I can’t believe that this will be the last blog post of the semester. I definitely have learned a lot throughout this course. But you’re probably not here to read about my experience. Let’s start talking about the case study in the book “The Global Educator” by Julie Lindsay.
At the end of the Global Educator, there is a section of the book that talks about ten different case studies. These case studies explore different opportunities for professional learning and collaboration. These collaborations and opportunities include online and virtual courses as well as conferences with face-to-face events.
The Global Educator by Julie Lindsay
One case study caught my eye in particular. That is the Global Education Conference , created by Steve Hargadon and Lucy Gray.
The Global Education Conference, created in the USA, is a “collaborative, inclusive, worldwide community initiative involving students, educators and organizations at all levels.” The goal of this project was to connect classrooms across the world while raising cultural awareness and spreading recognition of diversity all across the world.
This year, they held their ninth annual global conference with different educators, students, and teachers. Each person chosen to represent at the conference mist come up with a proposal. Proposals should focus on ideas, projects or programs that can help promote global learning and collaboration.
Below are videos to the 2019 Global Education Conference Sessions
Session 1 of The Global Education Conference with Steve Hargadon
Session 2 of The Global Education Conference with Steve Hargadon
Session 3 of The Global Education Conference with Steve Hargadon
Virtual reality is such an amazing tool that was created. It has so many amazing benefits to it like realistic scenarios, its suitability for different learning styles, and it can simplify complex problems/situations. One of the best things virtual reality can be used for is global collaboration.
Starting off in the classroom, virtual reality can really enhance a student’s learning experience. For example, you can take virtual field trips to visit different places at zero cost and in the comfort of your classroom. Teachers can let students do virtual reality activities and get the experience in class, and teachers can later post the lesson notes or lectures onto their website or YouTube. Eventually, one day, there could be a way where engineers can develop a way for students to interact with each other.
Coming from a Biology background, labs are what we are known for. Educators can use virtual reality to conduct labs if they believe that a certain chemical or a type of gas is too toxic to have in the lab room. Having a virtual lab class can eliminate any sort of hazardous scenarios that could happen in a lab room, like a chemical coming in contact with your skin, eyes, or feet.
Virtual Reality Lab
Generally speaking, virtual reality has made global collaboration and learning a lot more easier and more interactive. Just think about it, about two decades ago, students had to learn about other parts of a world through textbooks, pictures, and videos that other people upload online. Now, students can visit those places themself and get to experience what it really is like to be at these places. Students now are able to collaborate with others around the world because they have virtually visited those places themselves.
Digital StoryTelling is a form of storytelling but on digital media production. It’s where you can showcase or tell your story and share it with many people all over the world. Digital StoryTelling is a good way for people to learn about you and for you to introduce yourself on a bigger platform.
To show you this tool, I’ve tried using a site to tell my story.
Although Google Slides isn’t a site as exciting as others, there are so many more benefits when using the Google apps.
One thing as that they’re free! Some site will charge you monthly to use their site or app. However, Google Slides is a free website and app that has tons of templates for you to use and is very user friendly.
With Google Slides, you can also easily share it with others and you have the ability to customize your privacy. You have options to make it public to the whole internet, have it only shared to a couple people, have it private and have no one be able to view it, or you can choose the option where you can allow only people with the link to be able to access the storyboard/presentation.
Ever wanted to know what it’s like to travel across the world through the footsteps of thousands of migrants but don’t have the determination to? Have you heard of the Out of Eden Walk project? This project was started by Paul Salopek. It is a 21,000 mile odyssey experiment in slow journalism. Paul walks the pathway of the first humans who migrated from Africa during the stone ages, to build Earth of what it is today. ALong his way, he covers many stories, from climate change to technological innovation, and from mass migration to cultural survival. He documents these moments though his photographs, videos, and audios to create a global record of what human life was like at the start of all of this.
Paul Salopek’s unfinished map of his journey.
Holy Lands: Walking Jeddah
Paul’s journey through Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is the first thing that caught my eye. He is joined with Sami, a historian of Jeddah and Mohamad, a desert guide.I was very shocked at Sami’s action of walking ever so calmly into the speeding traffic. Paul compared his action to Moses, when he confidently parted the Red Sea. The climate there seems to be ridiculously humid and dry. There were streets dedicated to quarantine and isolate pilgrims during plague times. Throughout his journey in Jeddah, I noticed that there are not many people who go outside during that weather. Paul writes that people tend to run into their houses during 100 degree weather.
Milestone 53: Rally
During this time, Paul has traveled 5,200 miles and is located on the outskirts of Abbottabad, the garrison town where Osama Bin Laden was killed in hiding. During his time here, he wrote that he witnessed a political rally going on at the moment. Vehicles whizzed past the restaurant with bright colored flags. On top of those vehicles were microphones that broadcasted political ballads that praised the prime minister who recently had been overthrown for corruption. I was surprised to see that not only did the people travel int cars, trucks, and buses, but they also traveled on small motor bikes too. Although the climate there seems to be very dry and humid, the men there still wore long sleeved clothing to protect themselves from the sun’s harsh rays.
Autumn Wars: No Reply
After dark, soldiers cut the border wire. Thousands of flood across the border and into Turkey. This became the largest stampede of humanity out of Syria since the war began more than three years ago. The Turkish border town became completely overrun by Syrians. Even though Syrians basically over took the Turkish border town, young workers from the municipality walked among the Syrians and handed out shiny packets of biscuits as a way of welcoming them into their country.
This week, I will be discussing norm 1 and norm 2 from our textbook, “The Global Educators.” There are a total of 8 norms but I will only be focusing on the first two in this week’s blog post.
Picture that indicates how multiple people collaborate with each other.
Norm 1: Be Prepared
Many great global collaborations fail because the educators are not prepared or do not know what to prepare for. One tool that I really enjoy to prepare myself is Twitter. Twitter is such an amazing social media platform for educators to communicate, plan, and collaborate. Similarly to educators, biologists need to collaborate with each other. However, biologists rely on each other to bring a piece of the puzzle. They need the other biologists to share what discoveries they found with the rest of the group to be able to get closer to the answer that they are looking for. With so many living things involved and so many factors that can change the result, biologists need every person to contribute all they can so they can get a more accurate discovery. For example, biologists looked at dinosaur bones and the physics of flight to understand how bird flight evolved. When a biologist named Ken Dial added a new piece to the puzzle, a picture of how a baby bird uses their wings, the answer as to how flight evolved became much clearer.
Norm 2: Have a Purpose
Why are you collaborating? What are you collaborating for? These are the questions you should be asking yourself every time you contribute in a collaboration. If we look at the Biology field, there are multiple studies we can focus on. Do you want to find the cure to cancer? Do you want to find a way to incorporate holistic healthcare to traditional medical healthcare? Do you want to find a way you can change the structure of a plant to help it survive better in a certain environment? Or do you just simply want to understand how the human body works and why it does what it does? Regardless, you need to have a purpose or a reason as to why you are collaborating. Scientists who are looking for a cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s need to collaborate with other scientists to understand how this disease developed and if they can develop any medication that can help prevent that from happening to others in the future.
Although I am not directly collaborating with other biologists on a specific experiment, I follow biologist on my Twitter and see what they share with their audience and can learn a lot from what they share.
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One thing I have to say about this tool is that it has upped the game for traveling and learning in the classroom. This tool will make planning your trips so much easy and can also help teachers to enhance their learning experience.
Google Maps is such an amazing way to visit other places without spending thousands of dollars and is at the touch of your fingertips. Not only that, but you can also create your own custom Google Map where you are able to pinpoint every location you want to learn about or you can save it for future trips.
I have made my own Custom Google Map of places that were memorable to me when I visited Vietnam. I have pinpointed all of the locations in Vietnam that I visited. By putting them all onto a custom map, I am able to share it with others who may be interested in visiting Vietnam.
WATCH THIS VIDEO TO LEARN HOW YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN CUSTOM GOOGLE MAPS
Another way you can use this tool is in a classroom. You can really enhance a students’ learning experience by showing them what these different places really look like. It can give you a more real experience. Students’ will be more willing to engage in learning about that country if they see what it really looks like rather than just searching up pictures on the internet.
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This week, I am going to be reflecting on what I’ve learned so far into this course, and what tools/platforms I really learned a lot from.
One thing that I know I really enjoyed were the lessons from the Microsoft Educator Community. I really enjoyed the two lessons I completed so far. Recently, I’ve completed the Introduction to Skype in the Classroom lesson and I learned so many things that I did not know I could do with Skype.
5 Different Ways To Use Skype In The Classroom
Through this lesson, I found 5 different ways I can incorporate Skype into the classroom.
1. Virtual Field Trips
With virtual field trips, we can give our students a real-life experience that could potentially enhance their learning to that specific area. Instead of reading about that place from a textbook or having them look up that place on the internet, we can give them a real-time experience using Skype. This way, they can see with their own eyes what that place really is like live instead of pre-recorded.
2. Skype Lessons
With Skype lessons, our students can learn about a topic or country through a video that accurately shows and explains what that topic is. The great thing about Skype Lessons is that you can easily find what lesson you are looking for with the filter button. You can filter by age groups, subjects, countries, languages, etc. Skype makes it easy and simple to look for topics so anyone can understand how to use it.
3. Skype Collaboration
Skype Collaboration might be one of the best tools that I have discovered. With this tool, we can connect and collaborate with different classrooms and work together on different projects. This can give our students to exposure on what it is like to connect with other people and also receive a different perspective other than their own.
4. Mystery Skype
Mystery Skype is a game where two classrooms play a game where they each guess the location of the other classroom by asking questions. This is a great tool for teachers to use for their students because it gives them a great opportunity to learn about what the environment of the other classroom is like and expose the students on the different culture of the other country.
5. Guest Speakers
Skype is a great tool for teachers to incorporate what it is like to speak to an expert about that particular subject. By connecting with experts that know about that particular field (vet, musician, lawyers, etc.), students can receive real information.
I can definitely say that the Microsoft Educators Community lessons are my favorite assignments from all the other ones. I find myself not only learning a lot of valuable lessons, but I also enjoy watching the videos and reading the different charts and description of each part of the lesson.
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I’m sure everyone enjoys watching movies and television shows. Whether it be a horror movie, a romance movie, or a comedy. One thing I have noticed however, movies/television shows around the world are all different and they each highlight their country’s culture.
Korean Television Show (2015) “She Was Pretty”
Recently, I’ve watched this Korean television show called, “She Was Pretty.” This is a show that tells about two characters that were destined to be together from the beginning. The girl being beautiful when she was little and growing up and being considered ugly by the Korean beauty standard. The boy, however, was the opposite. He was considered ugly when he was little and growing up to become a handsome man. This TV show highlights a lot of cultural differences that South Korea has compared to the U.S. With those differences, there are also a lot of similarities that both of our countries share.
This show has many different cultural aspects. One thing I’ve noticed through this show is the Korean Beauty Standard. Through this show, the female lead character is treated worse than other people because she is considered “ugly.” While working at the magazine editing company, all of her co-workers always dress nice and always have makeup on everyday for work. One of the main points of why her co-workers deem her ugly are her curly and frizzy hair, her freckles, the clothes that she wears, and the fact that she wore glasses. Seeing her like this, her co-workers always made her do the heavy work and often belittled her. Once she started dressing nicely, applying makeup, and styling her hair, they all of a sudden became nice to her.
The left image is considered “ugly” and the right image is considered pretty
Another thing I noticed that was different from American culture is when they go out to a restaurant and eat/drink. As displayed in this show, in Korea, it is considered disrespectful if you do not pour drinks for elders. If you’re the younger person or you are a less experienced worker to the person who wants to pour you a drink (alcohol), then you must hold your cup or glass with two hands. It is considered respectful and polite towards the elder person when you do that.
I’ve watched many Korean dramas and most of them showed the same dinner etiquette. In the show, there is a scene where Hye-Jin (the female lead) and the department she worked in held a business dinner. At the restaurant, the chief editor makes a toast to wish their department a successful future.
Typical set-up for a Korean business dinner
Compared to my culture, there isn’t much difference with what we do. In Korea, there are many people to own cars, however there are some people who own motorbikes. In Vietnam, more than half of the country’s population ride motorbikes because it is cheaper and more convenient. Both countries have rice as their main staple food. It seems that in Korea, they have all four seasons like we do in America. In Vietnam however (where I lived at least), we mostly saw either rainy weather, or hot and humid weather. Both cultures mostly go out to restaurants to talk with friends, or to amusement parks. We also like to go by the ocean and just enjoy the view. Both in my culture and the television show, the one thing that we both value is respect towards our elder. We were raised to respect our elders growing up and to always greet them.
Recently in Vietnam, everything has seemed to be influenced by Korea. Korea has influenced so many things in Vietnam like foods, beauty, fashion, and even Vietnamese shows. Korean culture has blown up so much in the last couple of years and is slowly spreading through all across Asia
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I can definitely say that Twitter is one of the biggest platform of social media that has taken the world by storm the past couple of decade. I have used Twitter before for personal use only, but having to keep up with my PLN created a different experience that I have never faced before. These past couple of weeks, I’ve used Twitter to keep in contact and to keep updated with my classmates as well as other educators. I’ve participated in many global chats that helped me connect and understand the viewpoints of my classmates as well as other educators that were participating in this chat.
I’ve experienced many pleasant experiences through this social media app. I learned that you can search for every source using hashtags such as, #biology, #edtech, and #globalchat. Not only was I able to search up specific topics with hashtags, but by using these hashtags, I was able to open up and learn to lots of learning techniques. I’ve learned many ways to engage my learners to either physical class or online class.
Twitter App
Let’s talk about the bad:
The only bad thing that i’ve experienced with Twitter is that sometimes, the scheduled global chats never even took place. Other than the global chats not happening once in a while, I wished I was more involved with my own Twitter and learned about searching up topics using hashtags sooner.
Twitter Feed
I’ve really enjoyed the past 6 weeks on Twitter. My classmates are so kind and open to sharing their ideas and thoughts on my tweets. Not only that, I’ve also messaged many professionals and talked to many educators that are also studying in the same major. I’ve learned many thing from them and I’ve also shared my opinions with them. They’ve helped me understand many things that are not only related to education, they’ve also helped me with my concepts that I’ve not been able to understand.
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Global Learning is a learning style that should be taught in all schools, across the country. Not only will it allow students to connect with other students and to build relationships around the world, it will also create a foundation for the future global citizens of the world.
In “The Global Educator”, it talks about how open-mindedness and breakthrough of stereotypical understandings can have an impact on the students.
Teaching students to be open-minded while being open-minded and breaking stereotypes can impact students in many different ways. There are many ways you can engage students into doing this.
Allowing students to participate in global activities and collaborations encourages students to be open-minded as they learn to respect the opinions of others. By doing so, students are able to breakthrough certain stereotypical attitudes and will allow students to grasp a deep understanding of how the world works through personal interactions with other people. The learner’s mind are opened up with unlimited possibilities and begin to view themselves as global citizens, despite any prejudice or barriers. They begin to go from self-imposed to expressing themselves freely for the benefit of everyone. This results in a more peaceful environment and a more loving school environment.
I’ve recently found a blog post by Malvina Kefalas, and it talks about how becoming open-minded can supports consciousness.
In this article, Kefalas has many different tips and tricks to get your students to learn with an open-mind.
Students need to listen to different answers and see from the perspective of other students in the classroom. For students who have an open-mind and understand different perspective, this allows students to have more than one answer to the question. This way, students have more than one solution to a situation or a conflict.
According to Kefalas, talking to experts breaks down barriers. Meeting experts, like scientists, and talking to them like everyday people can make students feel comfortable.
The earlier we incorporate global learning into our schools’ curriculum, the more effective education can become for our students.
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