Julie Lindsay recounts her journey as an international educator, starting from Zambia in 1998 to various countries like Kuwait, Bangladesh, Qatar, and China, showcasing the challenges and triumphs of incorporating technology and cultural sensitivity in education. Through initiatives like the 'Flat Classroom Project', she emphasizes the importance of global collaboration and meaningful connections among students from different cultures. Her ultimate wish is for educators and students to engage in impactful global experiences that foster understanding and awareness beyond their immediate environments.

1. A Global Journey
Julie Lindsay

2. “Come and teach in the real Africa,” was the
advertisement that inspired my husband and I to accept
our first international teaching positions in Zambia,
January 1998.
Ndola, Zambia

3. Our daughter, Violet, was three. We sold up most of
our worldly possessions in hometown Melbourne,
Australia and left for Africa on our new adventure. We
are still out there as international educators, over
thirteen years and five countries later

4. At Simba School, Zambia I had transformed into a
computer teacher, where I was running an ‘Internet
Club’ as an after school activity and groups of
students participated in iEARN learning circle
projects.

5. This was an environment where only a single
computer in a locked room in the library was allowed
on the Internet (by directive of our school head) with
the non-networked computer lab being a good 5
minute walk away. This did not deter us!

6. Kuwait
Moving to the Middle East I found a different environment where
everyday my challenge was to be culturally sensitive to the host
country while continuing to implement new technologies and
ideas.
In Kuwait the text books were highly censored and often large
sections blacked out, the Internet was filtered of course, but I
was able to access necessary websites and tools for education.

7. The English School for Girls, my first position in Kuwait,
was a girls-only environment, No men at all allowed.
This was problematic for me as when I needed
computers fixed I had to wait until long after school
finished, until all girls and women had left, so I could
bring in the male technicians.

8. Getting a little tired of this, I persuaded my head on a
new arrangement. We agreed that if I yelled ‘Man in
the corridor’ and waited for all girls to scuttle into the
classrooms and don scarves and veils I could then
escort the technicians through to the computer lab.

9. Bangladesh
I continued my global journey to Bangladesh one
of the poorest, most crowded and desperate
countries in the world

10. It was during this time at International School Dhaka
that we implemented a Palm handheld 1:1 program
in the middle school, at a time in fact when the
devices were not available to buy in the country.

11. I still laugh at the story told by my Head of
school when he literally carried 20 Palms
back from the US and sweated all the way
through customs.

12. Around this time, Web 2.0 was emerging as a platform
for communication and collaboration. The time was
ripe to embark on something new that could be
scaffolded by online technologies and could join
students across the globe in meaningful learning
experiences. I joined my largely Bangladeshi
classroom with Vicki Davis’, ‘Coolcatteacher’ class,
from GA USA, and the Flat Classroom Project was
born.

13. Qatar
Moving back to the Middle East, Qatar, I was
concerned whether I could transplant the Flat
Classroom into this more closed and sheltered
community. Yes, the first challenges were
technical to do with tools and access; the second
were political - relying on me reassuring my
school administration nothing would happen to
upset students or parents,

14. but once these were solved I focused on the
real challenge of connecting students,
teenagers, across the world from very
different cultures but with many similarities.

15. My fears were largely unfounded, students
wanted to connect, and learn about the
world, and they did it with pride, fascination
and excitement.

16. I remember one parent, a beautiful Arabic woman in
abaya and hejab, came to see me with tears in her eyes,
exclaiming how excited the whole extended family were
for her daughter to be in the Flat Classroom Project,
collaborating using technology and learning about
leadership and digital citizenship and global
communication.
I was in tears as well, tears of relief and joy, thinking she
had come to berate me for exposing her daughter to the
wide world

17. Beijing, China
China is another story. You have to be in China to
understand how cut off from the world we can be at
times and how determined the powers to be are to
keep it that way. But then again, I know many schools
in the US, Australia and other advanced countries are
also existing under the same conditions, by choice!

18. If you are in this situation, remember my words
about China - there is always a way to connect and
communicate, you just have to be creative and
persevere.

19. So Ning goes down right after you encourage the
entire staff to join during a workshop

20. Voicethread is blocked just after the
elementary school teachers get really
excited and madly implement it into their
units of inquiry

21. or in a strange twist of fate, Edublogs blocks China (not
the other way around) just after you set up your class
blogs on this platform.

22. Very early on with Flat Classroom we saw the power and magic
of connecting with others globally and the difference it was
making to learning, including breaking through stereotypical
attitudes and behaviours.
Not only did we keep developing flat classroom projects but we
had a dream to bring students and teachers together f2f to
cement collaborative relationships and work on actionable ideas.
If the impact of global collaboration was evident in an
asynchronous project, we imagined the opportunity for growth if
we could get students and teachers from all parts of the world
working together in the same place at the same time.

23. Our dream came true in 2009, when the first
Flat Classroom Conference held in Qatar
changed lives and cast a vision for the future of
education.

24. This year in Beijing the second Flat Classroom
Conference held at Beijing BISS International
School brought together over 200 participants,
including 100 students, in a truly flattened learning
mode where ideas were envisioned, shared and
developed.

25. This challenge-based event encouraged action
projects for global curriculum and visions for improved
education systems and saw all participants, including
virtual team members, working together, and we held
it in China, behind the Great Fire Wall ...or rather
running along the top!

26. Being an international educator, and having a
daughter as a ‘third culture kid’, meaning
having lived her formative years outside her
country of origin, I selfishly want others around
the world to experience what we are privileged
to live.

27. I want them to be confronted with different religious
and cultural beliefs and be immersed in an
environment where English (or their own language) is
not spoken and where simple communication can
often result in highly creative sign language.

28. I want them to acknowledge and respect differences
and learn how to use their personal strengths to create
a bond of understanding with new friends. I want them
to question, doubt, be amazed, experience alternative
lifestyles, treasure similarities, and learn how to get on
with other people globally

29. I want them to be able to do this without losing their
own identity and sense of belonging to a country or
to a culture, and without feeling superior or inferior
to any other person.

30. I encourage each of you to embrace your own
global journey. There are three takeaways from
my story I would like you to remember:

31. Be open to
alternatives......
1. Remember, you can always yell ‘Man in the corridor‘
If you or your IT people don’t have the answers find
someone who does, or do it a different way

32. It’s cool to be ‘flat’
1. Use whatever tools you can to connect yourself with the
world. Go beyond the ‘wow’ and embed global collaborative
practice into everyday learning so that ‘unflat’ classrooms
are unusual.

33. If you aren’t doing it,
it’s not happening
1. the words of Thomas Friedman in the 2007 edition of
The World is Flat, in the chapter he writes about the
Flat Classroom Project. So, get out there and make it
happen, there are no excuses left, we have the
technology, we have the pedagogy, it’s time to join the
world.

34. In closing, here is my wish for everyone:
To experience meaningful connection and collaboration that is
beyond the daily expectation, that is global in concept and
practice and supports cultural understanding and makes a
difference to the world as we know it, one classroom at a time.