As we work towards helping our students develop their respectful and ethical minds, we help them with thinking not only about their immediate community, family, school, we help them connect to their surrounding community, their neighborhood and the world. According to Julene Reed, "most jobs [our students] will have in the future don’t exist today," yet we still have to prepare them for them. She says that by helping students become familiar with other cultures, it leads to compassion and understanding for those cultures. When we use group work in class, we are supporting the development of these attitudes. We now need to reach further than across the room, but across the globe.
Reed's article "Global Collaboration and Learning: How to create a world of success without leaving your classroom," lists many technology resources that educators can use to help students reach out, globally, to other students, cultures, and organizations. Students can use technology to create podcasts and videocasts that they can share with the world. For my 6th grade History students studying ancient civilizations, creating pod and video casts about the different units of study and sharing them with students and classrooms that share that history. Students could exchange information, both audio and visual, about the civilizations hey are studying. My class could present what they have learned and present hands-on projects to classrooms in Egypt, Greece, India, and China, while students in those classrooms could help us learn about that country and culture in the present day.
Through projects and activities like these, I can help students envelop their own creative and presentation skills, and their understanding if other cultures. Students will be creating work that will be shared with others, raising their level of performance and confidence. They will be learning about other cultures in a real way, through the experiences of other students their age. They will be able to make connections to the way other people live and gain hopefully compassion for others who may have drastically different realities than they do. Projects like this can also help students expand their own thinking about their future. Exposing them to the world can help me look further for their future. Respectful and ethical minds see themselves as part of the world. As a public school teacher in low income communities, something I wish for all of my students is to look further than the 5 square blocks of their neighborhood and know that what is out there is for them as well.
Gardner, H. (2009). Five Minds for the Future. Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.
Reed, J. (2007, September 27). Global Collaboration and Learning: How to create a world of success without leaving your classroom. EdTech K-12. Retrieved November 24, 2012 from, http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2007/09/global-collaboration-and-learning
