Discussions

Your Name and Title:
Jennifer D. Klein

School, Library, or Organization Name:
PRINCIPLED Learning Strategies, Inc.

Co-Presenter Name(s):
Kelsey Vroomunn, St. Mary's Academy

Country from Which You Will Present:
USA

Language in Which You Will Present:
English

Target Audience (such as primary school teachers, high school administrators, students, etc.):
middle and high school teachers and administrators

Short Session Description (one line):
Glocal learning approaches allow students to address the global challenges of displacement and refugee life on a local level. In partnership with the African Community Center, high school French students and a digital media class collaborate to complete a year-long glocal project-based learning experiment designed to help recent refugees navigate life in Denver.

Full Session Description (one paragraph minimum):
A growing movement within the field of global education is the "glocal" movement. Although the concept of "thinking globally and acting locally" is nothing new in North America, Chris Harth's landmark article, "Going Glocal," invites educators to embrace the world in their backyards in new and increasingly constructive ways.  Many educators are using glocal learning as a strategy in inner-city schools where students have little or no access to international service travel, while others are using glocal encounters to bring primary-source, authentic experiences to the global topics and languages students are learning about.  Glocal learning helps students see the world and their own community in far more nuanced ways; global issues no longer take place "out there in the world" in some abstract place, but are real issues affecting students' own communities as well, problems they can see up close, ask personal questions about, and then actually do something to solve.

These ideas will be illustrated by a PBL unit across two courses, Advanced French Language and Digital Design and Development.  The project begins with an in-depth inquiry in the language classroom into the difficulties faced by refugees new to the Denver area, a process facilitated by a strong partnership with a local refugee support center.  As a result of their investigation, students will create purpose-driven instructional videos for authentic audiences that will help refugees and recent immigrants navigate their surroundings; for example, videos will demonstrate how to buy tickets for local public transportation.  The project personalizes need-to-know grammar and vocabulary instruction so that students can successfully draft a script in the target language to be used as the subtitle track for French-speaking refugees.  The Digital Design course will also focus on refugee issues as a part of Adobe Youth Voices’ Making a Better World graphic design curriculum, in which students use Adobe Photoshop to create a poster highlighting a particular social issue.  To bridge the two courses into a collaborative final project, the Digital Design course will edit the French course’s raw video footage and design creative titles, graphics and a soundtrack.  The design students will produce multiple versions of the final video for the African Community Center’s cultural adjustment program, one featuring the AP French student-generated subtitles, and other versions containing text provided by the African Community Center in languages of high refugee need, like Amharic and Kiswahili.  

Participants will leave this session with a deeper understanding of Project-Based Learning and its applicability in a glocal learning context.  Participants will have opportunities to see these methodologies through the lens of a specific project which exemplifies the best of PBL, glocal thinking, world language study, and digital design.  Participants will be exposed to purpose-driven technology-enhanced curricular design which features the Adobe Youth Voices program, Adobe Photoshop, as well as movie-editing software.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
www.principledlearning.org