Organizations

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Comment by Jennifer Singleton on May 8, 2009 at 10:47am

Hello! I'm very excited to join this group and find out more about the interests and projects of its members!

I also want to introduce everyone to a great organization - World Savvy - and its new global education resource, the World Savvy Monitor.

World Savvy is a national education nonprofit working to educate and engage youth in community and world affairs. World Savvy programs provide students' with learning opportunities which develop content knowledge, skills and values and attitudes to promote responsible global citizenship. World Savvy has three core programs, the World Affairs Challenge, the Media and Arts Program, and the Global Education Program, and maintains offices in San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis.

The World Savvy Monitor offers an in-depth examination of one issue or region bi-monthly in an easy-to-read and objective format. Each edition represents diverse perspectives from more than 100 sources and includes an issue overview, historical context, key domestic and international player profiles, list of upcoming events/milestones, hot topic discussion questions, professionally developed classroom-companion exercises and World Savvy Salon guides (for potential community-wide discussions).

The Monitor was created by World Savvy to aid educators who are eager to teach about global issues that will play a key role in students’ lives (issues like international security, the environment and global health) but lack the time to synthesize information from hundreds of sources to create timely lesson plans that can be integrated into science, math, language arts and social studies classes.

For subscription information, click here. For more information, contact jenny@worldsavvy.org.

Thanks so much and I'd love to hear from you!
Jenny Singleton

Comment by Chantal Bonitto on April 1, 2009 at 3:57pm

Hey Everyone! I want to introduce myself and the Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning!

The next generation of high school graduates will be prepared for, or will be passed by, in a sweeping new era of global interdependence. There is an urgent need for new approaches to education to meet new demands. Asia Society’s vision is that all students will graduate high school ready for college and competent to compete, communicate and cooperate in a global environment.

To reach this vision, Asia Society has formed the Partnership for Global Learning. A membership network created to support a national movement of all K-12 stakeholders – educators, policymakers, universities, parents and individuals – the Partnership is working to develop students who are prepared for work and citizenship in the global 21st century. The Partnership provides:
 Opportunities to share best practices, resources, and models to stimulate new approaches through annual conferences, monthly e-newsletters, and collaborative learning activities
 Resources including curriculum products and tools, online programming and professional development for districts, schools and after school programs
 Policy Initiatives to address the need for public policies and actions at the state and national level
 Collaborations between U.S. and Asian schools and educators and opportunities to learn from best practice around the world
 Communication through publications, presentations and digital media
 Research and Development of new internationally focused schools and approaches to integrating rigorous global learning in existing schools

To learn more, visit us at www.asiasociety.org/pgl

We're also hosting our Second Annual Conference, "Putting the World into World-Class Education" on July 9-11th in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area! www.asiasociety.org/forum

Regards,
Chantal Bonitto

Comment by Diane Midness on February 2, 2009 at 9:48am

Thanks Rustin, I am so sorry I missed your session at FETC on neat tools. I bet this was one of them.

Comment by Rushton Hurley on February 2, 2009 at 9:42am

For those needing a shorter URL to see the very cool video Diane mentions below, go to:

http://tinyurl.com/CPS-intl-collaboration

Comment by Diane Midness on February 2, 2009 at 8:49am

I would like to share a video done by Chicago Public Schools on how one school is using international collaboration to improve reading and writing scores.

http://cps.answerstv.com/AnswersTV/Channel.aspx?ChannelID=8c947178-74b9-4e20-ab6f-403b35a0bb9b&StartPoint=Folder3006&PlayItem=9918&AP=true

Comment by Ed Gragert on January 29, 2009 at 8:15am

Hello everyone,

Here is a statement that we are sharing with the Departments of State and Education. If you would like to join in this effort, we would love to team up with you.

Ed

International Education Programs: A Crucial Component of Education Policy, Security and US Public Diplomacy


iEARN-USA strongly supports the Obama Administration’s commitment to strengthen our diplomatic presence, enhance educational technology and teacher professional development.

The economic and security of our country, as well as the creation of a more peaceful and understanding world, depends on our young people having 21st century skills, including an increased global awareness through interaction with peers around the world. Toward this end, we must urgently embark on a bold new initiative that will enable every school in the United States to be linked with at least one school in another country over the next four years.

One clear and concise way to start to make this a reality is to launch a national public-private partnership to enable schools and youth organizations across our country to create meaningful relationships with peers throughout the world. With minimal short-term investment, the country will reap significant and innumerable long-term benefits in enhanced learning

Our organization is prepared to work others in the International Education field and with the new administration to mobilize others in the private sector to make this happen. With 20 years of experience linking classes, iEARN-USA now is the world’s largest K-12 network, with programs in 125 countries and daily involving two million students and 32,000 teachers.

We have already painfully seen how lacking the US is in qualified speakers of the world’s languages and how woefully unaware our young people are about critical 21st century knowledge, such as world geography, foreign languages, and global economics. This seriously impacts how our country conducts its business, defense and international relations.

There are many components to resolving this very complex situation, including expanding classes in world languages and cultural studies. We must internationalize educational curricula and school activities. One way to immediately address this issue is to embark on a national initiative enabling every elementary, middle and high school in our country to interact with schools in other countries. These links could take many forms:

1) Simple exchange of “culture boxes” with items of daily life
2) E-mail-based links to enable students to meet virtually
3) Internet-based curriculum-based collaborative projects through which students work and learn together through projects in their math, social studies, art, science and other classes
4) Short-term class trips abroad
5) Participation in longer-term international exchange student programs

Classroom use of technology can exponentially expand global interaction and US competiveness. President-Elect Obama has stated “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online,” and he linked broadband access to the competitiveness of the U.S. economy. With appropriate professional development, educators can bring students into direct interaction on a very cost-effective and sustained basis, with proven pedagogical value. Our own organization has pioneered this field and brought tools to US schools through several Department of State exchange programs and through such resources as the “Teachers Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet” for the US Department of Education (http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/tech/international/index.html).

Regardless of the method, all of these links are a critical part of public diplomacy. A Congressional Research Service review of the 30-plus reports on revitalizing U.S. public diplomacy reveals that increasing funding and participation in various types of international interaction is the single most common recommendation for improving our image around the world.

The private sector is well-prepared to provide assistance to schools throughout the country—with networks of schools internationally, existing models for online curriculum collaboration and professional development, and years of experience sending and receiving youth exchange students.

Smart power, including exposure to US values and society through people-to-people interaction, builds the mutual understanding and respect required to support broad American interests. These programs not only build good will; academic, citizen, Internet and youth exchanges also enhance cooperation on critical security issues such as the environment, combating terrorism, public health, and economic and trade relationships.

We encourage the Obama Administration to expand the reach of international interaction programs as part of its efforts to strengthen our diplomacy. The need to bolster US public diplomacy and to improve the US image abroad has bipartisan political support, a national grassroots constituency, and is supported by State and Education Departments evaluation data that convincingly demonstrate positive impact of online and physical international interaction. The new administration, in partnership with the private sector, is in a strong position to play a significant role in supporting in achieving this goal.

Since 9/11, there has been an understandable emphasis on interaction with the Islamic world, of which those of us in international education and exchange were early supporters. Indeed, iEARN pioneered a number of programs under the aegis of the State Department to build bridges between US schools and those in countries with significant Muslim populations. While those programs should continue, we need to deploy resources in other critical areas as well – Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the nations of the former Soviet Union.

As mentioned above, we are prepared to help start to make this a reality through a national public-private partnership to enable schools and youth organizations across our country to create meaningful relationships with peers throughout the world. With minimal short-term investment, the country will reap significant and innumerable long-term benefits.

We look forward to working closely with the Obama Administration to address these critical concerns.

Sincerely,

Edwin H. Gragert, Ph.D.
Executive Director, iEARN-USA

Comment by Candace Hackett Shively on January 26, 2009 at 7:35am

Hello and thanks for starting this group so TeachersFirst has a place to "belong."

TeachersFirst is a free, ad-free teacher resource web site offered as a service to teachers by a non-profit learning and technologies corporation, The Source for Learning. Our value-added reviews and teacher-friendly site have been helping teachers since 1998, sharing the best of the web and our own original content along with practical implementation ideas and best practices for effective integration of technology as a tool for teaching and learning. We have an international audience and a strong reputation for providing and recommending high quality resources.

We are happy to join in with GEC, especially as teachers become more and more interested and willing to extend their classrooms out into the world. TeachersFirst tries to encourage collaborative ventures via our reviews of web 2.0 tools in the TF Edge section of our site and through efforts such as The Building Learners Project, a collaboration between TeachersFirst, a group of willing teachers, and web 2.0 developer TR-Intuition. Our role is often to encourage and "cheerlead" so teachers feel comfortable and to save teachers' time by steering them to good starting points for their global adventures.

Comment by Liz Barrett on January 25, 2009 at 9:43am

I work for JUMP MATH a Canadian charitable organization aimed at creating a numerate society. It was created by Dr John Mighton, mathematician, author and well known playwright as an attempt to address the social justice issues around math education - our program is from Gr 1 to Gr 8 and the resources and teacher manuals are free to be downloaded by anyone out there.We have one Math Outreach in Cape Town,South Africa called JUMP HI that the students and staff at Herschel are working on with Steve Sherman of Living Math. I have just started working on an outreach with teachers in Kenya.

Comment by brock dubbels on January 24, 2009 at 10:30pm

looks like fun. I am curious about using mmorpgs for collaborative learning and play

Comment by Peter Gilmartin on January 24, 2009 at 9:10pm

I work at Primary Source www.primarysource.org and am active in the Boston area promoting global education and developing related courses for educators. One exciting new project is a conference on teaching about India in secondary schools that will be at Harvard on April 3. For more info look at our site www.teachingindia.org.

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