First Reflection Essay: Understanding of Global Issues.
Introduction:
Global perspective looks at the study of the larger world
and our society’s place in it. It offers students and teachers an approach
which takes into account the whole of human society and the environments in
which people live. Global issues take into account change, interdependence,
identity, diversity, rights and responsibilities, peace, poverty and wealth,
sustainability and global justice. Looking at the educational technology
aspect, students learn cooperative learning and action, and shared
responsibility, critical thinking, communication, values and attitudes,
important skills and active participation. (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008) The
reflection discusses global issues developed as I grew up and my considerations
of global issues from my current standpoint as I begin this course, Integrating
Technology: Global Perspectives. As a teacher, I will also explain teaching
global perspectives in the classroom.
Global issues developed as I grew up:
I grew up and got educated in Zimbabwe and my global
perspective was limited to my society that time. As a student, I learned how to
respect, to value and to celebrate other cultures and to speak different dialects
in Zimbabwe. As I grew older, I started travelling to neighboring countries and
learning more of other cultures and my Geographical perspective started
expanding and understanding other people’s way of living at an international
level. Effective global education is not just a curriculum issue but it takes
into account the diversity of multimedia. We learned more on global issues from
reading books, listening to the radio, watching television, communicating
through the telephone and letters. We were taught how to become involved in
community activities and campaigns supporting global justice, human rights and
sustainable futures, both within and beyond the school community. The
curriculum covers both practical and theory, putting the acquired knowledge
into real practice. An example could be doing Agricultural projects such as
keeping and raising chickens for the school and fundraise money for our school
development. Practicing active and informed citizenship has the potential to go
beyond the academic, focusing on the whole person
and developing life-long dispositions. (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008) Unfortunately,
we did not have access to computers at that time.
How I consider global issues from my current standpoint at
the start of this class?
Global issues bring people together and have the respect of
human rights, environmental needs, peace and justice around the world. My
current standpoint about global issues would be to bring the aspects in the
classroom curriculum. My current stand point about Global issues/perspectives
covers cultures, languages, sporting activities such as World cup soccer,
Olympics, Global business, Education, politics, United Nations organizations,
health etc. Students will then learn and appreciate their natural environment
and the connections among people, cultures, peace and justice, health and
responsibilities around the world. As I see it, Globalization is real and so
teachers/educators have responsibilities of preparing students to function and
make contributions in the global world. To foster this global awareness in
students, teachers should incorporate the use of technology in the content and
pedagogy of the curriculum. According to Schukar (1993) Schools must prepare teachers in processes
related to global education and this include strategies and methods for
teaching inquiry-based learning, resolution-building among students and for
teaching controversial recent issues such as
the problems the world is facing today concerning diseases, war, hunger
and natural disasters. The technology offers a vast of opportunities of
fostering global awareness. Because of its network of multimedia, video
conferences, social action projects, virtual network of students and numerous
web-based hyperlinks, teachers are able to use in their teaching strategies. (Harris,
1997-1998)
How I currently teach global perspectives in the classroom:
As a fifth grade teacher, my students are exposed to global
awareness to some extent. Global issues come in all subjects such as Science,
Social Studies, Language Arts, Mathematics, Reading, Geography, History, Art
and Sports. An example is the Social Studies topic about the different American
Indian cultures. The students read about the different food, clothing, shelter,
art and hunting done by the American Indians who lived around thousands of
years before the European settlers in North America. Students watched some
videos and listened to documentaries and later made some art work for display
in the classroom. Some of the tribes are the Chirokee, Cheyenne, Navajo,
Arawak, and Sioux to mention a few. The class itself is made up of students
originally from different countries. I sometimes have time to talk about my
original country and give students time to discuss about their original
cultures as well. Besides, students have access to educational web links or
even web search on the computers. I would like to assist students to develop
the skills to question and critique texts such as advertising, media images and
use technology in much more ways of global perspectives. I would like to
introduce my class to Web 2.0 tools, starting with the blogging account. Before
doing that, I need to get permission from parents and administration to publish
students’ work online. I am aware of the consequences of cyber safety for the
students. Skype is one of the ways of free audio conferencing / internet
phone software and would like to try Skype pen pal projects with partner
classrooms across the country or across the world. Skype will be a huge global
project for the school. Students also get involved in community activities such
as making field trips to local companies learning about recycle, farm produce
for example.
Conclusion:
By the end of the course, I hope to accomplish and
articulate the value of global connections in the classroom to promote learning
in the disciplines. According to our instructor, Dr. Blesh, we have a lot to
learn about technology that strengthens the global perspectives in the classrooms
and integrate issues related to diversity into the curriculum. Global issues
developed as I grew up and my considerations of global issues from my current
standpoint as well as teaching global issues in the classroom have been
discussed.
References:
Browett, J. and Ashman, G. (2008) Thinking Globally: Global
perspectives in the early classroom, Curriculum Corporation, Carlton South.
Commonwealth of Australia (2008) Global Perspectives: A
framework for global education in Australian schools. Curriculum Corporation.
Carlton South Vic 3053: Australia
Harris, J. B. (1997-1998) From Wetware: Why use activity
structures. Learning and Leading with Technology, Retrieved, October 5, 2007
from, http://virtualarchitecture.wm.edu/Foundation/wetware.html
Schukar, R. (1993). Controversy in Global Education: Lessons
for teacher educators. Theory into Practice, 32, 52-57.
Both images from:
https://www.google.com/search?
Technology has opened so many opportunities for the global community. In schools everything has become easier because of electronics.
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