When I first read the criteria for this assignment, I was unsure of what I was supposed to do. What is a global education community. So, I did what any rational college student working agains a deadline would do: I googled it, and clicked on the first site I came upon.
All I can say is wow! I am pretty impressed with what I saw. For anyone who does not know what a global education community is, it is basically a group of people from around the globe gathering together in an online community, searching for various ways to connect. It might be through an environmental chat thread. Or helping gather research for a project being don around the world. One of the coolest ones I found was a link to a site where teachers could connect their strongest writers to a GLOBAL community of writers. In this particular community, young people can read other young people's writing, gaining inspiration and even lending a helping hand. If I had a place where I could have developed my writing when I was younger, then I wonder how much better I would be now?!
Basically, these global communities are similar in thought to the old "pen pal" idea of my days. Write a letter to a child across the world, telling them about your life in the U.S. Then, they would write one back and tell you about their life wherever they are. It was always a nice thought, but snail mail can be frustrating, and writing when your heart wasn't really in it was always more of a chore. But in these global communities, students can receive near instant feedback from a new friend across the world, download and share pictures, and again an appreciation of what it's like in other cultures. Pen pals for the digital age! What a great idea!
The site I found had a lot of jumping off points for teachers to guide their students as well as become involved in a community they are interested as well. It takes signing up to participate in the various threads, but it's nothing more than we do for hotmail or eLive anyway. The site's address is: http://globaleducation.ning.com/ I really reccommend it. I can't wait to find ways to integrate this into my own classroom someday and see what happens.
This is why I think after taking this class. when I become a teacher, I would share about Global Communication with my student so they know about the world outside them, not all, but at least they know that there are student out there willing to share something with them.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be great to involve students from around the world into the classroom. I was readig somewhere that only 20 -30 percent of American students knew how to locate where thet were on a map.
ReplyDeleteTeaching students about global communities would help to teach them about geography, among many other things.