Typepad is old and dated. Moving my writing to Medium!
https://lucygray.medium.com/
Typepad is old and dated. Moving my writing to Medium!
https://lucygray.medium.com/
"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - St. Augustine
While I have traveled to some amazing places for work (Finland, Portugal, Bahrain, Singapore etc), it’s always been somewhat of a solitary experience and I’ve always felt a twinge of guilt of leaving my family behind particularly as my kids have gotten older. I have chosen to embrace these opportunities not only for experiencing the world and learning about education systems outside the US, but to prove to myself that I can make my way through the world. I grew up seeing my mother not being able to handle her life competently, and I swore that I always will be able to take care of myself. Traveling and navigating other cultures can be a confidence booster and a reality check on one’s world view.
While we have epically traveled as a family mostly within the US, we have never immersed ourselves as a family in an adventure like this one. The trip’s genesis came after a hard few months supporting my dad and our desire to celebrate some significant milestones including big birthdays for Pete and Julia and our 25th wedding anniversary. The Normandy portion of the trip was also complementary to what my son, Henry, is studying in his American history class this year.
We found that it was more affordable to go to Europe than to a warm place at this time of year and started looking at Costco travel packages at a friend’s suggestion who had a good experience with Costco while traveling to Spain. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Those were really reasonably priced and there was a London/Paris trip that was a special offer. That didn’t work out due to blackout dates, but I would encourage others to check out their deals. I found a good deal on Expedia and away we went.
Here are some additional thoughts and resources that I’ve culled post-trip in case others would like to do a similar trip.
- Additional travel sites that are helpful are Google Flights, Kayak, and Hopper which will help you track flight prices.
-Citymapper is a good transportation app. We loved biking and scooting throughout Paris via Lime and Jump.
-I am really glad I upgraded my iPhone before this trip. The new camera is worth it.
-Join Facebook groups to research your destination. Certain groups were invaluable for our Glacier National Park trip last summer and with this trip. I also searched the NYT food group for Paris suggestions and posted some of my pics there. Be aware that some groups may have an agenda promoting services. Also, make sure to search a group for previous posts with information before posting a question. Also, don’t ask questions that can be answered simply if you do a Google search. Be mindful of people’s expertise and time.
-Solid shoes were crucial on this trip. We averaged 16,000 steps a day over the last week. A new pair of Merrill hiking shoes, gym shoes and my trusty Blundstones were necessities. We also spent most of the time in casual clothes and did laundry once at a local laundromat rather than pay through the nose at our hotel for items to be washed.
-We discovered this brand of travel pillow and bought one light version. The full version made us laugh.
-Our hotel was the biggest disappointment of the trip. We got a deal on a Novotel in the 15th arrondissement. I thought I had booked something in the 7th. It was 1970s modern, had no character, and was run down. It was the most unParis-like hotel I’ve stayed at during my four trips to that city. It had a pool for Peter, and we didn’t really care that much about the hotel as we were out and about all the time.
-By the way, I looked into AirBnB when researching options and there didn’t seem to be many affordable options near the city centre.
-Strolling through the big fancy department stores in Paris is a treat and totally out of our league. Their food and housewares emporiums are really amazing! And, the rooftop of Galleries Lafayette offers some of the best views of the city.
-It was hard to fit in visits to suggested restaurants around visits to sites. This was due to the holidays and transportation strike. The metro was running only on two lines. We rarely are a full breakfast and grabbed amazing croissants, coffee and juice most mornings. Dinner was typically in a corner cafe. I’d love to go back just to focus on food alone in Paris. My favorite meals were the Breton crepes and pizza in Caen plus an omelette in Marais.
-My favorite museum was the National Picasso Museum. It was not what I expected and I loved its building and location.
-My kids loved the museums more than they let on at first and I think they have a point about how museums engage young people. They found that audio tours helped them engage in museums more, and they liked how the Louvre uses Nintendo 3DS devices for this. My son did find some of the language used in museums to describe works to be very pretentious and he was very irritated by this. As a former student of art history, I found this amusing.
- I also really loved the Van Gogh experience at the Digital Atelier... if this exhibition travels around, go see it. It was incredible!
-Make sure to turn on the TV and watch local channels when traveling. My husband and I watched a lot of sports and marveled at soccer, rugby, and auto-racing. Additionally, we watched a lot of news. CNN International is a bit repetitive with its content but very different than their US version. We also liked BBC News.
-Paris is such an amazing city which may seem obvious. I think I love it more than NYC. Not sure how to articulate how I feel about it. We saw a great deal, but it was only a fraction of the possibilities. My dream would be to live in a few cities like this for longer amounts of time. Maybe one day!
In conclusion, it is most definitely a privilege to travel like this, but the lesson I’ve learned is to explore whatever corner of the world you have access to. Find your state or national park, an amazing library, or a museum within your reach as a starting place. I am so glad I did this with my family as these experiences will marinate with my kids for a long time as a friend wrote on FB in the comments of an earlier post. My ultimate hope is that they will grow up to have a zest for life and an insatiable curiosity about the world. These past 10 days helped us be more present with each other, too, and I’m impressed with how my family trooped through everything.
Here’s our day-to-day itinerary:
Sunday, December 22
Walked to the Eiffel Tower
Ate dinner at the Christmas Market in the Tuileries Garden
Checked out the Louvre Pyramid
Monday, December 23
Drove to Normandy
Visited the Caen Memorial
Went to Omaha Beach & the American Cemetery
Visited the Bayeux Cathedral
Tuesday, December 24
Went to the Paris Zoo to see “the blob” - the zoo was phenomenal, but the blob was underwhelming
Saw the Van Gogh Exhibit at the Atelier des Lumieres
Visited Jim Morrison’s grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery
Dinner at the Christmas Market again
Wednesday, December 25th
Went to Disneyland Paris - food in the Ratatouille section is very good and various stands provide an opportunity to sample some typical French food
Thursday, December 26th
Drove to Versailles and toured the Palace
Dined at the Relais de l’Entrecote back in Paris
Friday, December 27th
Rode scooters to the Musée d’Orsay
Took the red line Big Bus
Went to the Arc de Triomphe
Ate dinner near the Avenue des Champs-Élysées at Chez Barbara
Saturday, December 28th
Rode scooters to Musée de l'Orangerie
Ate croissants in the Tuileries
Visited the Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Took the Big Bus
Ate dinner in the 1st arr. at an average bistro
Sunday, December 29th
Visited to the Louvre (we should have booked a ThatMuse hunt, but I forgot about it)
Had a snack at Angelina’s which was overrated
Went to the National Picasso Museum
Took a taxi to Sacré-Coeur
Ate great pizza near Sacré-Coeur
Monday, December 30th
Lucy and Julia explored Bon Marché, La Grande Epicerie, and Conran’s
Bought chocolates at Patrick Roger
Saw St. Sulpice
Went to Shakespeare and Company
Ate at Café de Flore - overpriced and not worth it
Peter and Henry went to the Musée de l'Armée
Tuesday, December 31st
Went to the Galeries Lafayette, visited their home and food sections, and went up on the roof - great views
Sat on the steps of the opera building Palais Garnier
Walked to the Marais
Had lunch in Marais at Café Charlot
Walked through Marché couvert les Enfants Rouge
Had ice cream at Berthillon - best ice cream I’ve ever had
Took Seine boat ride - avoid Vedettes de Paris Seine which was recommended by our concierge; I had a better experience with this company on another trip
Had dinner at a café that preyed upon tourists near the Eiffel Tower - make sure to read Yelp reviews before choosing a restaurant
Wednesday, January 1
Had brunch at a local café
Rode bikes and scooter to the Grand Palais using Jump app
Went ice skating at the Grand Palais - overpriced for the experience, but kids enjoyed it
Did a skip-the-line tour of the Eiffel Tour - it was nice, but not needed. It was not crowded at 8 PM at night, but perhaps that is because it was very foggy. We booked this through our concierge.
Additional Resources
Paris-Related Movies Recommended by Friends
Apple Music Playlists
I'm in the midst of creating a technology and innovation plan for my school and I need your help! Key to the success of any such initiative is providing ample staff professional development opportunities. This can be a daunting challenge for any school or district as schools today are often thwarted by obstacles related to space, time, funding and institutional vision. To overcome these challenges, schools need to be creative in how they encourage professional learning given their particular circumstances. Additionally, it's important for schools to design professional learning experiences around best practices in order for these experiences to be impactful. This EdWeek article from 2016 cites a study that purports teacher-led professional development to be more effective than traditional sit and get methods.
Below is a survey that I have designed with the purpose of documenting professional learning practices in schools. There are no right or wrong answers; my goal is to get a sense of how other schools are approaching this topic. I am particularly interested in any evidence or research-based practices followed by schools; this paper by Linda Darling-Hammond et al from the Learning Policy Institute outlines best practices in teacher professional development that seem rooted in principles of adult learning theory. Perhaps some schools follow professional learning standards established by Learning Forward. And, I also would love to learn more about specific innovative approaches to professional learning. For example, at the Global Leadership Summit this year, I learned about Washington International School's PD Collaborative that engages not only WIS teachers but teachers in the community at large. Another example would Punahou's Summer Lab School for teachers at which I presented in 2010; I'm not sure the program is still in existence, but here's a video about the program.
I plan on presenting the results to colleagues as we discuss how to fit professional learning around tech and innovation into our busy school calendar. I will also make the results public to those who leave their email addresses when filling out the survey. I think many educators have questions about how to best craft professional learning for their colleagues and hopefully, the results of this survey will provide some answers or inspiration. The usefulness of this data will only become apparent if I am able to solicit responses from a large number of people; please share this survey with others so that we can crowdsource this important information.
Finally, I just added an additional question regarding the evaluation of professional learning programs. I'm curious as to whether your school analyzes PD programs in any way including for research purposes.
Please consider participating, and thanks in advance for your help!
Last night, I had an epiphany regarding the polar vortex that is descending upon much of the United States right now. On Monday, we had a significant snowfall here in Chicago and temperatures are rapidly dropping to historic lows. Tomorrow the temperature is expected to be around -13 F which is -25 C, but when accounting for the wind chill, it will feel like anywhere between -30 and -60 degrees (-35 to -50 C approximately). Yikes! Apparently, we should be getting used to this phenomenon.
My school, along with most around here, have announced that they will be closed for the next two days. Many of these school were also closed on Monday due to the snow. As an ed tech director, I'm always thinking about how to move innovation forward in my school and about how I can build enthusiasm among my colleagues for leveraging technology in teaching and learning. Time for providing support for this kind of work is scarce and precious, and it occurred to me last night that teachers now had two days in front of them where they might be willing to engage in some professional learning. I know that other educators around the country have hosted spur of the moment virtual professional development sessions from time to time, and so I put out feelings on Facebook and Twitter to see if any adventurous educators would join forces to host live PD via my Zoom video conferencing room. Alas, I think many people in my professional learning network work were too frozen to be as enthusiastic as I about this idea!
Then, I thought of a self-directed PD model that was popular a few years ago... not sure if it's 21 Things or 23 Things... but the general gist was to give teachers a list of tasks to explore at their own pace. I also thought about how it's essential that professional development be fun and personal; teachers are more motivated to take risks with educational technology when there is some connection to their professional practice and they have some choice in activities. As a result, I came up with five activities that I thought might be interested in my PreK-12 colleagues and created the following flyer. My hope is that they save a bit of time over the next two days to try at least one of these activities.
I'm thinking that I should develop a similar list for students and parents that I can update and re-purpose from time to time. Do you have any other creative ideas for encouraging teachers to make use of school closing days? Share them in the comments or on Twitter using the hashtag #PolarVortexPD !
Our curated global education resources have been updated and refreshed! Read more about this here. Find new collections containing information on projects, topics, and organizations on this page: http://bit.ly/GECresources. Note that you must be logged into the Global Education Conference Network to view! If you have resources to share with our community, post in our discussion forum or post to Twitter using the hashtag #globaled19.
We are also preparing for our fourth annual Global Leadership Summit taking place on March 15th in Chicago, Illinois. This is the second time we’ve partnered with ASCD, the leading professional learning community for educators, and we invite you to join us if you will be attending their Empower 19 conference. Learn more about the program and speakers here. If you represent a non-profit and will be in attendance, participate in our global resource fair at the Summit; email Lucy Gray at [email protected] for more information. Also, Erin Dowd will be hosting a #TeachSDGs meet up following the Summit; details to come.
Here is a roundup of projects and initiatives other organizations we’ve noticed lately:
Finally, here are a few reminders about how you can get involved in the Global Education Conference Network community:
That’s all the GEC news that’s fit to print right now!
In my role as the Director of Educational Technology at my new school, one of my goals is to facilitate connected teaching and learning in classrooms; I am more than happy to tap into my network and scaffold these experiences for my colleagues and our students. Earlier this year, I helped a fourth-grade class at my new school connect to other classrooms in order to participate in mystery location calls I also organized a video conference using Zoom and streaming live on YouTube with candy expert Jason Liebig (see below) for our Candy Around the World project. It was relatively easy to set up these collaborations because I have developed a professional learning network for many years and also know a few communities where it's possible to connect with other educators. My fourth-grade colleagues now want to learn how to do the same now they have mastered the basic logistics and routines involved with mystery location calls.
Here are a few tips for finding potential connections that can benefit your classroom.
If you're looking for more information about these type of connections, make sure to check out the following books:
Please share any additional ideas or resources in the comments for teachers just beginning to dabble in connecting their classrooms to the world!
As long as I've been involved with educational technology, one of my favorite activities has been to curate resources for future reference and for the various populations I've served as an educator, consultant, and co-founder of GlobalEd Events and the Global Education Conference. I use Diigo to save Tweets, bookmark items with tags, to make lists for my current colleagues, and to contribute to collective groups. I grab articles of interest (sometimes from my feeds in Feedly) related to global education and save them in Evernote. Most recently, I've started curating collections in Wakelet, a free tool that has a clean interface and is very easy to use. I foresee that I'll continue with this workflow.
The Global Education Network has served as an umbrella for global education organizations to share information about their programs and as a place to connect and collaborate for global educators. For the past few years, I've shared digital resources through the aforementioned Evernote notebook and through a Google spreadsheet. Neither has been particularly visually appealing or organized, although both resources are searchable. Over the last month, I've re-organized some of the material I've collected over the years. I took just about every global education organization that I've come into contact with and put links to their homepages in a Wakelet collection which is embedded on a page within my global community. With over 500 organizations in this collection, a problem arose. It is time-consuming to scroll through this collection plus I had difficulty exporting this bulky list. I then decided to put my links in smaller collections and the result of all this work is now available here. This page is a special benefit to members of the Global Education Conference Network which is FREE to join. Note that inclusion in these collections does not necessarily imply endorsement; you need to peruse the lists and find the resources that are useful for your particular situation. Also, keep in mind that a few topics are sparse and I will be updating these as I come across organizations and resources that are related to globally oriented teaching and learning. Hope you find this information useful and let me know if you have any feedback in the comments here.
While I have you here, if you are interested in global collaboration, consider attending our upcoming Global Leadership Summit that we're co-hosting with ASCD at their upcoming Empower 19 conference. This event sold out last year, so make sure to register soon!
Below is one collection as a Wakelet sample!
Here is our semi-regular blog post highlighting happenings in the global education community! If you would like your news highlighted here, make sure to post in our main community’s discussion forum, and we will include it next month. Past blog posts can be found here.
For those of you new to our work, Steve Hargadon and I are the co-founders of the Global Education Conference Network, a professional learning community designed to connect educators and organizations around the world. Our umbrella organization is Global Education Events, and we host several other annual in-person and virtual events. We are part of a partnership with TakingITGlobal.
Our second ONLINE AND FREE Global Education Fair is taking place this week. Here's how to participate:
Our exhibitors are excited to meet and connect with you, so please don't be shy! Take advantage of this opportunity to meet them in our chat rooms on Friday, May 4th.
We are hosting our annual meetup at the ISTE 2018 in Chicago, Illinois on June 24! Our registration procedure has changed this year; please register on ISTE's site. This means that you need to pay for the ISTE conference; our event is not an additional cost. Currently, Global Education Day is at capacity and a waiting list is in place. ISTE will notify those on the wait list as spaces become available.
Our three-hour event will take place from 2-5 PM CST (GMT-6) and will be streamed live on our Facebook page. Resources from this event will be available to the public as well. This link will be provided to our Global Education Conference Network community close to the date of the event.
Mark your calendars for our next set of online events!
Here are a few dates that we've noticed. Note that some have a US focus. Let us know about other dates that should be included in this list.
Do you have an event or resource to share? Post it to the discussion forum in the Global Education Conference Network and we'll share it next month.
I'm using a tool called Flipgrid to have educators respond to a series of prompts related to globally connected teaching and learning. The Global Share-O-Rama is located here and I'm looking for educators and global education organizations to participate. Consider doing any of the following:
I've created seven topics or Flipgrids within the Global Share-O-Rama; you are invited to respond to one or more of these by recording a short video of yourself discussing the topic. To participate, click on a topic, then the + sign, and allow Flipgrid to access the camera on your computer if necessary. If you are using an iPad, you can download the app, and use the code that is available in the top lefthand corner to join that particular grid. You can also leave responses for other educators who have posted to Flipgrid, too.
Below are some examples from the Global Share-O-Rama. I hope you will join in and make some new connections to enhance your work with students! Please share this information widely.
I'm using a tool called Flipgrid to have educators respond to a series of prompts related to globally connected teaching and learning. The Global Share-O-Rama is located here and I'm looking for educators and global education organizations to participate. Consider doing any of the following:
I've created seven topics or Flipgrids within the Global Share-O-Rama; you are invited to respond to one or more of these by recording a short video of yourself discussing the topic. To participate, click on a topic, then the + sign, and allow Flipgrid to access the camera on your computer if necessary. If you are using an iPad, you can download the app, and use the code that is available in the top lefthand corner to join that particular grid. You can also leave responses for other educators who have posted to Flipgrid, too.
Below are some examples from the Global Share-O-Rama. I hope you will join in and make some new connections to enhance your work with students! Please share this information widely.
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