Creating a Global Village Day One

Exhilarating: That's what today was. I met with a group of six teachers from my school to begin the process of creating a "global village" between our school and other international schools. The level of engagement these teachers demonstrated left me feeling hopeful and enthused. They listened attentively when presented with information about Problem Based Learning and Understanding by Design (thanks to Kim Cofino for the nudge in that direction). They responded thoughtfully when asked, "What role does our American identity play in the way we communicate and how can we make our children aware of their own 'context?'--as one teacher put it.

I have created a page on our school's World Village wiki to document the stages our project undergoes as it blossoms and transforms. You can check out the Agenda for two days of technology training, the essential questions and goals we produced, as well as the evaluative tools we plan to use. At the end of the day, when asked how we could decide if we had achieved our goals, it warmed my heart when one of the teachers pulled out the 21st Century Skills matrix. Her idea was to digitally document how each area of that matrix was fulfilled by the activities we did. Surely you can see all this beauty? Is it just me? By the way...that image you see linked to this post? A student created that logo for our Wiki. Ahhhhh, so lovely.