Janzen: Chapter 5 - The Student as Global Communicator and Collaborator

Chapter 5 - The Student as Global Communicator and Collaborator

I love that the skill most valued in a global perspective is empathy (65).  I can’t stress how important it is for students to be able to respect other points of view.  However, there is very little time spent on this in the traditional school system.  

Based on the November’s suggestion to watch the Eli Pariser TED talk (66), I decided to check it out. It’s kind of sad.  Algorithmic editing of the web is extremely scary.  Why would google give you different search results depending on where you search?  There is no longer a standard google. What’s scary is I knew some of this was going on but I didn’t realize it was so widespread.  It shows us only what we want to see.  Shouldn’t we all have access to the same information? Why can’t we opt to have standard editing?  If you did not watch this, I highly recommend that you do.  The internet is dividing us in a lot of ways when it has so many capabilities to bring us together.

Here is one great way to do the latter.  The epals.com site made me think about how I can incorporate it into my work.  I have a few teachers who have expressed interest in connecting to other classes via skype/hangouts and I would like to introduce this idea to them.  It is also interesting to see all the prep work that could go into a skype call to make it more effective.  The more students plan and research ahead of time, the more they are invested in the call itself, and the more they get out of it.

I love that there are suggestions for running a skype call.  I will definitely be referring to those once we start getting ready.  I have a TK teacher at one of my sites who is super excited to try a skype session.  I feel fortunate to be involved in such a global experiment with 4 and 5 year olds.  I let you know how it goes....