Global Education

I know, it's only got 15 letters but it is a huge topic and I will only scratch the surface with my first post about it.

I work in a privileged (very privileged) school in Chile, South America. I've been here for six years so I don't feel too bad in stating that the minds of a lot of people are closed to the outside world. Perhaps it is the media, perhaps it is the education system, or perhaps it is purely because of the geographical location (the Andres mountains cuts us off from the East, the Pacific Ocean from the West, Antarctica from the South and the vast Atacama Desert from the North). For whatever reason it is, I believe as an educator of young learners, it is my duty to try and close the knowledge gap and bring Chilean students closer to the rest of the world. 

ICT has to be a leader in this field. With the Internet we can reach anywhere in the world in an instant and I should be making better use of the technologies available to me to do this. That's where this short post fits in. I want to take a look at some of the options available to me.

ODDIZZI                 

Oddizzi is a primary school resource created to help children learn about the world. Teachers and students can use the interactive world map to click on a country, read news feeds, or even communicate with students from different parts of the world using ClassPals.

Here is a review I found on the Internet:

http://oddizzi.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/ict-for-education-review-gives-1010-to-oddizzi/

“ClassPals is an area where students can start to communicate with other schools and students from different areas of the world. The teacher can ask another school to be accepted as a friend and postcards can be sent to and from each school. This area is controlled by the teacher to give a secure interaction.

Oddizzi is a great idea and can benefit primary schools when it is used within the curriculum. It saves teachers time searching for quality videos, and information across various topic areas. The curriculum zone also points teachers to good ideas of how to use Oddizzi within the classroom, adding to the overall effectiveness of the website.”

I have not tried Oddizzi, but I like what I have read and they were a BETT 2012 Winner, which is a sign of quality assurance for me.

THE GLOBAL CLASSROOM PROJECT

http://theglobalclassroomproject.wordpress.com/about/

“Through Global Classroom, we are building the online collaborative spaces and global network to enable teachers and students to explore new ways to connect, share, learn and collaborate on a global stage.”

This is a page I have just come across but intend to investigate further. It was actually from a friend’s “Global Education” blog entry on this site that I decided to investigate this topic further. You can read that here:

http://theglobalclassroomproject.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/crafting-cultural-connections-with-grade-2/

BBC WORLD CLASS

Inspired by the Olympics is BBC World Class:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass

“BBC World Class helps UK schools to twin with schools around the globe as part of its educational legacy for the 2012 Olympics.Our mission is to support teachers in developing school-to-school partnerships, encouraging pupils to share creative work inspired by the Olympics.”


However, this states that it is for UK based schools……hold on, UK based schools….BBC “World” Class….that can’t be right surely.

I really hope that they don't literally mean UK Based Schools only, as for obvious reasons this would defeat the purpose of this incentive. 

I am sure I could have twinned our school, but perhaps I am a little late for the 2012 Olympics. However, as you can see there are other options, and I have now taken the time to look at some resources, now it is entirely up to me to investigate further and actually do something about linking our school with others around the world.