Web Wonders / The World in the Classroom

On or off the Internet, the resources for incorporating global perspectives in every subject in the classroom are rich and plentiful, offering teachers and students many opportunities for developing academic skills in reading, writing, math, art, science, and languages through cross-cultural appreciation and collaboration. Here are a few examples.

Professional Networks

How can teachers learn more about how to teach globally? A good starting point for educators is the Global TeachNet program of the National Peace Corps Association (www.globalteachnet.org). Click Resources, and the Global Education Gateway will lead you to a comprehensive set of links for global educators—including electronic mailing lists, summer programs for teachers, online networking, and teacher education—and for learning more about specific global issues, such as hunger and poverty, population and migration, and education and literacy.

For lesson plans and professional development ideas, you can sign up for the Globaled-Listserv, which sends out informative weekly e-mails. Subscribe to the bimonthly Global TeachNet Newsletter, the official newsletter of the ASCD Global Education Network, another group that you can join. You can also receive the quarterly WorldView magazine, which publishes news summaries, book reviews, fiction, and essays about the developing world. A special WorldView teacher's guide has 12 lessons for articles on developing countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Curriculum Resources

Several universities have developed high-quality curriculum resources and workshops for internationalizing the K-12 curriculum. The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (http://spice.stanford.edu) offers free multidisciplinary lesson plans for all grade levels on international themes, including analyzing conflict and international trade. The University of Denver's Center for Teaching International Relations offers curriculum materials for its World Affairs Challenge (www.du.edu/ctir/wac.html), an academic program for secondary school students to devise solutions to real-world problems. The Choices for the 21st Century Education Program at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies (www.choices.edu) provides curriculum materials that emphasize higher-order thinking skills, including using primary sources, weighing evidence, and understanding competing interpretations of international issues. The International Institute for Global Education at the University of Toronto in Canada (www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/ctl) offers graduate degrees in global education.

More Professional Development

The American Forum for Global Education (www.globaled.org) offers teaching materials with a global perspective and publishes the bimonthly Issues in Global Education. Such organizations as the Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange Program (http://grad.usda.gov/International/ftep.html) and Global Links (www.global-links.org) provide opportunities for teacher exchanges.

The National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (www.nctasia.org) conducts inservice seminars and travel-study tours for K-12 educators. The United Nations Cyberschoolbus (www.un.org/cyberschoolbus) has data on countries of the United Nations and helpful curriculum materials, including units on peacemaking and cities of the world. ASCD offers a Professional Development Online course on global education (see www.ascd.org).

Collaborations on the Internet

The Internet offers unprecedented opportunities for teachers and students to communicate and work with others around the globe. An excellent overall view of international Web resources is available at the U.S. Department of Education's “Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet” (www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html). Carefully mapped out, this comprehensive site offers reviews and international links for cross-cultural interaction and project work, including ePALS Classroom Exchange (www.epals.com) and Rome's Global Junior Challenge (www.gjc.it); tips on how to make these exchanges useful; and links to interesting collaborative projects in social studies, music, science, math, the arts, and languages.

In October 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the formation of Friendship Through Education, a consortium of nongovernmental organizations committed to connecting teachers and students around the world. On its Web site (www.friendshipthrougheducation.org), 11 organizations combine their efforts to help educators and students find ways to send letters and e-mails, interact online, and participate in projects and student exchange programs. Through the Coverdell World Wise Schools (www.peacecorps.gov/wws), for example, students can communicate directly with Peace Corps Volunteers in the field.

The International Education and Resource Network (www.iearn.org) is an online telecommunications network that connects more than 4,000 schools in nearly 100 countries. Schools sign up to participate in its online, interactive forums and to work with others on projects designed by online participants. You can find language communities and activities through the Language Resource page. Learning Circles are sustained, interactive 14-week sessions that emphasize developing research and problem-solving skills in such topics as energy and the environment.

The Global SchoolNet Foundation (www.gsn.org) emphasizes networked, project-based learning. Its Internet Projects Registry is a clearinghouse for projects that you can bring to your classroom. Students can collaborate on projects, take online field trips, and use videoconferencing software to connect with other students around the world. Teachers can share learning experiences in online discussion forums and find helpful resources for planning professional development.

Student Programs

For hands-on, simulated experiences in working together to make decisions about timely global issues, the Model United Nations program (www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/modelun/index.html) is a highly respected and active student program. The nongovernmental Foreign Policy Association (www.fpa.org) conducts a Global Decisions Global Affairs Education program that includes discussions on foreign policy topics. Students can take quizzes, respond to informal ballots, and share opinions on global issues with peers around the world.

Science can be an open, collaborative undertaking, and Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) (www.globe.gov) is a worldwide, school-based science and education program that gives students opportunities to take measurements (of the atmosphere or soils, for example) and to report their data through the Internet to a student data archive. The site supports school-to-school exchanges and offers students opportunities to chat online with scientists. The Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, hosts international collaborative science projects on its user-friendly site (www.k12science.org). In the Sun Times project, for example, students can join their peers in schools around the world as they figure out how proximity to the equator affects average daily temperatures and hours of sunlight.

Off the Web

The World Wide Web has cast its net wide and deep, but print materials, videos, and CDs continue to have much to offer global educators.

The World in Claire's Classroom (Marlboro Productions, 2001) video, for example, follows elementary school students in a small school in rural Vermont during a yearlong, in-depth study of India. Inservice and veteran teachers will appreciate Claire's sustained, hands-on, multifaceted approach to cross-cultural learning and her engagement of the community in these cross-cultural activities. Of particular interest is how Claire handles the conflict that arises during a student simulation of Gandhi's Salt March (available through www.marlboroproductions.com).

In the Global Classroom 1 (Pippin Publishing, 1999) and In the Global Classroom 2 (Pippin Publishing, 2000), by Graham Pike and David Selby, provide straightforward guidance and global education activities covering all curriculum areas and grade levels (available through www.pippinpub.com). Putumayo World Music offers a multicultural activity kit for educators who use its World Playground 1, World Playground 2, and Latin Playground compact discs (available through www.putumayo.com).

Globalization may seem like a recent phenomenon, but the PBS television series, The Crucible of the Millennium, explores global interactions in the 15th and 16th centuries, examining such issues as trade and technology and patterns of change and continuity. An Educational Resource Guide includes readings and focus questions for discussion and research (available through www.globaled.org/crucible).