Your Name and Title: Lili Monk Director of the Global Bridges Project
School or Organization Name: Walter Johnson High School and Fleming Island High School
Co-Presenter Name(s): Mrs. Amy Stalker Project Coordinator for Global Bridges
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: USA
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): high school teachers around the world
Short Session Description (one line): Creating Global Citizens by Connecting Students Around the World Through Relevant, Collaborative Projects
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: creatingglobalbridges.com
Full Session Description:
My name is Amy Bridgewater- Stalker. I am a High School teacher in Fleming Island, FL and an advisory board member for the Florida Geographic Alliance. I am the Global Bridges Project Coordinator. The Global Bridges Project is endorsed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. This project is for teachers that are interested in creating curriculum based projects and collaboratively sharing with schools overseas. We have schools looking for collaborative partners in the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, India, Lithuania, Tunisia, and Turkey (both Tekirdağ and Ankara).
The goal of the project is to help students to develop an understanding of other cultures and perspectives, thus empowering them to be responsible world citizens able to create informed solutions to global challenges. It will also allow students the opportunity to achieve the overall goal of the United Nations Global citizenship education which is “to empower learners to engage and assume active roles both locally and globally to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world.” Students need the ability to understand local as well as critical world issues and how they are interrelated. This project will help students recognize the challenges and opportunities of our increasingly distressed and closely entwined global community of cultures. Connecting American students with students in other countries will help them better understand critical world issues such as world hunger, poverty, maternal health, disease, environmental sustainability, gender equality, female empowerment and education, and conflict resolution.
The Global Bridges Project pairs schools in the U.S. with schools overseas. It opens dialogue between cultures. Students develop a multidimensional geographical global perspective and an understanding and empathy for people in other places. Students gain the ability to understand local as well as critical world issues. Classes that participate in this project will use teleconferencing technology to communicate with students in foreign countries. Geography comes alive as students engage in authentic field work and original research through the use of photography and the interactive multimedia formats of maps, text, audio, still images, animation, graphs, charts, geo-spatial representations of information, and video. Students create engaging rich media presentations teaching students in other countries about their cities. Students work cooperatively and creatively with others to communicate and articulate thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through the presentation media. Students then compare and contrast their local geography with students in other parts of the world. Students gain critical cultural knowledge through exchanges such as these. Students also gain in-depth content knowledge by applying basic knowledge to real locations that have meaning to them. Prospective classes that would be good international pairs are classes in Global Politics, Geography, World Religions, Economics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, Environmental Science, World History, Global Perspectives, Information Technology in a Global Society, History, or Foreign Language.
Lili Monk is the director of this project. Lili Monk is a High School teacher at Bethesda, Maryland and teaches AP Human Geography and US Government. She received a distinguished Fulbright Teacher Award to Argentina in 2011. She is the former co-chair of AP human Geography Test Develop Committee, and present assistant chief reader. Lili received the National Council for Geographic Education Geography Teacher Award in 2012, and the Geography Teacher Journal Award 2014.
The National Council for Social Studies has identified "creating global citizens" as one of the most important missions facing social studies teachers. Creating opportunities for students to interact with geographic tools such as maps and globes will enable them to experience the world a lot closer than through a textbook.” (Lili Monk) Students will be exposed to other cultures and will be given the chance to appreciate perspectives other than their own. We have schools in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, India, Lithuania, Turkey and Tunisia looking for sister schools. I hope we can continue to create new bridges and grow this project. Please let me know if you are interested in the Global Bridges Project. I will pair you with a school and add you to our website
Thank you,
Amy Bridgewater- Stalker
Websites
My project abstract can be viewed at https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=4465D0A3C7CE0768!581&authkey=!AAsy01NzyiN-qTc&ithint=file%2cdocm
The project website is http://creatingglobalbridges.com
The UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) website is http://en.unesco.org/aspnet/globalcitizens/act/projects/global-bridges-creating-global-citizens-usa
To give you an idea of what you can do, my student projects can be viewed at https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=4465d0a3c7ce0768&id=4465D0A3C7CE0768!431&ithint=video,mp4&authkey=!AK_lFCVCJZPNcf4
-The project that the students in Posadas shared with us can be viewed at https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=4465D0A3C7CE0768!720&ithint=file%2cpptx&app=PowerPoint&authkey=!AFEGttrg2FOhNqE
The international blogspot where you can view Lili Monk’s and Sharon Shelerud’s projects is available here.
Replies
This proposal is too long. You do not need to put your entire presentation in the proposal. My suggestion would be to be more succinct in the actual proposal and then attach a link to a web site or to a document (Word or Google Doc) with the other information listed here.
The reason for keeping things relatively brief is that attendees will be reading these and then deciding to attend sessions based on what they read. If you provide basic information about your work in a succinct an d compelling way, they will be more likely to read it and get the gist of your work.
If you can edit this a bit, I'll be happy to approve your proposal. Just let me know when you are ready for me to look at this again.