Thank you to TouchCast for editing this amazing video!
About #GlobalCOlab
This past year, students from around the world came together to collaborate on world issues affecting their communities, taking the concept of global learning and turning it into a reality. GlobalCOlab (GCL), Students teaching students from around the world, has connected students and educators from different cultures and religions from around the world to cross-cut disciplines, curricula, and traditional subjects to empower participants through student-led and student-created topics. These topics are based around global issues affecting each student’s community (http://bit.ly/1KP72xf).
The Next Generation Science Standards’ (NGSS) stated goal is to provide a conceptual shift in education by showing how Science crosscuts all subject matter. This can only be fully realized through connecting the science classroom to real world experiences. Such experiences must immerse each student within science and engineering through organic learning that is curtailed to each student’s individualized learning goals. Science is the unique subject that entails all other subjects, such as English through research and writing, math through quantitative data and graphing, and history with carbon dating and evolution (nextgenscience.org). These crosscutting concepts are also emphasized in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The goal is to stress the process of learning in order to provide students the preparation needed to enter tomorrow’s workforce.
GCL addressed these issues in a student-centered, individualized way. Students do not learn through individual subject matter, but by world topics that they select. Students then research their chosen world issue that is affecting their community, propose a lab or a solution to test, synthesize their idea through constructing in a lab-like atmosphere, publish their results, and then conduct peer review of each other’s work. By students completing all of these components, GCL not only provides the conceptual shift called for in the NGSS’ stated goal, but re-imagines the classroom into a borderless and subject-less world that allows students safe access to study topics and issues that they care about, making the curriculum both personalized and relevant. During the GCL process, students also create their own global planned learning networks to share and conduct peer review in a safe environment.
This year Brian Jones (@ProgresivTeachr) of Norwalk, California, Liz Meredith (@meredithscience) of St. Clairsville, Ohio, Anders Enström (@aenstrom70) of Stockholm, Sweden, and Sarenawati Jaafar (@sjaafar) of Malaysia proved a true GCL classroom can not only work, but succeed beyond the constraints of traditional classrooms. Using apps such as TouchCast, Voice Thread, Skype Classroom, and Weebly, students collaborated, shared, and conducted peer review of their work in real time. In overcoming distance, time-zones, and borders, we found a conceptual shift not only in the students, but in ourselves as educators. Principal Jaafar noted it best saying, “our students became culturally accepting as they participated in GCL, realizing that students are students, and that all had to work as a world to solve such complex issues such as climate change.” (https://youtu.be/IfEYBGGiqA8).
The Next Generation Science Standards’ (NGSS) stated goal is to provide a conceptual shift in education by showing how Science crosscuts all subject matter. This can only be fully realized through connecting the science classroom to real world experiences. Such experiences must immerse each student within science and engineering through organic learning that is curtailed to each student’s individualized learning goals. Science is the unique subject that entails all other subjects, such as English through research and writing, math through quantitative data and graphing, and history with carbon dating and evolution (nextgenscience.org). These crosscutting concepts are also emphasized in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The goal is to stress the process of learning in order to provide students the preparation needed to enter tomorrow’s workforce.
GCL addressed these issues in a student-centered, individualized way. Students do not learn through individual subject matter, but by world topics that they select. Students then research their chosen world issue that is affecting their community, propose a lab or a solution to test, synthesize their idea through constructing in a lab-like atmosphere, publish their results, and then conduct peer review of each other’s work. By students completing all of these components, GCL not only provides the conceptual shift called for in the NGSS’ stated goal, but re-imagines the classroom into a borderless and subject-less world that allows students safe access to study topics and issues that they care about, making the curriculum both personalized and relevant. During the GCL process, students also create their own global planned learning networks to share and conduct peer review in a safe environment.
This year Brian Jones (@ProgresivTeachr) of Norwalk, California, Liz Meredith (@meredithscience) of St. Clairsville, Ohio, Anders Enström (@aenstrom70) of Stockholm, Sweden, and Sarenawati Jaafar (@sjaafar) of Malaysia proved a true GCL classroom can not only work, but succeed beyond the constraints of traditional classrooms. Using apps such as TouchCast, Voice Thread, Skype Classroom, and Weebly, students collaborated, shared, and conducted peer review of their work in real time. In overcoming distance, time-zones, and borders, we found a conceptual shift not only in the students, but in ourselves as educators. Principal Jaafar noted it best saying, “our students became culturally accepting as they participated in GCL, realizing that students are students, and that all had to work as a world to solve such complex issues such as climate change.” (https://youtu.be/IfEYBGGiqA8).
