing I will take home. I can do that with students within a certain topic I teach or even in my mentor group. And I'm also thinking of Johan and me sharing what we've learned with other Dutch SEEs at the SMART office in the Netherlands ... Lots of ideas and work. Still processing.

Panorama shot taken from the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel

After Lake Louise we ate the best lunch ever at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and went for some shopping in the picturesque town Banff. I bought some stickers, pins, pencils and t-shirts. This was good and I want to be back! Canada. Is. Epic. Thank you SMART Technologies for taking good care and having me and the other SEEs around the past week!

At Lake Louise with Lise, Kristin and Amanda.

SEE of White Hats

This morning I created a Time-Lapse movie from the walk from Hotel Alma to SMART Technologies HQ and will add this to the #urban100 community, which embraces #GuerillaGeography to map the world in a slight different way. And I think that's a cool thing.

The hackathon teams presented the outcome of their ideas and they were in just one word amazing! If all this will be added to SMART Notebook and SMART amp we will truly be very happy with that. We (and certainly I) loved all the new things that actually will be added to the new NB and amp versions. It's a good thing to have teachers collaborating with the coders. Looking forward to the next release of NB (and the iPad version!).

Warren Barkley was ours for two hours during the Fireside Chat. About 15 people did get the chance to fire away the question that they really wanted to ask the CTO of SMART Technologies. Mine was a bit long, but was satisfied with the answer. The past few years (2012 till 9 months ago) SMART wasn't that good in my opinion and I was afraid that likewise to Apple, SMART Technologies didn't dare to experiment anymore and that future releases would be as predictable as the larger, better camera having, quicker and better OS etc. iPhoneX (don't get me wrong, I'm a fan). Well he explained that since 9 months SMART is back and all I can say and see after this week: He is totally true. My believes have returned too ...

On the Fireside Chat with Warren Barkley

After the lunch break we were divided in smaller groups and had the chance to discuss in smaller groups a few NDA stuff about both amp and Notebook. I was in a group that chatted further about the mobile version (yes, even smartphones) of amp and what and how teachers and students would want to see and control the content within the SMART amp platform. The teachers were quite unanimous about most things and the developers were very happy with our input.

When we got back from the small-group discussion sessions we were told to go upstairs and gather in the cafeteria of SMART Technologies. While entering the cafeteria we were applauded by the whole team of SMART and there were seats ready for us in a nice dressed up place with balloons etc. This was a huge surprise and it got even better. While the week was wrapped upon by a few very kind words to us by the chief of SMART we were told to check the little gift coupon in our chair (Oprah moment). Most of us gained a couple of thousand points for the Gold Star SEE Challenge (I got 2500) or a book and a few got some big surprises awaiting them. Lise won a new 600-series SMART Board and two others won a light raise interactive beamer. This was very nice! And on top of that we all received a one year license for SMART amp! Whoo-hoo!

Than we all had to do the White Hat ceremony and we were given a White Hat! This was so nice and the SMART staff kept applauding! We felt very special and there were people crying from joy. Lots of pictures were taken and then we had to get back to the Hotel to dress up for the 80's murder mystery dinner at Ford Calgary! This. Was. An. Awesome. Summit! Thank you SMART.

At the end of the day, before I left a few people from the technical department from SMART Technologies were so kind to have a look at my computer. Since the release of SMART Notebook 11, SMART Response Teacher Tools wasn't working on my MacBook, due to flash errors. With some coding added to the registry I am finally able to use the Teacher Tools again on my MacBook. So glad they could help me out! This has been buggering me ever since. So thanks again!

The whole group of Global SEE Summit SMART Exemplary Educators 2014

Broken Toyz

Allen pointed out this morning the following statement and I must say that I agreed on this one. "Who is crazy enough to present after a night out with Broken Toyz?" Well, it was my turn today so I guess I'm crazy enough. This morning wasn't going very well and I had little trouble with the mild headache and little sleep I had the past night. Anyway, I was up and was about to do two presentations today! One with Kate Seward (whom I met at the Summit in 2011 and I have been collaborating with the past school year) and one on my own about Global Collaboration. This was also the day that my eldest daughter Faye was about to turn eight and whilst following up on the news about the MH17 flight that was shot down from the sky above Ukraine last week, this day was a national day of mourning in the Netherlands because of that.

The topic of today was 'It takes a teacher to grow global understanding' and my presentation and how to set this up in your class room was due today. We started with an open discussion about SMART amp lead by Erica Arnoldin concerning our experience with amp after the SMART amp camp from yesterday. After that the whole group could ask questions to the developers team and loads of requests and feedback was released from the SEEs. I was kinda worried that a lot of requests were about the fact that powerful tools from Notebook should be added in amp, but in my opinion that's not a good thing. Notebook is mainly a teachers tools, where amp is a collaboration tool for students and they shouldn't be the ending up the same. That's all I can say about these NDA sessions.
After the lunch break and before my workshop about Global Collaboration, there were some small presentation of SEEs that have already done some Global Collaboration just to inspire the whole team of SEEs and prepare them for the workshop later this day.

Lise and I are getting a selfie with Neil!

Look what Rafranz gave me! A Sheldon flash drive!

The first presentation I did together with Kate while she was not present at SMART Technologies HQ, but called in from her home address using Bridgit. We'd created a Notebook-file together prior to the summit and showed and shared our experience with our colleague SEEs (present and the ones that joined in via Bridgit) just as Bob, Giovanna, Maria and Chris. We did a great job (well, mainly Kate, because I was still suffering from the Broken Toyz thing ...). And after this show the Global Collaboration 'how to' was on. I had about 90 minutes and the SEEs needed to work and collaborate with each other in small groups that were lead by an EMEA SEE, so there were 24 small groups. The outcome was a Global Collaboration lesson plan for the next school year and needed to be shared in the Gold Star SEE platform. There were some good things going on and I got a lot of positive feedback on my presentation. The SEEs were very happy to work in smaller groups on hands-on assignments. It turned out to be a good day after all.
During the day I interviewed a few SEEs that I have worked with the past year and asked them what was the main benefit from doing such a project. And did I use eXtreme Collaboration? Oh yes I did!

Yulia, Hamdy and Michelle giving their feedback on our projects.

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I have shared my presentation via Twitter and a SlideShare version is available here:

Learning Preferences

"There are no learning styles, but learning preferences” is what Heather Lamb pointed out and puts this whole learning thing in a new perspective and is certainly applicable to the way amp works, because since technology is more the way students learn today, than the latest gadget. And today we did a SMART amp camp and received a certificate afterwards as well. The SMART amp camp was lead by Heather Lamb during this day, while others were invited to join a hackathon and had an eight hour session with coders whom would build new features in both amp and notebook upon the input of the attending SEEs. The outcome of that would follow on the next day. 

For both groups this was a very intense day of training. Ainhoa pointed out that in the formerly know SMART Learning Space SEEs could do an online SMART amp collaboration training free of charge. I will do that before next school year starts.

"When there is a correct answer - exercise in creative thinking"

We were asked to respond to the question of what collaboration (with SMART amp) meant. These are a few of the responses that I especially liked:
- 1+1=3

- Personalised learning with AMP workspaces open to all learning preferences.

- Everyone working in the same direction, although the necessarily at the same speed or the same time.

The - according to Rafranz - stock image photo of me collaborating in amp with Lise and DeVane

During this day lots of SEEs created Kermit style video's about the Summit, SMART and education, due to a newly introduced Gold Star SEE Challenge and I interviewed Lise (CA) and deVane (US):

After dinner at the end of the day almost all SEEs attend the #smartee twitter chat! which I prepared with host Rafranz Davis (from TX, USA). We created the next questions which all SEEs could respond to during the twitter chat session.

1. How do you manage to escape from the standardised curriculum and add to your lessons?

2. In what ways do you add creativity to your lessons/content? 

3. How can we create lessons that better prepare kids to be globally prepared?

4. What do you think is most important to teach concerning world citizenship?

5. How do we maintain global awareness in learning

During the one hour Twitter Chat we did, the response was huge and the discussions were running. I respect the fact that Rafranz kept track of everything and guided the whole group through this session. It was great and the best part was yet to come. At the end Rafranz added a sixth question 'what would people want in their class room' and Linda Janssen was one of the people who responded and she asked for wifi in her classroom in South Africa, something they just don't have. Which Warren Barkley (CTO of SMART Technologies and present at the time) responded to that and said that SMART would take care of that. How awesome is that?! There we're tears all over the place.

The day ended with eighties hair metal cover band Broken Toyz at Morgens Pub. 

Receiving the SMART amp camp certificate from Heather Lamb