This week I will be reflecting on case studies from “The Global Educator” by Julie Lindsay. In her book, Julie writes about different teachers from across the globe and their success stories with global collaboration in the classroom. Today I will be focusing on two of those stories. Before reading these success stories, please enjoy this video of a teacher in Italy who was successfully able to create a global collaborative project in her classroom!
The first case study which I connected with was about Mali Bickley who is a Canadian classroom teacher of 34 years. Ms. Bickley used a program known as ICT to integrate global learning in her literacy and other content areas so that her student could connect to and learn from other students around the globe. I could tell her enthusiasm with global learning as she helped to create meaningful projects that her student could not only learn the content but also change other peoples lives by connecting with others around the globe. This is such a great thing to read as a future educator because it motivates me to use global learning in my classroom to help engage my students and enhance their knowledge as well as create meaningful connections with people around the globe. The author writes that the students in Ms. Bickley’s classroom became extremely passionate about these connections they were making. This is wonderful to hear as when students are excited about the content that they are learning; they are more likely to be internally motivated to learn more and do well on assessments.
The second study which spoke to me as a future educator was about Tracey Winey. Tracy is a STEM teacher and Media Specialist at a school in Colorado. In her class, she decided to make use of 3D printing technology to create a globally collaborative project. For this project, Ms. Winey had her student connect with people from around the globe to help design lights that can be used in different parts of the world. This is such a beautiful project because not only are students becoming engaged with learning how to use a 3D printer, but they are creating connections around the world and providing support to areas that may be in need. I plan to implement projects like this in my class where we are focusing on a core content area while also creating connections and providing support, making the content usable for the student and exemplifying how to use this knowledge for good!
Teachers all around the globe are finding it harder and harder to engage their students. With the current youth engaged continuously on their devices, having to come into a classroom, sit quietly, and listen to their teacher talk about concepts that seem foreign to them seems almost comical, but we continue to do it.
Lucky for us, the future of education looks much more engaging as technology continues to advance. Virtual reality is the new hot spot in schooling and seems to be spreading like wildfire and for a good reason!
What is Virtual Reality
Wired has a great article on virtual reality that ultimately encompasses all aspects of the software that you can read right here! However, in short, virtual reality (VR) is a false reality that is computer generated. The most common form of VR is a headset that projects images through the eyewear that makes the user feel that they are immersed in whatever ‘reality’ they are experiencing. Virtual reality is used for gaming, entertainment, and now, learning! The two leaders in VR are Oculus and Vive.
So What!?
Virtual reality is one of the most engaging pieces of technology out there today as the user is completely immersed in whatever it is that they have chosen. Because of the high level of engagement that VR provides, it is an excellent resource for education. Teachers who have the ability and resources to implement VR in the classroom have the luxury of engaging their students on another level. Imagine you are learning about the Battle of Gettysburg in your history class and instead of reading it out of a textbook and watching 30-year-old documentaries about it, you are actually standing in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania watching the Confederacy and the Union fight. Imagine shrinking down to the size of a red blood cell and traveling through the human body to learn about the circulation system. With virtual reality, these types of adventures that seem to come right out of The Magic School Bus can happen in your own classroom!
Watch some videos of classrooms that have VR in their classes and listen to how well the students react to it!
The reason why this technology is so engaging is that it places the students in the content and doesn’t require them to have background information to conceptualize sometimes abstract concepts. This technology supports a teaching technique known as embodied learning which is a style of teaching that involves the whole body with learning.
What do you think of VR? Would you implement it in your classroom? Let me know in the comments down below!
This week, I tried out a new storytelling program to see how it works and I will be reflecting on my thoughts in this blog!
Storytelling
For thousands of years, storytelling has been a way of communicating for humans and over time the way we tell our stories has changed. Here is a quick video on teaching storytelling in the classroom.
Storytelling is an extremely important skill for students to have as it enables them to get their message across to others in a structured fashion. In today’s world, storytelling has evolved away from just written or verbal stories and now with the help of technology, stories can be told in many different fashions.
StoryboardThat
The Good!
The program I chose to use to tell my story was called StoryboardThat. Here is a link to the website so you can check it out for yourself! This program allows users to create a comic strip like storyboard by using premade scenes, characters, speech bubbles, infographics, and more! Users are able to click and drag these tools to different parts of their comic strip and insert text to give the context of the images. When using it myself, I found the program to be very self-explanatory and I did not need to do any further research on how to use it. The scenes, characters, and images the program provides have plenty of options and should fit any kind of story the user would want to tell.
The Not So Good!
The only downside to this program is that it only allows the user to create a comic strip that is 3×1 or 3×2 for free. Anything other than those two options requires the user to pay to upgrade their account. This could cause issues if teachers want their students to tell longer more detailed stories. The other small detail I found slightly frustrating when using this tool was that the characters were all standing and facing forward. There was no way to make the character positioned differently such as sitting, walking, or turned to the side. This limits the actions your characters are able to do within the storyboard.
Overall
I really did enjoy using this tool to tell a story and could see myself using this tool in my own classroom as a short warmup or cooldown activity to get the students thinking about their stories and visualize it in a comic strip.
My Storyboard
Below is an image of my own storyboard so you can see what a final product looks like. My story is about the journey I went through to get a new job as a server at a restaurant!
Let me know what you think of this tool and if you have any storytelling tools you like to use in your classroom in the comments below! Thanks for reading the blog!
Before I go into the highlights of this site and how it can be used in the classroom, I want to introduce you to the owner of the website and why it was made.
Paul Salopek is a writer and journalist from the United States of America. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and has reported for many organizations and now works for National Geographic. Paul decided to embark on a decade long experiment to retrace the migration path of our ancestors. This journey will take him an estimated seven years beginning in Ethiopia and ending at the bottom of South America.
This is an image of the migration of human beings out of Africa and into South America that Paul followed.
Watch this video below to see Paul Salopek himself explain why he is embarking on this adventure!
Paul began his journey in 2013 and estimates that he will be finished in 2020.
Highlights
In Paul Salopek’s trek, he records his experiences on the Out of Eden National Geographic website. Paul uploads consistent blog posts detailing his encounters with different towns, people, and cultures. Some of my favorite features of his site include milestones, walking tours, and the articles.
Milestones
Around every hundred miles, Paul Salopek stops to record different parts of his surroundings which he calls milestones. These milestone links contain seven tabs: introduction, panorama, map, earth and sky, encounters, glances, and comments. The introduction to the milestone titles the area that he will be revealing gives the number of days that it has been since he began his journey, the number of miles he was walked, and the elevation of his location in feet. Following the introduction is the panorama photo. This tool allows the reader to take a view of Paul’s surroundings as if they were there themselves, giving them the ability to look all around. The map tab provides a topographical map that pinpoints Paul’s location during this milestone. Earth and sky is also a new tab in which Paul takes a photo of the ground beneath his feet and the sky above him. In the encounters tab, Paul introduces one person at this milestone asking them “Who are you?”, “Where do you come from?”, And “Where are you going?”. This feature is probably one of my favorites within the Milestone section of this website as you are able to meet different people from across the globe. It gives life to the pictures and articles of the towns and cultures that Paul is experiencing on his trek. In the glances section, Paul provides a quick video of whatever is around him at that time. Finally, in the milestone section, there is a section for comments allowing readers to reflect and discuss things they found interesting from Paul’s journey.
Another great piece of this website is the walking tour that Paul provides. These tours begin with a brief introduction of the location of the trip as well as the distance and amount of time it took to take a walk. Then, as the reader scrolls down, they are able to see pictures, mini-articles, and videos of Pauls walk on the left side of the screen and on the right they can view the location of the walk on a satellite map. This is an excellent feature as it allows the reader to feel as though they are walking alongside Paul, seeing the things he is seeing and meeting the people he encounters.
Paul writes such detailed articles about his journeys across the globe. In them, he will describe his visual surroundings as well as the people he meets. Through his words, Paul is able to provide vivid images of what he is experiencing and allows the reader to immerse themselves into another culture and livelihood from across the globe. In his articles, Paul uses a lot of vocabulary from the area he is writing about such as the names of plants and animals from this region, of buildings, and of traditions from the area. These vocabulary words are sometimes difficult to understand for a high school level reader, so it provides an opportunity for readers to research definitions and expand their own vocabulary.
Through this website so beautifully crafted by Paul Salopek, teachers can educate their students on global awareness, different cultures, writing styles, practice reading different writing styles, and learn how to research using a reliable source. National Geographic’s website provides an excellent space for students to do research on cultures across the globe. One great way to utilize this website is for a unit on culture. First, the teacher could introduce the culture, and it’s meaning to the students. The teacher would want to build the students’ background knowledge on their own culture and how it affects the things they do, people they interact with, the food they eat, and so much more. Then, the teacher could introduce the students to Paul’s site and his mission. The teacher could then give the students the freedom to explore the site on their own. After a few days of introducing culture and this site, the teacher could then ask the students to find one culture they found most interesting on the site and research it. The site will provide the students with most of the information they need between the milestones, articles, walking tours, and other links Paul has provided. The teacher should encourage the students to dig deep in the website for information but allow them to do further research using other appropriate sources of information. The students should then take all the information they found and prepare a presentation about the culture they have chosen. This is just one example of a project that can be done to engage the student’s global awareness through Paul Salopek’s site.
What do you think of Paul’s journey? How could you implement this in your classroom? Comment down below your thoughts!
