Cereal as a Cultural Indicator?

I'd like to think I know a cool project when I see one, so when my school's social studies teacher came to talk to me about a sociological experiment involving Breakfast, she had me at "coffee." Her idea is to have her students collect data about what people in various countries eat for breakfast, and then to analyze that data for social, economic, cultural and even religious significance. Awesome, right? We've got the 4 Breakfast wiki for the project set up and initial emails sent out to our World Village partners, it has been posted in various places, now we play the waiting game. Won't you come and play with us?

Our Chat with India Today

Today was our first Skype video chat with our new partners in Indore, India at the Southern Heights School. The Tech Coordinator there, Kumar, is such a friendly and dedicated person. I feel honored to be gifted with a partnership with him. I updated our wiki today with some videos highlighting the dance that he spoke to our children about and some photos. Although our children were all supposed to meet, there was a communication problem and their children were not there when we showed up. I have found if you go with the flow, anything can be an excellent learning experience. So, we spoke with Kumar instead about the holiday his students were on and how they observe that holiday. We're looking forward to our next chat on the 17th...take two!

Stating Your Intentions

In my email inbox today, there was a "declaration of intention" awaiting. The email from our newest World Village partner in Indore, Madhya Pradesh India had a pdf attachment formally declaring their intention to partner with us and explicitly outlining their wishes for certain outcomes. This blew me away. In a world of hastily-typed emails, K. Ram Mohan Rao took the time to state his school's intentions. It reminded me of the power words can have. Technology can trivialize the communications process, it can distance us from the gravity of our own statements. This man from the Southern Heights School in India treats his words with care and honor. I have already learned from this partnership. I think all our new partnerships should begin this way.
image credit: pandagon.blogsome.com

The World Village Comes A'visitin'

This week marked a momentous occasion for our World Village initiative: we had our first visitor. Now, it's not the first visitor the school ever had, but it's the first to occur because of our global connections initiative. Mr. Samuel Yalew is the founder of the Ethio International School in Bahirdar. He stayed with my family for an evening after a week-long conference in DC, then visited our school for a day. He gave informative and interesting presentations to our 2nd, 3rd and 8th graders. I was not only impressed at Mr. Yalew's ability to communicate and connect with our students but also with our own students' questions in response--they were thoughtful and insightful. Here are some images:

World Village Project Update

It's working! It's working! I'm just superstitious enough to worry that I anger the technology gods with that proclamation, but by golly it is working. Our second graders are having consistent communication with their partner class in Thailand. Our fifth graders are "meeting" their partner class in Turkey next week via videoconference. There are TWO, count 'em, TWO partnerships occurring simultaneously in our Spanish classes between Spain (Barcelona) and Argentina. And there has been a spontaneous pairing between our French classes and a tiny school in the countryside of France. The only one that has fallen through is our Holland connection. That irritates me, but I'd say the percentages are pretty good.

Some hints: Our French teacher made her connection all on her own through Epals. She assures me that she got a response in only one day, and a mail exchange in only a week. The Thailand connection came through a colleague I met (Kim Cofino) on the Global Ed Ning. I've made the Argentina connection through Global Schoolhouse and the Turkey connection via the Sister Schools Project on the Global Awareness for Teachers Web site.

Creating A World Village, Day Three

The Day of Reckoning. Of course, I didn't call it that when I sent out the agenda to the participants of this program, but still...it was the day that they were each supposed to bring a completed outline of the ideas for activities they all had for their partnerships. It was outlined by month. I'm thrilled to report that there are some impressive ideas to be had there. One of my favorites involved making virtual collages to exchange with partner students so they can learn more about one another through self-selected images.

I started the day with a reading from a National Geographic article I read this weekend, called "The Struggle for the Soul of Pakistan." The section from the article that I read explained the founding of Pakistan in the 1940s and provided quotes from the first leader about how it was first organized and why: "Pakistan's first leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and his brain trust of secular intellectuals created a fledgling democracy that gave Islam a cultural, rather than political, role in national life. Their Pakistan was to be a model of how Islam, merged with democratic ideals, could embrace the modern world." A young student, when reminded of this information replied, "That is a lie," Ayman says, her voice shaking with fury. "Everyone knows Pakistan was created as an Islamic state, according to the will of Allah. Where did you read this thing?"

This might seem a strange way to open my meetings about creating a World Village. My goal was to cultivate discussion about how these deep-held beliefs that we ALL have can be incredibly wrong and how to do we go about mining for our own incorrect assumptions about being American? It's a tough but important talk for us to have with our children.

After spending some time reviewing the outlines for activities each teacher brought, we talked about our successes and challenges ahead, and then finished the meetings by writing scripts for a mini-movie we made. We're required to present to our faculty at Fall Meetings about what it is we've been doing all summer. So, our idea was to make a "cooking show" demonstrating how to make a Global Village soup, with experts on the ingredients (like blogs, wikis, nings). I'll upload it to YouTube tomorrow for all to see.

In the meantime, the Day of Reckoning left me breathing a sigh of relief. We can do this. We can really do this.

Image Credit: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/pakistan.html
Photograph by Reza.

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.