As global education becomes the focus of my current Web Tools class, I find myself wondering how I can ever be a successful educator with so much still to learn. The Norms of Global Education are a great guideline for new education professionals to get an understanding of behaviors, practices, and actions to guarantee global collaborative success. While The Norms of Online Global Collaboration give great insight into just how to be an effective global educator, perhaps the two most important are: Be Prepared, and Have a Purpose.
Preparation can seem obvious to ensure global collaborative success. Preparation tries to remove the risk of error, shorten activity length and make sure there is no re-work. Global Collaborative efforts incorporate preparation through synchronous and asynchronous communication. Asynchronous communication is where collaborative efforts do not take place in real time. In this type of collaboration, it can take 24-48 hours to have an email responded to, or a project worked on. Google Docs is a tool used in asynchronous collaboration. An ongoing editing of a document takes place over time. Using this, educators must be prepared for students days off, differences in time zones, ensuring all technology tools are set in place and running. Being prepared for an asynchronous communication may seem difficult, but preparing for synchronous communication can be even more challenging. Synchronous communication involves real time communication through video calls, or messaging. Educators must let all parties know details on how participants will communicates, how to join the chat, what time zone the chat will be held in, and what tools will be needed beforehand. With so many factors in play, it is easy to see how one could slip up in the moment, which is why being prepared may be the most important part of an online collaborative effort. Most importantly, for online collaboration to work everyone must have access to the tools needed to complete the project.
Have a purpose… From the point of view of an educator, it seems intuitive that everything we do has a purpose. From lesson plans, to homework and tests, there is a reason why we have students complete these tasks. Global Collaborative efforts must be view the same way, more for the people involved that the educator. There must be thought put into every project. When assigning or working on a project, the purpose has to be clear. A clear purpose is direct result of communication between all parties. Without a clear purpose, confusion can arise and partners can become irritated and uninterested in the project. Every lesson put forth by an educator should have a purpose. When an educator works on a collaborative project, they should understand the purpose of it too. Below I have posted a video on global education, as a reminder of just why it is so important in today’s age!
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