Thinking Globally

While my students may mainly be from immigrant families, the majority of my students were born and raised in their little area. Their families may think more globally and understand different cultures and perspectives, but my students only know what they are used to. In order to expand their global thinking, I would like to use Skype to allow my students to "meet" experts from around the world and to learn from people in different locations and cultures. 

We recently learned a lot about natural disasters, including earthquakes. It would be both fun and educational if my students were to Skype with a class from California and have those students tell my class about their perspective on earthquakes and how they learn to prepare for an earthquake. My class might be able to teach the California class something they do no not know about blizzards since my class has more snow experience than a California based class might (depending on the location). 

When learning about measuring or area and perimeter in math class, my class could Skype with an architect or someone in construction to learn more about how those are important topics when it comes to building strong and safe buildings. 

When my class is learning about the American Revolution, they could Skype with a class in England and discuss the differences in how they learn history. I can imagine students being extremely motivated understand our version of the events so they can clearly discuss America's side of the history. 

Although everything needs to be tied to a standard and have a clear academic purpose, there are many ways that those standards could be incorporated. The class could work on writing either to get ready to Skype or as an assignment afterwards. For example, if we had scheduled to Skype with an English class about the American Revolution, my students would have had to have learned about the war beforehand and might be able to write a persuasive letter to send to the students afterwards. 

Some of the issues that might arise from Skyping people in other parts of the world would be differing time zones and finding people to Skype. The timing is a relatively easy issue to solve depending on what part of the world you are trying to Skype. It just requires careful pre-planning. California is 3 hours behind and England is 5 hours ahead so both of those locations are manageable. If we wanted to Skype someone in China we might have a problem. Even if we found someone who speaks English, there would be a twelve hour difference in time. We might not be able to Skype a school but an expert might be possible. We could also write questions for the person or people we wanted to speak to and have the person send a video message in reply if scheduling was an irreparable problem. On the issue of finding people to Skype, there are websites that teachers can use to find other teachers to video chat with. In the past, I have found that word of mouth is surprisingly helpful in this area as well. I have friends or friends of friends that would be good candidates for Skyping as global experts. I also have friends who are teachers with connections to schools in other parts of the world. 

In incorporating Skype in the classroom, it would also open the floor for discussions on internet safety and internet etiquette. This link provides ideas and rational for teaching students etiquette and safety online, along with ideas for other ways to use video chatting and online resources. 

In today's world, most people know that the world is not literally flat but as Thomas Friedman writes, technology and economics have essentially created a metaphorical flat earth. There are fewer boundaries when it comes to economics and there are definitely fewer boundaries when it comes to education. Students will need to think globally as they get older so we should take advantage of the earth's newfound flatness and encourage global thinking at younger ages.