Co-Presenter Name(s): Jennifer Klein
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Canada
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): Educators, Administrators
Short Session Description (one line):
Explore the importance of global education, and how technology can help bring the world into our classrooms.
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
Today’s students will need to both compete in a global knowledge-based economy and collaborate to devise and implement solutions to major global issues such as poverty, climate change, and conflict. As educators, we know that we need to prepare our students for an increasingly globalized world but may not know how to go about it. Teachers from around the world are connecting their classrooms through web technologies to facilitate student-led, collaborative global projects that humanize and personalize urgent global issues. This workshop will showcase the best practices of globally-minded educators who have made great headway in the area of technology-enabled international project-based learning to globalize their classrooms and coordinate rich cultural exchanges between their students and others on an international scale.
Examples of these best practices will include work in student-driven digital media projects, solution-based approaches to project-based learning, strategies for assessing global competencies, and the use of global projects to meet core curriculum standards and benchmarks. The tools, resources and platforms these educators use in their global education practice will be highlighted, with special attention being paid to TakingITGlobal for Educators (TIGed) and its virtual classroom platform designed to support global collaboration. Participants will have a chance to explore these tools for themselves, the challenges of global project-based learning will be discussed, and creative strategies and solutions will be explored.
During this session, participants will:
- Explore how to utilize collaborative, project-based, student-driven, technology-enabled, international learning projects;
- Identify the components and qualities associated with successful global learning projects, and how to recruit and work with partners in their implementation;
- Investigate how global learning projects can be designed to meet specific educational standards in creative ways, including traditional benchmarks;
- Obtain tangible resources for implementing technology-enabled global education in their teaching practice, and ideas for projects that will help their students develop their cross-cultural competencies and other 21st Century Skills.
Jennifer D. Klein is the Professional Development and Outreach Coordinator for TakingITGlobal, where she designs and delivers accredited online e-courses for teachers across the world. She is also the Director of Educational Development for the Research Journalism Initiative (RJI), an educational non-profit that facilitates creative expression among Palestinian young people and the use of their media projects in American classrooms, and Global Partnerships Director for World Leadership School, building online curriculum and projects between American classrooms and schools outside the U.S.
Jennifer holds a BA from Bard College and an MA from the University of Colorado at Boulder, both in Literature and Creative Writing. She taught college and high school English for 19 years, including five years in Central America and 11 years in all-girls education. In 2010, Jennifer left teaching to begin PRINCIPLED Learning Strategies, a global educational consulting business dedicated to enriching global educational approaches through curriculum development, professional development, and the use of e-technologies.
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