In 2000, Jennifer and I travelled to Lorne, Australia at the invitation of Bruce Dixon, our mentor and friend, educator and evangelist for 1:1 computing in the classroom. We spoke at the Expanding Learning Horizons conference, and our vision for TakingITGlobal and just-launched site attracted a wave of attention. We hadn’t fully thought about the potential for the TakingITGlobal community to be used as a learning tool in the classroom.

Fast-forward almost a decade, and TakingITGlobal's TIGed (short for "TakingITGlobal for Educators") program has had the benefit of a 3-year Partners in Learning grant from Microsoft to support development and scale, and has inspired and supported thousands of schools in over 80 countries in their global education endeavours.

In 2007, I keynoted the Australian Council for Educational Leaders annual conference in Sydney, Australia. I don’t remember much – I was knocked out by a terrible cold, and arrived that morning with 3 cups full of herbal tea and a mouthful of lozenges, just hoping I’d be able to survive the keynote with anyone understanding our work. Apparently I did more than that – I was really overwhelmed and honoured to have such a positive response, so much so that my colleague and friend Jenny Lewis, ACEL’s CEO, announced at the conference closing that Jennifer would come and do a joint presentation with me 2 years later at their 2009 event.

Last year, ACEL invited me back as their “travelling scholar” – I gave 6-hour professional development seminars across the country, starting in Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Canberra, and finally in Sydney (with a few other conferences in between). Having that much time to work with school leaders and educators has really helped me reconnect with my passion for supporting innovation in education, and helped us grow and refine the focus of the TIGed program. It also connected us with several other opportunities to ensure that the 2009 trip wouldn't just be for ACEL's event - in the end, we would reach five different events in the same trip!

On September 12th, we arrived in Sydney to begin our trip. Of course, we were thrilled to be able to spend a day with Jarra, one of the TIG founding team members, and the designer of the TIG logo. The following day, we headed to Hobart, Tasmania, for a two day stay to keynote the AHISA conference. AHISA stands for the Association of Heads of Independent Schools Australia, and we followed a great keynote providing an overview of the bombardment of media young people today face. Our presentation about the opportunity for school leaders to engage with TakingITGlobal as a positive way to engage young people in media, develop their critical thinking and media literacy skills, and connect with global issues provided a great next step for those wondering how they could turn this media-rich world into positive learning experiences for their students. We were pleased to have so many schools interested in implementing our brand new Tread Lightly initiative!

Next, we were off to Adelaide, for several days of work. First, with the State Government’s Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS), hosted by Margot Foster, coordinator of the Learning to Learn program there, who I had the pleasure of meeting last year in Adelaide when I keynoted the Middle Years Conference. Margot had brought together about 80 educators from across the state, some who drove four hours to attend, to engage in a full day of exploring youth engagement and TakingITGlobal’s programs at a beautiful golf course on the outskirts of Adelaide. We delivered our keynote, but unlike the session in Hobart, had the luxury of frequent breaks for questions and input, and by the end of the day, Jennifer got everyone talking. In the afternoon, they had a through guided tour of the TakingITGlobal site, and time to work with their tables on discussing and designing different ways they could address some of the challenges schools are facing with technology-empowered learners.

The next day, I gave the opening keynote speech for the Australasian Association of Distance Education schools, a perfect audience to understand the opportunity of our programs, as they all specialize in remote delivery of learning experiences – starting from the famous Australian “school of the air” and now leading some of the most innovative online delivery models in the world. After my keynote, I led two discussion sessions, which I was honoured to have moderated by Louise Bywaters, a brilliant consultant and incredibly experienced educator with many amazing stories to share. The following day, I joined several others on the closing panel for the conference, and was inspired by closing with everyone sharing the one or two things they would do in the future if they were starting a new school from scratch. I talked about the importance of community partnership, which Macklin Public School used to make their Globalize This! Student film festival, a huge success, and an inspiration for the development of our Global Issues section. I also talked about the opportunity of using virtual experiences, like our education games, and virtual field trips, as a way to ensure students are connected with the world, and understand their privledge.

Zooming across the country, we landed in Darwin, where we had the opportunity to take a well-deserved break, catch up on work, and enjoy some sunny weather. The following Friday, we joined some colleagues and friends and many new faces for a beautiful dinner under the palm trees and starry skies. The following day, we were lucky to have a double slot for our session – 1 hour and 50 minutes for our keynote! At ACEL in 2007, we ran out of time for questions, but this time, we integrated discussions and Q&A into our whole talk – as difficult as it sometimes was in a massive theatre, Jen made the best of it and rushed into the crowd to encourage and facilitate participation!

We reconnected with a number of people who saw me in 2007, and spoke of the steps they’ve already taken to bring some of our ideas into their schools – with even more ideas sparked by hearing of our latest programs. Even more hadn’t ever heard of us before, and were excited to get engaged, with Tread Lightly being one of the first opportunities. We re-connected with Simon Breakspear, and caught part of his session, working to redefine the image and brand of education, and encouraging and supporting innovative ideas in the youngest educators in schools.

We spent Sunday afternoon in the air, returning to Sydney and heard much about the aftermath of Australia’s worst ever dust storm, which blanketed the city, grounded flights, and triggered breathing problems in thousands of people. On Monday, we visited Amanda McKenzie at the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who we hope to work more closely with as part of our work at Copenhagen and with Tread Lightly, and met Jarra with Nick Moraitis, another of our founding team members, at the new offices for their multimedia consultancy, Make Believe. Monday night we spent with James Moody, who was part of the Youth Caucus at WSSD in Johannesburg in 2003, where we kicked off our involvement in UN policy processes so many years ago.

On Tuesday, Jen flew out to head to UNESCO’s Youth Forum in Paris, and I ventured over to Trinity Grammar School to keynote the Association of Independent Schools’ Technology Integrators Conference, sharing our work with about 120 leaders from independent schools across New South Wales. This was the first time I’ve given a keynote with a live twitter backchannel on screens beside me, which was a really interesting way to challenge myself to respond real-time to audience comments and feedback! I was lucky to have lots of positive feedback and input along with some great questions to discuss, and am excited to follow-up and hold a more hands-on follow-up event when I return next March.

Overall, we're quite pleased with the impact of the opportunities we had to share our message and vision. Both because of how many people were thrilled to hear about us for the first time, and immediately saw connections with so many issues Australia is dealing with today (water issues & immigration came up frequently) - but also to re-connect with many people who’d heard one of us before, and were excited to re-engage. Everyone I spoke to felt equipped with a deeper understanding of how our programs at TakingITGlobal can help in supporting their quest to ensure meaningful use of technology, explore global collaboration & understanding, and develop creativity, innovation, and critical thinking skills in their schools! To ensure all of this interest & engagement across Australia is sustained and built on, we'll be working with ACEL over the next months to build out a TIGed program model to be implemented across the country, to support and engage a vibrant community of practice around global education & collaboration through technology.