Global Awareness

Building global awareness creates opportunities for learning and working collaboratively with individuals representing diverse cultures, religions and lifestyles. Understanding cultures is very beneficial in building on knowledge being presented to students. It’s important for students to know that there a whole world to tap into and that the rest of the world is just as valuable as their little part. It builds a sense of community.
It was interesting to see how easy it can be for teachers to be able to find other teachers to network with other teachers. Our reading offered helpful assistance. Browsing Classroom20.com or doing a google blog search for anyone with a shared passion so that co –learning can start. It’s funny to think that most students could probably show their teachers how to go about this.
EPals is amazing! There were a lot of great ideas for projects on the Epals site that I would want to use in my classroom someday. I was searching through the different projects within Epals and there are so opportunities for students to learn from others who live what we want to know. One of my favorite ideas is learning how to use the 3 types of maps (climate, physical, and political) via exchanging emails with Their EPal about how their location impacts their daily life. This type of learning will be so much more meaningful than a demonstration by a teacher!
The other project I think I would like to do in my classroom someday is to have students communicate to learn more about and create a presentation on the habitat in their EPal's country. Considering technology, students could be very creative with sharing their EPal's information. (I’m thinking VoiceThread, Skype…?)
The skills and connections that students create through projects like EPals will carry with them throughout their life. Way better than a book report to me!
I like the story of the girl who got all of her community project ideas from the international readers of her blog. She has connections all over the world of people who share the passion of volunteer work and community services. This shows what can happen when children have some knowledge about global awareness and get involved.