TEDxEnola: Get Connected

Get Connected
TEDxEnola
Lucy Gray
February 1, 2012
1Wednesday, February 1, 12

Happy Digital Learning Day! How appropriate as I’m going to be discussing my work in
educational technology with you today.

Why Change?
Change is in the air, and this word tends to cause some anxiety in educators.

Why Evolve?
I prefer to use the word evolve. Those of us working in the ﬁeld of education need to be
mindful of continuous improvement. We can’t simply rest on our laurels or accept current
conditions if we truly care about preparing all students for modern society.

Another Nation at Risk
Moment ?
How do we improve teaching and learning?
How do we assess students?
What’s Truly Innovative?
Perhaps never since the publication of “A Nation at Risk” in the 1980’s has there been as
much dialogue and polarized views in education. We’re wrestling with many questions
including:
How do we improve teaching and learning?
How do we assess 21st century skills?
What’s truly innovative?

The Partnership for
21st Century Skills
We’re talking 21st century skills which means that artful teaching is more important than
ever. Content is still king, but we need to infuse other kinds of skills into core content.

“The Highly Connected
Teacher”
The National Educational Technology Plan

The Horizon Report
K12 Edition
New and emerging technologies also play a role in today’s changing educational landscape.
The Horizon Report K12 edition is a useful document to help plan for effectively using
technologies in school settings.

Horizon Report 10th
Anniversary Summit
Megatrends
The world of work is increasingly global
and increasingly collaborative.
I’m on the advisory board for the K12 edition and last week, we gathered in Austin TX for a
Horizon Report summit. A forthcoming report will be issued in the next few months based on
megatrends that our group identiﬁed.

Megatrends
People expect to work, learn, socialize,
and play whenever and wherever they
want to.

Megatrends
The Internet is becoming a global
mobile network - and already is at its
edges.
The numbers of cell phone users and those with broadband access continues to skyrocket.
We are global and mobile.

Megatrends
The technologies we use are
increasingly cloud-based and delivered
over utility networks, facilitating the
rapid growth of online videos and rich
media.
Think YouTube and Facebook.

Megatrends
Openness — concepts like open
content, open data, and open
resources — is moving from a trend to
a value for much of the world.
Authoritative sources are losing their importance; increased need for validation and curation.

Megatrends
Legal notions of ownership and privacy
lag behind the practices common in
society. The very concept of ownership
is blurry.
The cloud is blurring these lines.

Megatrends
Real challenges of access, efficiency, and
scale are redefining what we mean by
quality and success. Access to learning in
any form is a challenge in too many parts
of the world, and efficiency in learning
systems and institutions is increasingly an
expectation of governments.
Solutions that scale are very important. Look to other parts of the world for innovations in
this area.

Megatrends
The Internet is constantly challenging
us to rethink learning and education,
while reﬁning our notion of literacy.
Think Henry Jenkin’s New Media literacies. Traditional literacies are not enough.

Megatrends
There is a rise in informal learning as
individual needs are redeﬁning schools,
universities, and training. Traditional
authority is increasingly being
challenged in many arenas.
Politically, socially and intellectually. Traditional authority is also being challenged in
academia.

Megatrends
Business models across the education
ecosystem are changing. Look to
libraries, colleges, and the publishing
industry.
Everyone is re-thinking their missions.

Personalized
Learning
Mobile
Technologies
21st century
skills
generational
Diversity
Learning
environments
Design
Thinking
Cloud
Computing
Textbook
Revolution
Curated
Learning
New Media
Literacies
Flipping
The
Classroom
Global
Connections
That all said... these are some of the buzzwords that I come across in my work as a
consultant. I’m in a unique position to get a sense of trends because of the broad spectrum
of my work.
For the remainder of this talk, I want to focus on the idea of global connections.

Connect Now!
My name is Lucy Gray and my passion is connecting people.
It’s time to connect your classrooms to the world, I’d like to share some of my experiences
that have led me to call for action.
I believe in technology, professional generosity and global connectedness will help
modernize education.

The Global Education Conference that has taken place during International Education Week
for the past two years has been the most profoundly challenging, exhilarating, rewarding,
and exhausting professional experience of my life to date was this event. I never thought
Steve Hargadon and I would pull this off.
How many of you saw a session?
Any of you present?

15,028 Unique Logins
Archived Presentations from 62 countries
400+ Free General Sessions
60+ Free Featured Keynotes
The 2010 Global Education
Conference
5 days
Around the Clock
The Global Education Conference that has taken place during International Education Week
for the past two years has been the most profoundly challenging, exhilarating, rewarding,
and exhausting professional experience of my life to date was this event. I never thought
Steve Hargadon and I would pull this off.
How many of you saw a session?
Any of you present?

2010 - Brian Mannix
The back story is a little fuzzy in our memories, but to the best of my knowledge, Steve first
approached me at Educon 2010 about creating a significant education event leveraging our
respective online communities, the Global Education Collaborative and Classroom 2.0 as well
as Elluminate (now called Blackboard Collaborate), a video conference service for which Steve
is a consultant. He asked me what we could that would be BIG, taking advantage of the
collaborative properties of Elluminate. My response was that we should do an online
conference, similar to the K12 Online conference, but entirely in Elluminate. Our idea
stagnated for awhile, until Steve attended the CoSN conference that March and was inspired
to start moving on this project by CoSN Executive Director, Keith Krueger.
Called it the Global Education Conference, our intent was to facilitate a collaborative and
world-wide community project designed to significantly increase opportunities for globally-
connecting education activities.
Steve and I coordinated our event to coincide with International Education Week 2010. From
the start, we wanted this to be as inclusive as possible and we ended up with over 400
sessions and 60 keynote presentations taking place around the clock for five days. Presenters
hailed from over 60 countries. All of this content is archived and freely available to anyone
with an internet connection. We expect stats to be about the same for the 2011 conference as
well.
About 6 months beforehand, we started to build this event, enlisting the help of hundreds of
volunteer educators worldwide and an advisory board was led by Julie Lindsay, an
international school educator currently based in Beijing. We also partnered with over 100
global education organizations who were charged with submitting presentations and for
spreading the word.
Behind the scenes, our plans were developed using Wikispaces, Google Docs and Forms,
Sites, Calendars and a clever tool called You Can Book me which allowed our session

2010 - Polar Bears International

2010 - Catlin Gabel School
• Program Information

2011 - Pam Allyn - LitWorld

2011 - Greg Jacobs - Louder Than a Bomb

2011 - The Shoah Foundation

Steve Hargadon
By the time the conference closed the ﬁrst year, Steve and I were a bit punchy to say the least
as we spent the entire week glued to our computers.
It’s hard to describe the feeling in a virtual room, but the closing session vibe was remarkably
jubilant. People shared their experiences and suggestions, and it was really rewarding to hear
these stories.
Some people may brush off technology as a de-humanizing force in our world, but I can
assure you of the opposite. This event bonded people and given the locations of participants,
I don’t think this would have been possible without technology.

In 2010, my then 8 year old came home from school shortly after the conference ended, and I
announced happily that my event was over. He pointed to the blue armchair in our living
room, and said, “Now you can leave that chair!”.

This is some of the feedback we received that justiﬁed my feelings.
Reactions to the conference have been really positive, and it’s also been interesting to hear
how people took advantage of the conference. I recently heard that one school in Los Angeles
devoted a classroom and projected various sessions continuously through the school day.
Teachers could stop by during their prep or lunch periods to take part in the conference.

I have truly enjoyed this experience. I've been able
to get the beneﬁts of a conference- collaboration,
brainstorming, samples of work amidst the regular
workday. And there is something to be said about
sitting with a cup of tea from your own kitchen
while listening to new ideas.
Listening to presenters made me proud to be a
teacher. They are so clearly professionals, and
teachers in the US have been pummeled lately. So
it was wonderful to remember why I teach, and to
"be" with like-minded teachers.
It really makes the world feel small.
This conference brings the world to a developing
country where teachers work against huge odds
with few to no resources. Their determination is
exemplary. Without such conferences their story
would be missed by many.
Wow - what an incredible concept! And, at the
same time, why isn't all learning like this?!
I think this is the future of professional
development!
This is some of the feedback we received that justiﬁed my feelings.
Reactions to the conference have been really positive, and it’s also been interesting to hear
how people took advantage of the conference. I recently heard that one school in Los Angeles
devoted a classroom and projected various sessions continuously through the school day.
Teachers could stop by during their prep or lunch periods to take part in the conference.

Lessons Learned
Along the Way
So, how did I get this place where I had the good fortune to participate in such a rich event?
I’ve thought a lot about this and for me, The Global Education Conference was the
culmination of lessons learned over the past few years. These lessons are:
•Time is of the essence.
•Our children (or grandchildren or kids we love) are our litmus tests.
•Professional generosity beneﬁts everyone.
•Our physical, emotional and cognitive boundaries need to be extended.

What are we waiting for?
Text
The Global Education Conference was the pinnacle of a relatively new journey I’ve taken in
education. Because of various experiences, I’ve arrived at a place where I believe that global
connectedness plays a very important role in modernizing education.
Let me preface this by noting that I am not the savviest world traveler, nor a speaker of many
languages, nor a real expert in global education. My passion is for connecting people and
educational innovation; global education is a part of that.
For me, it starts with Julia and Henry. My school-aged kids don’t have the luxury of waiting
for change. Via my travels as a consultant and through new media, I interact with people all
over the world, listening to their stories about what’s happening in their classrooms and
secretly hoping my kids will have the same opportunities in their classrooms. My role as a
parent needing information on best practices underlies all that I do, and I can tell you from
my experiences that we have a long way to go in this country in terms of raising global
awareness.

Practice professional
generosity.
One factor that fuels my work is what I consider my moral obligation to be professional
generous. Sharing what I know leads to learning from others and these mutually beneﬁcially
relationships lead to change. I think it’s especially important that we all practice professional
generosity as teachers are currently under close scrutiny.
Several years ago, I complimented a colleague on her groundbreaking work in educational
technology, and suggested that she blog about her experiences so that others could learn
from her. She replied, “That might be how you do things, Lucy, but it’s not for me. I get 25
emails a day from people asking me questions, and they can learn it just like I did. RTFM.” I
vowed at that moment to never develop a similar attitude and this professional generosity has
been an underlying theme in all of my work.
Through the Global Education Conference, I’ve seen this concept come alive. We had a virtual
conference lounge where people could come for help and volunteers gathered there to be
assigned sessions to moderate. These moderators often jumped in to ﬁll holes in our
schedule. My favorite story was when my friend and mentor Larry Anderson stopped by to
check out the conference and was so moved by the sessions that he viewed the moderator
training video and started helping out around the clock.

Push your boundaries. 36Wednesday, February 1, 12
During the course of my work, I have also learned, too, that it’s scary to push beyond one’s
own comfort zone, but the rewards are worth it.
This picture of barbecued stingray in Singapore reminds me of this... I am not one of those
people who relishes new foods, but I know that I’m going to miss out if I don’t take a bite.
That’s how I feel about global education... if we don’t connect schools, our kids are going to
miss out on rich and authentic experiences.

See the world and understand. 37Wednesday, February 1, 12
In 2006, a trip to Berlin, Dresden and Prague with Apple Distinguished Educator colleagues
also inﬂuenced me. We were charged with creating a global awareness curriculum using
digital artifacts from our experiences and I came to the very basic realization that given the
state of technological advances, at least here in the US, there is no excuse for NOT
connecting.
How can we can we expect students to understand the world without seeing it in person or
through virtual experiences?
How can we expect students to engage with the world unless we model it?
How can we truly understand others if we never interact with them?

http://globaleducation.ning.com
The Global Education
Collaborative & Conference
In 2007, inspired by the success of Steve Hargadon’s Classroom 2.0 social network which
now has over 50,000 members, I decided to create a similar community focused on global
education. The Global Education Collaborative has a members of approximately 10,000
people
from over 100 different countries. Anyone with an interest in developing projects, sharing
resources, and bringing attention to global initiatives is welcome to participate. Our goal is to
serve as a central location for connecting and ﬁnding resources that promote connections for
adults and students alike.

As I started brainstorming for this presentation in late 2010, I serendipitously received a
tweet
from New York educator George Haines. He put me on the spot for a 140 character answer
and my response was:
It's because we have urgent problems that need to be addressed and in order to prepare our
students to work on these problems, we must connect them globally. We must teach them
how networked learning leads to networked problem solving.
I think often of Jean-Francois Rischard’s work, High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to
Solve Them and he makes it clear that these pressing issues are not going to be solved in
isolation. Solutions lie beyond borders and the global community must rally.

@oline73: Can you distill why globally
connected classrooms are vital in 2010? (More
than say, 30 years ago)
tweet

@oline73: Can you distill why globally
connected classrooms are vital in 2010? (More
than say, 30 years ago)
It's because we have urgent problems that need
to be addressed and in order to prepare our
students to work on these problems, we must
connect them globally. We must teach them how
networked learning leads to networked problem
solving.
tweet

Need Further Evidence?
If you need further convincing, look at just what has happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and
Libya. Consider the role of technology in informing and empowering the voices of many who
would have been drowned out 30 years ago.
During the Egyptian protests, my friend Atif who teaches in Cairo sent me this tweet. At ﬁrst,
I
didn’t quite get what he was asking because I think everyone in the US generally knew of the
events unfolding. It occurred to me later that the news is heard here, but I wonder how well
people listened and truly understood the perspective of people living in Egypt. I think the
desperation I read in Atif’s tweet came from years of experiencing partial truths and inaction
against injustice... he was really saying, I think, was, “Make people listen and act”.
I also think that because of social media, our students will continue to be exposed to global
events as they unfold, and it’s up to us as educators to prepare them to analyze and
participate for these situations.

I took this picture of an arbor of trees outside the Berlin Jewish Museum in 2006 when I
visited Europe with my ADE colleagues. To me it represents my global awakening. I realized
that it’s never been easier to connect with others using the technology tools at our disposal.
If I can reach out and connect with others around the world, so can you. It’s your obligation
to do so with your students.
I’m going to pretend that I won the TED Prize and here’s my wish for you.
Get connected and come join me on this journey in the Global Education Collaborative and at
the 2012 Global Education Conference which will take place November this year!

Lucy Gray
http://lucygrayconsulting.com
Slides available at:
http//lucygray.org
Twitter: elemenous
Email: lucy@lucygrayconsulting.com
2010 Global Ed Conference
2011 Global Ed Conference

TEDxEnola: Get Connected

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