The focus of this presentation is on developing student autonomy to build learning networks and communities of practice for collaboration, both local and global. We talk about the teacher as a connected and collaborative global learner, but we need to redesign the learning paradigm further to connect students in K-12 more independently with others. The role of the teacher as activator or ‘learning concierge’ for student network building is crucial. Knowledge construction via a non-hierarchical approach means the student must also learn to take responsibility for professional learning modes and not be reliant on the teacher as the conduit. Join Julie to explore new ideas for collaborative learning to support deeper understanding about the world while working with the world.

1. Student Autonomy
Flat Learning– Global Collaboration
Julie Lindsay
#ozelive2015

2. Meet Julie Lindsay…..
Global Educator, Innovator
Teacherpreneur, Author
MA Educational Technology Leadership
MA Music
EdD Student, University of Southern
Queensland
Adjunct Lecturer, Charles Sturt University,
Faculty of Education
Global collaboration consultant
Apple Distinguished Educator
Google Certified Teacher
Director, Learning Confluence Pty Ltd
Founder, Flat Connections
@julielindsay | flatconnections.com | @flatconnections | about.me/julielindsay

3. Flat Learning
Global
Collaboration
Student
Autonomy

4. The focus of this presentation is on developing
student autonomy to build learning networks and
communities of practice for collaboration, both
local and global.
We talk about the teacher as a connected and
collaborative global learner, but we need to
redesign the learning paradigm further to connect
students in K-12 more independently with others.
The role of the teacher as activator or ‘learning
concierge’ for student network building is crucial.
Knowledge construction via a non-hierarchical
approach means the student must also learn to
take responsibility for professional learning modes
and not be reliant on the teacher as the conduit.

5. What is a ‘Flat Student’?
What is ‘Flat Learning’?
Flat Learning

6. Where ALL learners have freedom to
communicate ‘across’ rather than
up or down
FLAT LEARNING?

8. Digital access and fluency
supports new learning
modes……Flat, connected
learning!

9. Synchronous ‘flat’ learning
Challenge: To be able to sustain connections beyond the face-to-face
experience and beyond the virtual, synchronous experience e.g. Skype call.

10. Asynchronous ‘flat’ learning
BLENDED
Learning modes

11. Flat Connected
Learning
Collaborative
– Culture of
Sharing
Blended
learning
Flipped
learning
Inquiry
based
Project /
Challenge
based
PedagogyLearning Design
LeadershipWeb 2.0
'Flat Connected Learning' © Julie Lindsay 2014

12. More ‘flat’, connected learning ideas
• Learning 2.0
– Participatory
– Relies on interaction with other learners
– Not what you know but who you know
• Learning 3.0
– Semantic-based architecture of webs
– User and machine generated
– New ways of thinking and learning
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/next-generation-learning.html

13. Learning 3.0?
“If Web 1.0 was the 'Write Web' and Web 2.0 is
the 'Read/Write Web', then Web 3.0 will be the
'Read/Write/Collaborate Web'. But it will not
only promote learning that is more richly
collaborative, it will also enable learners to
come closer to 'anytime anyplace' learning and
will provide intelligent solutions to web
searching, document management and
organisation of content.
Steve Wheeler – eLearning 3.0 http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/learning-30.html

14. http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/next-generation-learning.html
Next Generation Learning

15. “The pipe is more important than the content in the
Connectivism – George Siemens
‘Connectivism’
“…..draws upon the fact that
the very concept of
knowledge and learning are
changing before our eyes
with the advent of new
technologies.”

16. What are enablers for flat learning?
• Web 2.0 tools – access at home and at school
• Curriculum redesign
• Promoting the ‘networked student’
– PLN and PLC development
– personal branding
– global digital citizenship
• Student independent learning
– Choices
– Collaboration
See ‘Who says global collaboration is hard?
http://www.julielindsay.net/2014/08/who-says-global-collaboration-is-hard.html

17. What Hattie tells us about ‘Effect Size’
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/media-speeches/guestlectures/pdfs/tgls-hattie.pdf

18. What Hattie tells us about ‘Effect Size’
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/media-speeches/guestlectures/pdfs/tgls-hattie.pdf

19. How connected
are you as an
educator?
How are you
connecting your
students to the
world?
The 90 second challenge
Add your ideas to the chat

20. Global
Collaboration
nick-diamantidis

21. Definition – ‘Global Collaboration’
‘Global collaboration’ broadly refers to
geographically dispersed educators,
classrooms, schools and other learning
environments that use online technologies to
learn with others beyond their immediate
environment in order to support curricular
objectives, intercultural understandings, critical
thinking, personal and social capabilities and
ICT capabilities

22. The future of ‘flat’ learning includes
collaboration online.
How are we supporting this?
How can we take this from local to
global?
Future?

23. THREE easy steps……
1. Build online learning
communities
2. Design for success
3. Move to collaboration
and co-creation

25. Flat Connections Global Project (FCGP)
• 500 students
• 20+ classrooms
• 6 countries
• 36 student teams
• 1 Keynote
• 24 Expert Advisors
• 18 Judges and 3 Meta-judges
• 213 Videos
• 15 eBooks
February-June 2014!
http://flatconnections.com

26. FCGP Community for Learning

27. Interact and
Share with
the World
Collaborative
Learning
Community
Network
Spaces for Global Learning

28. Spaces for Connection……..

29. Spaces for Collaboration……

30. Student Leadership…….

31. What do student leaders think?
Communication was difficult. I don't think that it
was necessarily just being in different time zones,
but also that it was all based online.
I found that the majority of the students in my
team never contacted me, despite being messaged
several times with the expectancy of a response. I
often felt more dedicated to the task than a lot of
other people in the team.
However, in saying that, there were also other
students who contributed significant amount of
information, and should be commended for it.

32. Students as global project leaders……
This project was a great experience for me to
be able to collaborate with people from all over
the world and learn how to communicate with
people who have different ideas and
perspectives.
It was like herding cats…….

33. Challenges to global collaboration…..
I would often send messages to my team members, but
I think most of those messages went unnoticed. It
would be great if the inbox would do something more to
alert you that you have a message - it would help a lot!
The thing that did not work with student leaders was I
felt like most people in my group just felt that it was the
student leaders job to do everything and they didn't
have to do anything. This could be improved by making
sure people know that being part of a group means
everyone needs to help and do their job.

34. Student comment the next year..
“When I am not connecting globally I feel
disconnected”
Berea District, USA

35. What do
teachers need
to know to
bring global
collaboration to
the classroom?
How are you
bringing global
connections and
collaboration to
your students?
The 90 second challenge
Add your ideas to the chat

36. Student
Autonomy

37. Coming towards a definition…..
….the level of control, autonomy, and power
that a student experiences in an educational
situation.

38. Thoughts on ‘Student Agency’
• Refers to the level of control, autonomy, and
power that a student experiences in an
educational situation
• Looks like:
– Giving students choices for learning environment,
subject matter, approach and/or pace
– Authentic assessment
– Experiential or project-based learning
– Mastery-based learning
http://www.knewton.com/blog/ed-tech-101/student-agency/

39. School on Cloud: Towards a Paradigm Shift
EU Network School on Cloud: Namely, that present conditions
require a new teaching and learning paradigm based on the
integrated dimension of education, when considering the use
of cloud computing. In other words, it is suggested that there
is a need for an integrated approach which is simultaneously
pedagogic (i.e. new role of teachers), technical/technological
(i.e. use of the internet), administrative (i.e. new role of
school administrators), social (i.e. a different disposition of
parents towards school), political (i.e. a different approach of
government to school) and cultural (i.e. new role of students),
being in dialectic harmony and respecting all aspects of
teaching and learning, an integral part of which are pupils,
teachers and school administrators.
http://earthlab.uoi.gr/theste/index.php/theste/article/view/147

40. If ‘normal’ school is not supporting
students autonomy for global
connections, what alternatives exist
now?
• Virtual school?
• Home schooling?
• Blended learning?
• Distance education?

41. Examples of ‘Virtual Schools’
• NETschool Bendigo
– http://www.bssc.edu.au/college/netschool
• Schools of Isolated and Distance Education
(WA) (use of Moodle)
– http://www.side.wa.edu.au/about/communicatio
n/news/116-welcome.html
• School of the Future – BrisbaneSDE
– https://brisbanesde.eq.edu.au/

42. Tool-based approach – Building curriculum
• EduonGo - https://eduongo.com/v2/
• Canvas - http://canvas.instructure.com/
• Moodle….
• Others????

43. Getting back to Student
Agency……How do we foster it?
• How do we give students choices within the
current education system?
• How do we provide opportunities…?

44. Example: Albany Senior High NZ
Learning to Learn for Life
• ePortfolios implemented
– Thinking about learning
– Reflecting on learning
– Cultivating stories about learning
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Updates/Issue-21-May-
2012/Why-is-learning-to-learn-so-important

45. Visible Learning - Hattie
Hattie (2009) observes that “significantly high
effects on students’ learning are found where
they (a) can set challenging and specific goals
that allow them to direct, evaluate and redirect
their learning, and (b) receive feedback (from
peers, teachers, parents, and own experience)
that relates specifically to how the gap can be
addressed between current and future
performance”

46. Barriers to Student Agency
• School structures
– Timetables
– Curriculum objectives
– Assessment requirements
• Teacher attitudes
• Parent attitudes
• Community attitudes
• Student attitudes…..?

47. The Role of the Teacher
• Change agent
• Enabler, not barrier
• Range of learning strategies
• Provide feedback
• Visibly learn themselves
• Activator, not facilitator…….?

48. Effect Size (ES) - Hattie
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/media-speeches/guestlectures/pdfs/tgls-hattie.pdf

49. Is the teacher
the barrier to
student
autonomy/agen
cy?
What ideas do
you have to
remove the
barriers so
learning can be
flat and global?
The 90 second challenge
Add your ideas to the chat

50. Teachers and ‘Social Change’
‘Social change’ refers to a paradigm shift to
constructivist teaching modes infused with
online technologies that supports global and
collaborative practices and student agency

51. Social Change

52. The change we are seeing …….
• Community building as a prerequisite to
learning
• Collaboration that leads to co-creation
with other learners who are not in the
same time and space,
• Pedagogical independence and
leadership for change within a
school/institution

53. What the research is telling us….
Many teachers adopt technology without
changing their pedagogy in order to
complete low-level tasks.
If teachers feel pressured to change their
pedagogy in order to accommodate new
technologies they are more likely to resist
adopting technology altogether.

54. What about Global Learning
and Collaboration?
Teacher knowledge about how
to embed global learning is low
Those who integrated global learning do so
through personal commitment, rather than a
formal curriculum or requirement
– Implications for policy makers and teacher
preparation programs

55. My ‘Moonshot’…….. #gtasyd 2014
https://www.flickr.com/photos/29131777@N03/8309024612

58. Team Giant Leap

59. ‘Learning Collaboratives’
• Supports student passion and choices in
learning
• Global teams
• Learning concierge support
• Design thinking structure
• Schools, teachers, independent learners invited
to apply to join
• Global understanding supported by global
connections, collaborations and ‘flat’ learning

60. An alternative approach to ‘school’
A redesign of the learning
paradigm where STUDENTS take
the lead in connecting and
collaborating and co-creating
solutions to global problems.

61. Learning Concierge
• Teacher ‘Activator’
• May have students in the collaborative or not
• Supports the learning – monitors and
encourages all learners

62. Connect with China
Language Learning Collaborative
Goal: To join global Chinese language
speakers (native and non-native) with a view
to sharing language skills, living culture and
developing perspective that will enable better
understanding of the world through
connected and collaborative learning.
Pilot April-June 2015
Guiding Question: Is my lifestyle in
balance with my surrounding
environment?
Theme for pilot: ‘My Disposable Life’
http://www.flatconnections.com/connect-with-china.html

63. Coming soon……..
2. Social Entrepreneurship Learning
Collaborative
Pilot planned for September 2015
Goal: The collaborative is a one-semester
‘program’ to introduce social entrepreneurship
and the design thinking process to foster
problem identification, ideation, prototype
development, feedback and iteration.

64. Three things to takeaway…...

65. Image: '| WHITE moment |’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/34145688@N00/90120985
Learning does not
happen in isolation!

66. Image: 'Star pencil’ ttp://www.flickr.com/photos/29468339@N02/6097158569
Students must connect for
‘flat’ learning!

67. SHIFT
‘Content’ to ‘Context’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29131777@N03/9528549446

69. Main website http://flatconnections.com
Teacher Network http://flatconnections.net
Contact: admin@flatconnections.com
Learning about the world, with the world
@julielindsay | flatconnections.com | @flatconnections | about.me/julielindsay