Ning

I'm so glad we've had a chance to explore the Global Education Collaborative...I think we need to get involved with this and other groups to find out what others are doing and share our own best practices.

Next step - marketing China in the World on these sites!

Googlyness

I think that Google Docs has huge potential, and Jenn R. and myself have just started to collaborate on a document in it. Seems to work fairly well, although the tables were hard to manipulate. I think it's a good alternative to Shared Docs for documents that are in progress, in particular. It's still not quite the same functionally as MS Word or Excel, but for most things it should suffice.

Google Calendar would be an amazing improvement over our current system. I think it would be much easier to schedule meetings with others and see what space is available! It's so much more elegant and user-friendly than our current system.

Wikis!

I've actually used wikis before - once to share recipes with my family and once to plan our honeymoon. I've switched over to Google Docs for collaboration, but I think wikis are a bit more flexible. I can definitely see applications for our work. Perhaps teachers in a course could complete a wiki for other educators about a particular topic, or about ways to globalize your classroom, as part of course assignment. You could even include student work samples. It would be a great marketing tool if we ended up with a polished site, as well.

web 2.0

I'm a bit ashamed of how long it's taken me to return to 12 things, but I'm back!

I looked over dozens of the web 2.0 winners, and had trouble deciding which to focus on. I decided to take a closer look at LinkedIn, a site that I'm already involved in but not taking full advantage of.

I went ahead and began increasing my contact list and updated my profile...I think this site has great personal and professional potential - and I'm going to keep up with it!

RSS feeds

Not surprisingly, I discovered that I already had Google Reader setup but hadn't looked at it for 6 months. So it was a treat to start over from scratch and begin building a list of news sources that will be useful for me to check out on a regular basis. I've found a mix of work and personal sites and I'm excited to start using it!

Technology and Social Impact

I just found out about a group called the Ethos Roundtable, which meets once a month at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. Ethos is dedicated to "measuring and extending ethos" and "using technology for positive social change," and they bring in speakers on the third Tuesday of each month for a discussion about ways to reach these goals.

I'm planning to attend a future session to help us think more about how Primary Source can use technology to help schools globalize curricula. Perhaps we'll find new ideas through collaboration. Let me know if you'd like to join me at one of the roundtable discussions.

Fall in New England

Two things that are definitely Vermont
Originally uploaded by Zeb Andrews

This has little to do with Primary Source or global education, but the photo (which I found on flickr) really captures the feeling of fall in New England. Just thought I'd share!