40 Ways to Teach About Global Education and Empower Globally Competent Youth

In our increasingly connected world and global economy, it is more important than ever to equip and empower youth with the skills and knowledge to be globally competent. They need to be taught how to learn about, communicate with and take part in their local, national and global communities.

Successful high school graduates should be able to demonstrate excellent communication skills, empathy, critical media literacy, cultural sensitivity and collaboration. They should have an understanding of the history of their own cultures and the world. They should know how to effectively use maps, charts and graphs to learn information about geography. They should be eager to share their stories and learn the stories of others, with open hearts and minds.

How can you empower youth with global competencies?

Share Enlightening, Inspiring Content

• The video above describes what the world would look like if it was made up of 100 people. It's a great starting point for discussion about global inequities. There are further statistics, videos and lesson plans and information about The 100 People Project available online. 
• This Child Every Child - a book containing many more statistics that compare the lives of children around the world. 
• Jenny Buccos is an amazing human being and her Project Explorer inspired a whole lot of great learning for EPCOT class last year. She is leading a mission of creating 10 million globally competent youth by 2020. The free videos on her website are helping to do just that.

Connect Your Class With Other Classes

• One of the most powerful ways for kids to learn is from other kids. If you can, connect your students with students from around the world.
• Skype in the Classroom helps you connect with other classes, experts and virtual field trips. If you haven't tried a Mystery Skype yet, you have to sign up!
• The Global Read Aloud, run by my incredible friend, Pernille, unites classrooms around the world, as they read the same book (there are choices based on student age) every fall. 
• Connect with Pen Pals. Start with reading the book Same Same But Different and brainstorm ways you and your students can find Pen Pals (Snail Mail or digital)

Participate in Global Initiatives

• In October, Stand Up for Girls. Learn about why so many girls around the world are not given an opportunity to have an education, and demonstrate your support for them by literally standing up for girls.

Learn About the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

• Share and post the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in child friendly language, in your classroom. 
• Illustrate and write about what each of the rights mean to you and your students. Years ago, I did a project where I collected drawings depicting the rights here in Canada and then had students in Lesotho, Africa, draw their representations as well. 
• If You Could Wear My Sneakers - funny poems based on the articles in the UN Convention
• For Every Child - beautifully illustrated depictions of the Rights
• I Have the Right to Be a Child - simple, colourful book exploring all childrens' rights. 

Learn About Micro Loans

• Read the book One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference
• Fundraise $25 (or $50 or $100...) and, as a class, invest in a real person. Visit Kiva.org and start a lending profile. You will be able to relend your loan over and over and over! My students and I have put under $175 into our account and that has allowed us to lend over $1000! 

Read Amazing Stories in Picture Books 
There are many incredible picture books that help tell the story of children around the world. Here are just a few that I love:

• Iqbal and Malala - The stories of an Indian boy and a Pakistani girl who demanded education and faced incredible violence from adults as a response. These stories open a students' eyes to how differently education is valued around the world.
• It's Back to School We Go: First Day Stories
• Malala Yousafzai: Warrior with Words - by now, you surely know about Malala, the youngest every recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. This book is, "a testament to the power of education to change the world for boys and girls everywhere."
• Nasreen's Secret School 
• "Young Nasreen has not spoken a word to anyone since her parents disappeared. In despair, her grandmother risks everyone to enroll Nasreen in a secret school for girls. Will a devoted teacher, a new friend and the worlds she discovers in books be enough to draw Nasreen out of her shell of sadness?"
• There is a video of this book being read available on Youtube
• Rain School - I was introduced to this story by one of my Bachelor of Education students who created a whole day plan based on this beautiful book. (Video here)
• "It's the first day of school in Chad, Africa. Children are filling the road. 'Will they give us a notebook?' Thomas asks. 'Will they give us a pencil? Will I learn to read?' But when he and the other children arrive at the schoolyard, they find no classroom, no desks. Just a teacher. 'We will build our school,' she says. 'This is our first lesson.'"
• Waiting for the Biblioburro
• "Ana loves stories. She often makes them up to help her little brother fall asleep. But in her small village, there are only a few books and she has read them all. One morning, Ana wakes up to the clip-clop of hooves, and there before her, is the most wonderful sight; a travelling library resting on the backs of two burros (donkeys) - all the books a little girl could dream of, with enough stories to encourage her to create one of her own."

Learn About the Lives of Children Around the World Through Gorgeous Photographye
Again, this is by no means an exhaustive list. Here are just a few that I love:

• A Life Like Mine
• Children Like Me
• Every Day is Malala Day
• My Librarian is a Camel: How Books Are Brought to Children Around the World
• My School in the Rain Forest: How Children Attend School Around the World
• Off to Class: Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World
• Ryan and Jimmy - the true story of a young boy in Canada and his Pen Pal in Uganda and the water project that turned them into brothers.
• Shannen and the Dream for a School - this is the story of Shannen who demanded that the Canadian government create better schooling options for her and other aboriginal youth.
• This is the Way We Go to School
• What's For Lunch?
• Where Children Sleep - the most popular book in my classroom for years, our copy has needed many repairs! You can see photos from the book online and project them into your classroom to encourage discussion. 

Share Your Stories

• On your class blog, share what a day in life of your students looks like - use pictures, videos and/or writing.
• Share your learning, projects and adventures on a class Twitter account.
• Make videos and have a class Youtube channel to tell your learning stories.
• Respond to people's comments, visit their projects and learn together.

Show Your Students That They Can Make an Impact

From Amy Poehler's Smart Girls

• Share stories of kids changing the world (including this list from 2012 and these projects by awesome young humans) 
• Fill some free time in the classroom by practicing your vocabulary or times tables (or a number of other topics) and, for every correct answer, the World Food Program gets rice to give to people in need. Play FreeRice!
• Set up a class account on We Give Books. For every book your your students read online (extra awesomeness for reading with younger or older Reading Buddies!), Penguin donates books to children who need them!
• Ask your students what problems they want to solve and be a Collaborative Curator to support them. Curate great information and collaborate with them to make a plan!

How do you empower your students and help them become globally competent? Share your ideas below!

This post was inspired by this tweet:

Thanks for spurring me into action, Sylvia! 

30-Day Blogging Challenge: Day 20: Collaborative Curator and Student Curation

Day 20: How do you curate student work - or help them do it themselves?

I see myself as a Collaborative Curator in the teams I work with. I help students to curate the huge amounts of resources available to them and help provide them with strategies, tools and resources to enhance their learning.

In terms of curating student creations, I am still working on that. I do a number of things: we post our work around the classroom, in the hallways, on our class blog, on Twitter and we organize it in our "Book Apartments" (I hate desks, so students always work at tables, but that means they lose desk storage space. I have wooden shelves for them to keep their notebooks, duotangs and work, a few years ago, the students named them "Book Apartments". The name stuck), we put work together in collaborative books (Class Glossary, an atlas of imaginary places, poetry collections), we organize our work on the Google Drive, and each individual student selects examples of his or her work to showcase in SLCs (Student Led Conferences).

I would like students to take more, regular ownership over curating their work. I really liked using "Proof Cards" in the final SLC of the year last year and found that, after a year of modelling how to curate work, reflect on our learning and celebrate the process of learning (not just the product), students effectively used them. They selected work that showcased all stages of their learning and that proved what they had learned. They curated work in their Work Apartments and talked about their ongoing learning.

I hope to incorporate blogs into my teaching this year. Several years ago, I helped four classes students curate and distribute their work through individual History blogs. This was terrific for them and for me and I am considering ways to make this work with my grade 3/4s this year.

Tech Helps to Prepare Our Students for the Future

A member of my PLN and #comcon, Aviva Dunsiger, recently posted the above comment on one of my blog posts. Aviva is great at pushing me to think. She always makes sure to comment thoughtfully and ask questions to encourage further thought.

I am also thinking a lot about my rationale behind using educational technology because of discussions that took place between my BEd students yesterday in our first class. As a whole, my students were less familiar with edtech than I expected. Some even questioned the need for it.

We are responsible for preparing our students for the future. As teachers, we have to be futurists. The future includes technology in our daily lives. For better or for worse, kids in today's classrooms will be using technology every day throughout their lives. If we don't help to prepare them to be responsible digital citizens and how to use technology effectively, who will?

As those of you who know me in person know, I love technology. I love playing with new things and finding ways to make them help my students. I've gotten a reputation amongst peers and students that I am a "tech expert". I am not an expert by any means, but I am an eager learner.

Using tech with students has been transformative for me (and for them). Students who struggled to find and share their voices in a busy classroom suddenly feel empowered through the use of tech. Some ways I've seen this is in the work they create on the Google Drive, the videos they create to share in class (sometimes if they're too shy to present in person), and the projects they collaborate on. Notice that in the previous sentence, I mentioned "creation" twice. It is too easy to be a consumer in our world. Creation is key in life and in education. It's part of the reason I'm committed to blogging more this year. We are all responsible to control our own impact on the world - in person and online. The sooner students start living this the better.

Of course, there is a need for balance, and I don't, by any means, suggest that technology is a replacement for relationships or in-person contact. I only know that it enhances everything I value in a classroom. Tech helps with differentiation, creation, collaboration, authenticity, transparency, communication and engagement.

My Rainbow Eggheads presented at a conference for local teachers last year about how tech enhances their learning. They can tell you far better than I can about the impact edtech has on them.

I think today's teacher is not just a "Guide on the Side", but should be seen as a "Collaborative Curator". Technology gives me the abilities to: personalize all student learning and collaborate with each of my students; aid them in collaborating and connecting with each other and those in the world who can help and support them; help them sort through the huge volume of information available and curate effectively; give each student the opportunity to share his or her voice with each other and the world.

Technology, as Bill Ferriter wrote, is a tool, not a learning outcome. Like any educational tool, it can be used in a variety of ways depending on the creativity of students and teachers, and it does not stand alone.

I share this image frequently. I think Bill effectively summarizes so much about what great educators do, in the face of fears of technology. 

Technology allows me, as a teacher, to bring my practice and student learning to another level. I have deeply internalized the SAMR model to not just enhance, but to transform my teaching. Just substituting a paper worksheet for one online does not an educational enhancement make. When you start to redefine teaching entirely, that is when technology becomes indispensable. Providing my students with opportunities to Skype and collaborate with students in California, create a video for a student in hospital undergoing cancer treatment, bring their families from around the world "into" the room by live streaming class events and sharing our inquiries with changemakers through Twitter and our blog would not be possible without technology.

I think every teacher NEEDS to know and understand the SAMR model. My class learned and lived it last year.

Becoming literate today means a lot more than being able to speak, read and write. As I shared with my BEd class yesterday, there are "New Literacies" illustrated by Silvia Tolisano that was can use technology to help our students develop. 

"New Literacies" include the abilities to collaborate globally, create multimedia and design effectively. 

My new grade 3/4 EPCOTclass is very excited to get started using their Chromebooks. We are several days and some training away from starting to use them daily, but I look forward to exploring with them the challenges and advantages of having access to technology anywhere, anytime in our classroom.

Teachers, we have to keep up with our students and help them keep up with the world. Technology is a tool that can help us do just that.