Let's develop badges to demonstrate progress towards global competency! View Connect All Schools's proposal and add your comments here: http://ow.ly/7Plcz
CONNECT ALL SCHOOLS - LEARNING WITH THE WORLD
Global competence is an imperative skill for students if they are to effectively work in a globalized work arena. This has been emphasized in the critical skill set identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and various educational institutions. The President, as well as the Secretaries of Education and State, have stressed the importance to individuals and the entire country of our students gaining global awareness, experience and skills at world languages.
In the last several years, significant work has been done by the Council of Chief State School Officers, Asia Society, Harvard University and others to define what it means for our student and teachers to be globally competent. Students who are globally competent:
- Investigate the world
- Recognize perspectives on issues, both their own and others internationally
- Communicate ideas with diverse audiences
- Take action from the learning gained in investigation and interaction
Yet, it is not easy to determine when a teacher or school is globally competent. Recently, the private sector has joined with the federal government to identify what is happening at US schools to bring the world into the classroom using a variety of methods and resources. For example, the Connect All Schools initiative (http://connectallschools.org) enables teachers, students and partner organizations to tell stories in words, photos and videos about their globalizing efforts and gives them the chance to indicate how they have accomplished this. The options are:
- Added global issues curriculum
- Hosted an exchange student from abroad
- Introduced a world language
- Engaged in international disaster relief and/or development aid
- Exchanged physical objects (letters, culture boxes, etc.)
- Created online links for electronic pen pals
- Participated in a web culture quest
- Engaged in online project collaboration internationally
- Sent a student abroad on an exchange
- Sent a teacher abroad on an exchange
- Participated in an international video-conference
- Made possible professional development for our teachers in global education
On behalf of the 100+ member Connect All Schools Consortium, iEARN-USA and the Global Education Collaborative propose to create a badge program for schools and educators who contribute to their students’ global competence by any of the above (or others to be identified) options. We are proposing a three-level badge system:
A discrete skills Global Teacher badge is planned for each of these activity options to acknowledge efforts to take a step(s) along the road to global competence;
A dynamic dossier Globally Aware School badge for schools in which 2-5 teachers have engaged in six or more of the activities—signifying that a school has successful engaged in ongoing efforts toward creating a Globally Competent School; and
A dynamic dossier Globally Competent School badge for schools in which more than five teachers have successfully engaged in eight or more of the above activities.
Needless to say, it will be very prestigious to be awarded the Globally Competent School badge—setting the bar high as a goal for schools across the country.
Teachers who apply to receive one of the Global Competence Badges will be asked to:
- Indicate how specific 21st Century Skills were enhanced through the activity:
- Global Awareness
- Reading and Writing Skills
- Ability to work collaboratively in teams
- Critical thinking
- World Languages
- Share the experience on the Connect All Schools website, explaining how the activity was implemented with text and multimedia, as well as sharing the educational impact of the activity on student learning.
Teachers who successfully complete the two requirements above will be able to post the badges on their school’s webpage and on other digital collateral, such as newsletters, flyers and posters that might be distributed among members of the community. This will be particularly important for schools seeking to attract students who would like to attend a school that demonstrates its commitment to global education and ability to produce globally competent students. Students will be able to utilize these credentials on college applications to demonstrate that they have successfully graduated from a Global Education School.
Further, these teachers and schools will serve as role models for others that would like to emulate their efforts and the Connect All Schools website will enable both aspiring teachers, members of Congress, and general public to see at a glance the level of 21st century global education skills that are being enhanced in specific communities and states. The Connect All Schools search engine will be enhanced to reveal the badge recipients.
In our experience it is important to demonstrate the efforts at creating a global education school to go beyond the admirable work of a champion teacher who understands the value to both students and our nation. If we are to successfully prepare our students for the 21st century, the world must be incorporated into all aspects of a school’s curriculum.
As the leading K-12 educational network that daily enables millions of students to engage in technology-enabled collaborative project-based learning among the 130 countries in which it has organizations/offices, iEARN is well-suited to be a partner in the creation of this badge system. With 23 years of experience enabling classes to engage in online international interaction among classes, iEARN has a significant body of research and anecdotal evidence that such global engagement provides both 21stcentury skills and student curiosity and motivation to take responsibility for their own learning.
The Global Education Collaborative, which has 10,000 member educators, has pioneered the use of technology to both bring together educators who share a passion and commitment to global competence and to facilitate innovative virtual global education conferences and professional development.
Further, the badge system will be both promoted and utilized by the 100+ Partner Organizations that are participating in the Connect All Schools consortium with the goal that all 130,000 US schools will internationalize some aspect of their school, its curriculum and its school life and environment by 2016. It is estimated that these 100+ organizations are currently working with or in affiliation with over 20,000 schools, enabling the badge system to be extensively utilized, sustained and scalable. For a descriptive list of these Partner Organizations, see http://www.connectallschools.org/about/partners
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