The Global Education Conference 2014

I have signed up as a member of the Global Education Conference (GEC), which will take place completely online during International Education week (November 17-21). I have also registered my beloved cause of choice, Long Way Home, as an official partner organization.

On the GEC website they state the following as their mission:

The Global Education Conference is a collaborative, world-wide community initiative involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels. It is designed to significantly increase opportunities for building education-related connections around the globe while supporting cultural awareness, recognition of diversity, and educational access for all. The conference seeks to present ideas, examples, and projects related to connecting educators and classrooms with a strong emphasis on promoting global awareness, fostering global competency, and inspiring action towards solving real–world problems. Through this event, it is our hope that attendees will challenge themselves and others to become more active citizens of the world. Let us learn, question, create, and engage in meaningful, authentic opportunities within a global context!

My goals are two-fold; as an educator teaching internationally I am interested in connecting with other educators around the world and learn from them. I am particularly interested in learning how teachers are connecting their classrooms in one country or region with another to create a meaningful inter-cultural exchange and cultivate global competencies in their students. This is a goal I have for my professional practice.

As a representative of Long Way Home, I am eager to spread the word of the good work we are doing in Guatemala building a sustainable green school, integrating environmental education, and designing a future green vocational school. I would like to expand our network and potentially find some professional development opportunities for our teaching staff in Guatemala (in Spanish).

But really, I am new to this kind of online conference format and am just trying to get my feet wet. I am interested to see how to make this a useful yearly learning and networking experience.

If you are interested in participating here are a GEC resources you should look at right away:

1. Sessions & Speaker Schedule
2. Keynote & Distinguished Speakers
3. The Twitter Tagboard for the latest GEC updates and discussions
4. Time Zone Scheduler – After all it is a global conference!

I am particularly interested in the following speakers:

• Vicky Colbert, Executive Director of Fundación Escuela Nueva Volvamos a la Gente
• Paul Salopek, journalist and founder of the iEarn program
• Emily Havens of OpenIDEO
• John Mergendoller of the Buck Institute for Education