Monday, March 20, 2017

Global Connections & Collaborations


This is one of the topics that I am most passionate about; I feel so strongly that we need to provide our students opportunities to hear from the broader world and speak to authentic audiences.  One of my goals is to continually broaden my students' worldview, and yet this is also an area that I struggle to work out the practical application.  There are so many opportunities to connect...and so many barriers to overcome.  With my own classroom I would persist through whatever barriers of time, language, and cultural barriers we faced.  Adding to this the element of collaboration it all becomes more complex.  Even with these barriers and complexities I am determined to continue seeking opportunities for our students to connect with the world beyond their classroom walls.  Having as many options and solutions for this as possible will help me achieve this goal.
Some of the ideas that stood out to me from the resources provided could be done within library programming, and others I will approach classroom teachers to collaborate on.

With Classes:

Mystery Skype- I have looked into doing with with geography, but haven't been able to interest any of our teachers on it.  Looking at it again, I am thinking we could approach this from an environmental/ science angle, and have students develop questions that focus on the biome in which other students live.
Quadblogging-  This is something that our English classes may be interested in, and if they are not I will explore as an option for my 10th grade Research Seminar class.  Perhaps we can incorporate this blogging element into our research questions to share with a real audience.  
Global Nomads Group- There are so many ideas here!  I have foreign language and global studies teachers who have been interested in connecting with classes of students in different countries, and I believe the resources and curriculum opportunities offered through this organization may help us overcome the logistical barriers that have prevented us from making more of these global connections.  

In the Library:

#GlobalSpeedChat- During our major spring library promotion/ contest of Bookopoly I will incorporate these challenges as some of the activities for students to complete to earn "property cards".  In addition to this program, I plan to include watching TED talks from the "Bridging Cultural Differences" playlist.  
Bridging Cultural Differences- This series of TED talks has provided me with ideas of people/ topics to feature in a library display/ social media series on this topic.  I am gathering resources to share in both the physical library and within our digital presence.
Global Nomads Group-  I subscribed to receive updates, so that I can proactively be looking for coming programs that could be stand alone experiences in the library, or that I can incorporate into collaborative instruction.  

In addition to the ideas that I gleaned above, I have also gathered hashtag ideas to explore, and added a column to my Tweetdeck on #globalclassroom to keep this at the forefront of my professional learning network and personal exploration.  The tools and resources I gathered from this lesson have been a real encouragement to me on a topic that I was beginning to get frustrated with achieving.  I am ready to continue being persistent now!

1 comment:

  1. Terrific! You've got a lot of great ideas to pursue! Like you, I feel really strongly about this topic too. So important.

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