Last week I had my Tweetdeck open when I saw a tweet by Mrs. Durff which mentioned Sharon Peters discussing EBB (Education Beyond Borders) on Thursday night. Right away I became excited because I am going to be working with EBB this summer in Kenya. I had heard about EBB about two years ago when Sharon Peters had been a guest with Alec Couros for my EC&I 831 class and she discussed her interest in global education/collaboration. Then about five weeks ago Sharon had posted information on the Global Education Collaborative about applying to join EBB in Africa this summer. I spoke to my husband about the opportunity, emailed Noble Kelly, sent in my application, had a Skpe interview then found out last weekend that I will joining a team in Kenya.

I rsvp’d for the online interview and discussion then plugged in for my Elluminate session on Thursday night. The forum for the discussion was: The Future of Education: Charting the Course of Teaching and Learning in a Networked World. Welcome to the Future of Education interview series and discussion community.

I joined in to listen to Steve Hargadon talk with Sharon Peters and Noble Kelly about “Education Beyond Borders.”” Education Beyond Borders is a non-profit NGO devoted to closing the education divide through teacher professional development and community education. EBB is focused on advancing and supporting the movement for educators and advocates for education to do our part in supporting our colleagues and their students in disadvantaged regions here at home and around the world.”
I was fascinated to listen to Sharon talk about her experiences traveling to South Africa and Kenya to facilitate teacher workshops. Sharon and Noble both spoke about EBB’s mission of engaging, educating and empowering the educators of the countries that they work in. EBB is a collaborative group that base the workshops on the identified needs of the country. EBB projects are designed to build capacity with the project participants first as teachers then as facilitators. EBB focuses on building self-sustainability over a four-year series of workshops.
As Noble shared
“Education is a collaborative effort lasting a lifetime; our learning model is designed to connect global ‘best practices’ to those at the local level who can build their capacity and in doing so, change their communities and ours.”
In Kenya there is limited computer access and limited resources. One difficulty is that most schools lack electricity which makes it difficult to have computers. The model of instruction is very teacher centered and there is a lack of professional development. EBB works with the Ministry of Education and the local teachers to develop workshops that expand the teaching repertoire, introduce new methodologies and learning theories while working with the Kenyan curricula. EBB also assists the Kenyan teachers in developing their own professional learning communities (PLCs) to share knowledge. Nings have begun to be used for PLC communications. This year it’s expected that during the three weeks we will be in Kenya we work with approximately 190 primary and secondary teachers. We will also be working with 12 Kenyan facilitators and developing their skills.
There were 42 educators attending the Elluminate session. Some of the attendees were former or current team members like me while many other people were interested in the work that EBB is doing in Africa. The evening was a good start in my learning curve. During the presentation I wrote on the chat that I was at the bottom of a very steep learning curve and that is so true. I’ve got so much to learn and get organized in what seems like a short time but I can’t wait to get started!
For an archived recording of the session you can check out the following links:
Full Elluminate: https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2010-03-11.1450.M.9E9FE58134BE68C…
Portable Audio: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/peterskelly.mp3
Chat Log: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/peterskelly.rtf