A Global Journey Julie Lindsay

Ndola, Zambia

“Come and teach in the real Africa,” was the advertisement that inspired my husband and I to accept our first international teaching positions in Zambia, January 1998.

Our daughter, Violet, was three. We sold up most of our worldly possessions in hometown Melbourne, Australia and left for Africa on our new adventure. We are still out there as international educators, over thirteen years and five countries later

At Simba School, Zambia I had transformed into a computer teacher, where I was running an ‘Internet Club’ as an after school activity and groups of students participated in iEARN learning circle projects.

This was an environment where only a single computer in a locked room in the library was allowed on the Internet (by directive of our school head) with the non-networked computer lab being a good 5 minute walk away. This did not deter us!

Kuwait

Moving to the Middle East I found a different environment where everyday my challenge was to be culturally sensitive to the host country while continuing to implement new technologies and ideas. In Kuwait the text books were highly censored and often large sections blacked out, the Internet was filtered of course, but I was able to access necessary websites and tools for education.

The English School for Girls, my first position in Kuwait, was a girls-only environment, No men at all allowed. This was problematic for me as when I needed computers fixed I had to wait until long after school finished, until all girls and women had left, so I could bring in the male technicians.

Getting a little tired of this, I persuaded my head on a new arrangement. We agreed that if I yelled ‘Man in the corridor’ and waited for all girls to scuttle into the classrooms and don scarves and veils I could then escort the technicians through to the computer lab.

Bangladesh

I continued my global journey to Bangladesh one of the poorest, most crowded and desperate countries in the world

It was during this time at International School Dhaka that we implemented a Palm handheld 1:1 program in the middle school, at a time in fact when the devices were not available to buy in the country.

I still laugh at the story told by my Head of school when he literally carried 20 Palms back from the US and sweated all the way through customs.

Around this time, Web 2.0 was emerging as a platform for communication and collaboration. The time was ripe to embark on something new that could be scaffolded by online technologies and could join students across the globe in meaningful learning experiences. I joined my largely Bangladeshi classroom with Vicki Davis’, ‘Coolcatteacher’ class, from GA USA, and the Flat Classroom Project was born.

Qatar

Moving back to the Middle East, Qatar, I was concerned whether I could transplant the Flat Classroom into this more closed and sheltered community. Yes, the first challenges were technical to do with tools and access; the second were political - relying on me reassuring my school administration nothing would happen to upset students or parents,

but once these were solved I focused on the real challenge of connecting students, teenagers, across the world from very different cultures but with many similarities.

My fears were largely unfounded, students wanted to connect, and learn about the world, and they did it with pride, fascination and excitement.

I remember one parent, a beautiful Arabic woman in abaya and hejab, came to see me with tears in her eyes, exclaiming how excited the whole extended family were for her daughter to be in the Flat Classroom Project, collaborating using technology and learning about leadership and digital citizenship and global communication. I was in tears as well, tears of relief and joy, thinking she had come to berate me for exposing her daughter to the wide world

Beijing, China

China is another story. You have to be in China to understand how cut off from the world we can be at times and how determined the powers to be are to keep it that way. But then again, I know many schools in the US, Australia and other advanced countries are also existing under the same conditions, by choice!

If you are in this situation, remember my words about China - there is always a way to connect and communicate, you just have to be creative and persevere.

So Ning goes down right after you encourage the entire staff to join during a workshop

Voicethread is blocked just after the elementary school teachers get really excited and madly implement it into their units of inquiry

or in a strange twist of fate, Edublogs blocks China (not the other way around) just after you set up your class blogs on this platform.

Very early on with Flat Classroom we saw the power and magic of connecting with others globally and the difference it was making to learning, including breaking through stereotypical attitudes and behaviours. Not only did we keep developing flat classroom projects but we had a dream to bring students and teachers together f2f to cement collaborative relationships and work on actionable ideas. If the impact of global collaboration was evident in an asynchronous project, we imagined the opportunity for growth if we could get students and teachers from all parts of the world working together in the same place at the same time.

Our dream came true in 2009, when the first Flat Classroom Conference held in Qatar changed lives and cast a vision for the future of education.

This year in Beijing the second Flat Classroom Conference held at Beijing BISS International School brought together over 200 participants, including 100 students, in a truly flattened learning mode where ideas were envisioned, shared and developed.

This challenge-based event encouraged action projects for global curriculum and visions for improved education systems and saw all participants, including virtual team members, working together, and we held it in China, behind the Great Fire Wall ...or rather running along the top!

Being an international educator, and having a daughter as a ‘third culture kid’, meaning having lived her formative years outside her country of origin, I selfishly want others around the world to experience what we are privileged to live.

I want them to be confronted with different religious and cultural beliefs and be immersed in an environment where English (or their own language) is not spoken and where simple communication can often result in highly creative sign language.

I want them to acknowledge and respect differences and learn how to use their personal strengths to create a bond of understanding with new friends. I want them to question, doubt, be amazed, experience alternative lifestyles, treasure similarities, and learn how to get on with other people globally

I want them to be able to do this without losing their own identity and sense of belonging to a country or to a culture, and without feeling superior or inferior to any other person.

I encourage each of you to embrace your own global journey. There are three takeaways from my story I would like you to remember:

Be open to alternatives......

1.  Remember, you can always yell ‘Man in the corridor‘ If you or your IT people don’t have the answers find someone who does, or do it a different way

It’s cool to be ‘flat’

1.  Use whatever tools you can to connect yourself with the world. Go beyond the ‘wow’ and embed global collaborative practice into everyday learning so that ‘unflat’ classrooms are unusual.

If you aren’t doing it, it’s not happening

1. the words of Thomas Friedman in the 2007 edition of The World is Flat, in the chapter he writes about the Flat Classroom Project. So, get out there and make it happen, there are no excuses left, we have the technology, we have the pedagogy, it’s time to join the world.

In closing, here is my wish for everyone: To experience meaningful connection and collaboration that is beyond the daily expectation, that is global in concept and practice and supports cultural understanding and makes a difference to the world as we know it, one classroom at a time.