Teen Life and Blogging Globally

Join us for a live webcast on Teachers Teaching Teachers Wednesday night 9 p.m. EDT.
hosted by Paul Allison.
Please go to: http://edtechtalk.com/node/1705
"Teachers from the International Teen Life Project will be joining us on Teachers Teaching Teachers this week to discuss their project and and more generally: blogging globally in the middle school years.

This is how the participants in this project -- Jamie Hide (Cartagena, Columbia), Clarence Fisher (Snow Lake, MB, Canada), Lee Baber (Virginia, U.S.A), Kim Cofino and Jabiz Raisdana (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) -- described their purpose on their PBwiki

The purpose of this project is to have teenagers from different locations around the globe exchange their thoughts and perceptions of what their lives are like. By viewing, reading, and listening to the perspectives of others from around the globe, they will gain a greater perception of the similarities and differences of people's lives around the world. I DO NOT want to do an international project where kids learn about the holidays, foods, etc, of another nation. I presume we have all been through enough of these already. I am looking to dig deeper, to have kids dig, read, write, etc. I want them to explore issues, and work intensely to gain a clearer understanding of concerns that people have in a global world.

teenlife / a verion

We will talk about their accomplishments and issues they faced, and we'll consider how we might add more global partners to our school-based social network, our elgg for middle school students, The Personal Learning Space.

We will also talk about Madeline Brownstone thoughts behind setting up a "Global IT group" on Classroom 2.0:

The reason [Madeline is] proposing this group is threefold:

1. Our digital native students often do not have the tools to step out of their online worlds to analyze it's impact--it is our job as educators to lead the way

2. I would like to see if we can establish a continuum of goals and objectives (and at some point, lessons) that can begin in Middle School and continue through High School

3. Starting in the fall, I will be teaching an IB course called Information Technology in a Global Society (ITGS) and I am going to be developing curriculum for that as well as looking back to how our school can modify our scope and sequence for 7th through 10th grades to better prepare our students who will be taking ITGS in the 11th and 12th grades

Getting Started - Classroom 2.0

Please join us for what promises to be a freewheeling conversation about blogging, covering the content of a global education course, social networks (elggs), wikis... and most of all connecting middle school students in global conversations."