Nominated by Brenda Dyck
Teacher Middle School (ages 11-14) at Master's Academy and College
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

I would like to nominate Karen Kliegman for the 2005 Global Schoolhouse Shared Learning Award for educators from the United States.

Karen and I serve as teacher-editors for MidLink Magazine, an ezine that was described by GEM (The Gateway to Educational Materials) as "an interactive forum for student contributions, and a resource for teachers and students who want to find creative classroom projects, partners, and ideas." Karen's enthusiasm for telecollaborative learning is thorough and contagious as she models the creation of highly engaging, thought-provoking projects that links learners from classrooms across the country. Karen’s contribution to the MidLink team is extensive as she uses her professional expertise to support educators throughout the world via this quality online resource.

Karen is a full-time library media specialist at Searingtown School in Albertson, New York, where she teaches kindergarten through fifth grade. She also teaches educational technology professional development courses in her school district’s Teacher Center and is the Webmaster for Searingtown School and Searingtown School Library Media Center.

Karen has created numerous telecollaborative projects. Her project, "Walls That Talk", won national acclaim last year when the project placed as the first place winner of the ISTE SIGTEL Online Learning Award. This moving project created a place for students to put history into perspective by exploring special walls in their region, adding to the virtual walls in this project, and creating their own 'Wall of America'. Karen's 2004 election project, Federal Holiday's WebQuest joined learners in New Jersey, Italy and New York State. This marvelous webquest was recognized by Blue Web'N as a HOT site of the week. Karen’s recent “Meet the Candidiates WebQuest” created a meaningful platform to help students learn about the 2004 presidential candidates and the election process as they participated in teams to research presidential platforms and policies, develop marketing plans, or plan for public awareness campaigns.

Karen's well-grounded understanding of telecollaboration enables her to use technology to stimulate collaborative work and inquiry-based interaction that promotes students' critical thinking that supports state, library and technology standards.

In spite of the fact that we are separated by many miles, Karen’s professional influence on me is significant and ongoing. It is an honor to work with her and to nominate her for this year’s Global Schoolhouse Shared Learning Award for educators from the United States.

Brenda Dyck Master’s Academy and College Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The section below lists the testimonials that have been reviewed and approved by the candidate.

1. Testimonial from Nancy Lindenauer (1)
Principal/Headmaster at Searingtown School
United States

I can’t believe that Karen Kliegman has been at Searingtown School for only four and one-half years – for in that time she transformed our library media program and brought us forward into the 21st Century. Karen is enormously creative and has focused her creativity into our ed/tech program

Throughout the past four years, Karen Kliegman has developed expertise in educational technology. In fact, she has taught many ed/tech courses in our Teacher Center and is the Webmaster for our Searingtown School and nationally-recognized Searingtown Library Media Center websites. Her online collaborative projects have earned recognition from Education World, Blue Web’N, Sea World, Tech Learning and recently from ISTE, where her project Walls That Talk was awarded first place in the 2004 SIGtel Online Shared Learning competition. She has shared the success of her projects at many educational technology workshops she has given at local conferences and at the 2004 NECC and 2002 NSBA Technology & Learning conferences.

Karen is dedicated to her work and to helping students and teachers discover the possibilities and usefulness of technology and its power to enhance shared learning. To this end, Karen has created online learning modules in which she collaborates with universities, teachers and students both in our building and throughout the country.

In particular, her 2003 Walls That Talk project included our entire school as well as students from the New York metropolitan area, Italy and Bulgaria. Karen created a project that focused on cultural understanding and tolerance and brought together local and international partners. In this project, Karen and her partner teachers provided the learning foundation and inspiration for the creation of over 100 Searingtown School student-created self-portraits that reflected their understanding of themselves, others and how they fit into the world. These amazing portraits now adorn the walls of our Assistant Superintendent’s office as a statement of our cultural understanding and pride. Our students also wrote poetry about both physical and imagined walls that keep both individuals and societies apart. Our students shared their touching poetry with our parents and administrators at a school wide assembly.

Additionally, I accompanied Karen at a Walls That Talk presentation to our local Community Coalition, an organization of parents that seek to promote cultural tolerance in our school district. Their enthusiastic appreciation of the project was evident from the excellent comments and questions we received at the end of the presentation.

Also, Karen introduced our fourth grade students to the plight of injured and stranded sea mammals on our Long Island shores and provided technological learning and community service opportunities for our students. In her Circle of Life project, Karen provided experiences to encourage our fourth grade students to develop environmental stewardship of Long Island by connecting them electronically and personally to The Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, an organization that operates the Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program in New York State. In this project, students created websites about the mission of The Riverhead Foundation, adopted injured seals and sea turtles, and participated in a local beach clean-up.

Karen has been nationally and locally recognized and honored. However, there is no one who appreciates her more than her principal. I applaud her, respect her and learn from her.

2. Testimonial from Walter McKenzie (2)
Technology Education Director at Salem Massachusetts Public Schools
United States

I have had the pleasure to work with Karen Kliegman first hand as she developed her Meet the Candidates project for the 2004 election cycle. Karen developed this project as a meaningful way to integrate technology into instruction, involving students first-hand in the electoral process first hand as it played itself out locally and nationally in the Fall of the 2004 school year.

Karen worked with me in the summer of 2004, as she helped me to beta test my online course “Ways of Knowing: Multiple Intelligences and technology.” The course is designed to help teachers develop technology-based units of instruction which are theoretically sound and account for all the different paths to learning in the classroom. For her course project, Karen chose to take her Meet the candidates project which she had already created and further develop it in light of Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. You can see the result of her work on the course project gallery at http://surfaquarium.com/CoP/Project_Candidates.pdf .

In her project, Karen mindfully developed learning objectives which focused on information literacy skills so critical in effectively using today’s digital media. Her selection of technologies and standards nicely aligned with her objectives and the intelligences she targeted to produce a cohesive delivery of instruction.

Karen used a tightly structured project-based learning model which prescribes tasks, resources, roles and outcomes for participating who students who collaborate to achieve a common goal. In Karen’s project, she has students divided into three separate teams: marketing, public awareness and public policy. In this way students examine each candidate on the merits of his platform as well as his savvy in using media to deliver his message.

Student work products resulting from this wonderful project included a sixty second video commercial which showcases a specific candidate's promises to the American people, designing a campaign poster for a candidate in Adobe Photoshop that includes a photo of the candidate, the symbol of the party, and a slogan and focuses on one issue the candidate champions, and a PowerPoint presentation on the importance of voting, including information on how to register to vote. The range and quality of student responses to these activities was incredible!

What is truly striking in the Meet the Candidates Project is Karen’s awareness of the power of combining current events and digital technology. Many fine projects online utilize technology as a natural extension of work going on in the classroom but Karen’s project takes the process one step further, inviting students beyond the four walls of their classroom to experience the national political stage as it unfolds before them and then return to their classrooms to respond to their real-time experience in substantive, vibrant, meaningful ways.

I also want to commend Karen as a library media specialist who sees her role as an agent for technology integration not only throughout her own faculty, but for classrooms around the nation who wanted to share in her vision of real-world learning made possible through her excellent project design. Rest assured that the experiences of students participating in her project will stay with them in times to come, not only in 2008 as the next Presidential election takes place, but in their own adult lives as they take their place as responsible voting citizens. The Meet the Candidates project is a big step forward in helping students to become critical consumers of information in an age where information is the coin of the realm.

For all of these reasons I fully commend the Meet the Candidates project to you, and Karen Kliegman for your consideration as a worthy recipient of the GSN Online Shared Learning Award.

Walter McKenzie

3. Testimonial from beth vendryes williams (3)
Teacher at Searingtown Elelmentary
United States

I have worked with Karen Kleigman since she first came to Searingtown when we discovered our mutual passion for making connections between disciplines to make learning come alive! We can choose to investigate a world issue, find a way to integrate it into the regular school curriculum and engage teachers and students in working together to produce a product that reaches out way beyond Searingtown's walls!

This is Karen's special vision. Once she is inspired by an idea, She avidly pursues ways to awaken the students, teachers, parents, administrators and community members to its important connections to their lives. Whenever I have an idea that I want to research, she is full of ideas, emailing me links and sending me books to look at. She loves to post my art journal assignments on the web. She has worked on many projects with me, both large and small. She helped to make it possible for me to get an art image resource in my room as well as access to the projector to show them. She is always interested in pursuing information quickly and effectively!

Karen creates easy to understand websites that clearly define the issues, making information interactive and providing many possible links and in depth research possibilities. Our collaboration in” Walls that Talk” is a prime example of the thorough presentation and professional approach so apparent when she puts her energy into a project! That project commenced when we talked about the wide array of cultures that make up the population of our school and how knowing more about each other would further promote understanding. The project was born.... and kept Art (my subject area) and Library forming a substructure for the research and artwork produced by the children in our school for much of the year, setting a valuable precedent for future research projects.

Her facile and responsive, handling, transmission and organization of information promotes integrated curriculums, clear information sharing and an accurate view of what is going on in our school and in our educational development

She makes information visible and interactive...so in a very unique way she is an artist, using books, information and technology as her mediums.

4. Testimonial from Christine Michelen (4)
Parent at Searingtown School
United States

It is with great pleasure that I write a recommendation for the Global SchoolNet Foundation ‘s GSN Online Shared Learning Award for Mrs. Karen Kliegman. Searingtown School is a K-5 elementary school within the Herricks School District in Albertson, Long Island, New York. This is my 11th year as a parent of three boys in the Searingtown School. I have served on the executive Board of the PTA for 8 consecutive years. I currently have one child remaining in the school. When Mrs. Kliegman came to Searingtown School she was met with the great challenge of renovating and expanding the library. She took that task to heart. She didn’t take the simple way out, as some would, to merely choose colors for the walls and carpet. She helped redesign it, creating a welcoming and functional environment. We currently have a wonderful library with various stations that make it a multi-functional library/media center. We have cozy little areas for the children to snuggle with a book, either with an adult, or in small groups. We have a fabulous media center that is designed to be used by an entire class, or in small groups. The books are easy to find and easy to reach, even by our smallest children. The main desk is centrally located and well designed for easy use by our students. Mrs. Kliegman has contributed greatly to the enrichment of the entire student body by engaging the children in various projects over the years. A few years ago I had the pleasure to witness her coordinate an entire school project as part of the National educational program entitled “Walls that Talk,” based on the “Wall of America” project. Every grade participated in a multi-cultural project that was just awesome. We are proud that our school is so culturally diverse that our families come from 84 different countries, and speak even more languages than that. Mrs. Kliegman embraced this diversity and helped the students celebrate it with various projects for each grade. The primary grades drew flags, made puppets representative of different cultures, and researched how to say hello in 42 different languages. The upper grades researched 84 areas of the world, wrote poems (including a peace poem), created digital images, and painted a fabulous mural. Through the guidance of Mrs. Kliegman the students learned how to use Power Point and research the Internet. On May 20th the fifth grade visited a collaborative celebration of the Walls of America at C.W. Post University. Not only did they participate by creating a piece of the wall, they met and interviewed people from all over the world as well. We brought in dancers from around the globe and researched what and how children play around the world. Please visit our website http://herrickses.org/searingtown/wallsthattalk/ to learn more. She encourages the students to participate in various projects and think outside the box. She’s always looking for new projects and new ideas. Her knowledge of the computer and Internet is extensive and she is able to transfer that to the students. As a matter of fact, my now 12 year old was able to teach another Mom and I how to use Power Point for a presentation we were making as part of a grant we wrote, since learning to master the program through a project he participated in with Mrs. Kliegman in 5th grade. Mrs. Kliegman also helped us gather media information as part of that same grant. Given all the above, and so much more that she does, I strongly recommend Mrs. Karen Kliegman for the Global SchoolNet Foundation ‘s GSN Online Shared Learning Award. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely, Christine N. Michelen

5. Testimonial from Beckey Reed (5)
Educational Consultant at North Carolina State University
United States

There are those exceptional educators who standout from the moment you first interact with them – virtually or in person. As a MidLink Magazine Editor [http://www.ncsu.edu/midlink/] since the fall of 2002, Karen Kleigman has contributed significantly to the online community and especially to this group. Her creative online educational projects truly speak for themselves.

Karen is the voice for elementary schools and Media Specialists on MidLink. Her expertise and leadership are invaluable. She is currently redesigning the resources on MidLink and adding numerous quality links to sites around the world to assist K-12 teachers and students. Her organizational skills have been vital for this important component of MidLink. As always, Karen volunteered to take this on with energy and enthusiasm!

Karen’s collaborative spirit was evident when she joined MidLink Magazine Editors for a meeting in Raleigh in November 2004 even though her major project, Meet the Candidates, was culminating. Whether in person, in phone conferences or the MidLink listserv, Karen contributes her extensive knowledge to the professional development of her colleagues.

While on campus at NC State, Karen spoke to our preservice classes. Our faculty members in the College of Education were inspired by her teaching at Searington School and her techniques to mentor other teachers. Her passion and solid pedagogy came across loud and clear as she shared her experiences, online projects and knowledge of integrating technology into the curriculum with our undergraduate and graduate students.

Karen also was a featured speaker at our MEGA event, a network of North Carolina teachers: http://www.ncsu.edu/mega/Training/success/110304/. As she shared her process to develop and implement Meet the Candidates in her school, our teachers understood the power of telecollaboration and connecting with classrooms beyond North Carolina. Karen challenged these teachers to participate in online projects and dream big!

Karen not only dreams big, but also encourages students and educators around the world to join her award-winning projects. Her favorite quote by Blanc Bowman is truly a statement of her educational philosophy: “It’s not about who gets there first, but making sure that everybody does.”

It is an honor to highly recommend Karen Kleigman for the Global Schoolhouse Shared Learning Award for 2005. She certainly deserves this recognition for her outstanding online projects and contributions to MidLink Magazine and K-12 education.

6. Testimonial from Susan Silverman (6)
College Professor at NYIT
United States

Searingtown School in Albertson, New York is very fortunate to have Karen Kliegman on their staff but so are we! Through her online projects, Karen makes it possible for the global educational community to take advantage of her innovative, vital, and enchanting online projects. Karen’s work speaks for itself. Imagine what it would be like today if world leaders experienced “Walls that Talk” when they were in school. Students in the United States that participated in Karen’s “Meet the Candidates” WebQuest probably have a better understanding of the election process and will have the skills they need to make intelligent decisions when they are voters. Students who examined political cartoons in her WebQuest know how to analyze them and can help their parents understand the cartoonist’s point of view. Karen’s sensitivity to important issues extends to wildlife and the environment. Marine Mammals in New York State benefit by her Circle of Life project. There’s a saying, “If you want something to be done, ask a busy person to do it.” Between working as an editor for MidLink Magazine, a full time media specialist, giving after school technology courses, maintaining the media center web site, and taking care of her family, Karen is a busy person. She is a busy person that gets things done and she does them well. Karen Kliegman is most worthy of the 2005 Global Schoolhouse Shared Learning Award for educators from the United States.

7. Testimonial from Delia DeCourcy (7)
Teacher at Cary Academy
United States

Karen and I are both editors for MidLink Magazine, an online magazine that features on-line projects by students in grades K-12. For the past two years, I have been amazed by the projects that Karen has put together and the faculty and students she has brought together to make these projects happen. As a library media specialist, she dreams up incredible web-based projects, collaborates with teachers and/ or gets them on board to make them happen and has terrific follow through! In addition, some of Karen's projects are telecollaborative so that classrooms at other schools can take part in them. Projects of this nature include The Federal Holidays Web Quest and her Presidential Election Project. In addition, Karen gets various community groups involved in her projects as was true with the Circle of Life Web Quest for which she brought together her elementary school students and the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation. For the Walls that Talk project, Karen brought together teachers, artists and community members to make this incredible learning experience happen. Finally, Karen has been integral to MidLink Magazine's recent success. She recently completed an overall of our cybrary resource pages that is truly impressive. This educator has the most vast knowledge of web resources that I have ever seen. She has also presented on her projects and methods at national conferences as well as to students at North Carolina State University's School of Education. I have presented with her and seen how inspired teachers and education students are by her work. I too am inspired by Karen's work and ability to successfully create collaborative educational experiences.

8. Testimonial from Jeanne Smythe (8)
School Technology Teacher at Searingtown ELementary School
United States

I have known Karen Kliegman for the last four and a half years. First as a special education teacher and then as the computer technology teacher I worked with Karen on a variety of programs. It never failed that Karen made use of all her talents and skills when creating a new adventure for the students and staff of Searingtown School. Her philosophy of incorporating as many areas of curriculum and learning styles is evident in her many class, school wide and internet projects.

The Walls That Talk project included every child, family and staff member in our school. The resulting website and other activities help to create a sense of community not only with in our school but also our district. Other areas of the US, as well as other countries also interacted with the project. We still receive email from people throuhout the world giving us feedback on the website.

Karen has worked hard to bring awareness of environmental issues to the students here at Searingtown. Through the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program Karen was able to create a Circle of Life project for our 4th graders. Through a combination of field trips, research and electronic experiences our 4th graders were helped to develop a better understanding of Long Island's marine environment.

Karen has been an incredible asset to the Searingtown School in her ability to create, communicate and impliment online projects that allow both students and teachers to grow in their knowledge and skills.

9. Testimonial from Kim Guarascio (9)
Teacher Elementary/Primary (ages 5-12) at Berkeley Township elementary School
United States

I don't know Karen personally, however, my 6th grade class participated in her online web quest. My student had a wonderful time learning about the election. By the time they were done they knew more about each candidate than their own parents did. In addition, the responce from the children's parents was over whelming. They were thrilled at how much thier child learned. Karen's web quest was amazing. She did a fantastic job creating it. I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Kimberly Guarascio Berkeley Township Elementary School

10. Testimonial from Bette Schneiderman (10)
College Professor at Long Island University
United States

I have had the great pleasure of knowing Karen while she was in our masters degree program in Educational Technology at Long Island University, C.W. Post. As Co-Chair of the Department and faculty teaching in the program, I saw Karen as student and as leader. Ours is a program about the transformation of teaching and learning environments. Karen excelled and continually transformed the environments she created with others. Once graduated from the program, Karen continued to participate in our Electronic Educational Village, our special outreach arm to the community. The EEV is archived in the Smithsonian and has won grants and awards because of people like Karen. Karen creates collaborative projects of deep meaning that impact on her elementary students, her district, and the community. Some of the extraordinary examples she has led include her Wall of America project, her Walls That Talk, and her most recent collaboration with us on Human Rights and Child Labor. Karen is creative, hard working, and so capable. She would be an outstanding recipient of your award.