Jim Carleton and Mali Bickley are Canadian educators leveraging the collaborative power of technology to help their students help others worldwide.

Jim and Mali offered a multimedia-rich, onstage dialogue featuring their inspirational experiences and can-do insights on how they have transcended traditions in education to create dynamic, engaging learning environments. Jim and Mali were interviewed by prominent NBC journalist Lester Holt. Holt is the weekend anchor for NBC Nightly News, and is also co-anchor of the weekend edition of TODAY.

It was an inspirational session with these two Canadian educators who had taken the risk to step out into ICT when they didn’t have the skills, in an attempt to reinvigorate their teaching and help to engage their students learning.

They began by making a class website with the help of a friend. They then decided to adopt project-based learning using iearn. The focussed on collaborating with children in Sierra Leone, getting understanding of the world of the child soldier in the process.

More recently, they have been focussing on an environmental  project to help reduce our carbon footprint.

This was great to see, especially as they were not ‘IT gurus’ to start off with – just ‘ordinary teachers’ learning along the way and doing extraordinary things. They also weren’t at a huge technology school, but what they had, they used well.

Their MyHero project was very interesting. Global, collaborative, social, child driven, projects which try to make a difference and leverage technology as an environment for learning.

(Thanks to Lisa for helping with the notes on this one!)