Global+Awareness

=Global Awareness = =A Lesson Plan =



**Description**
This assignment required the creation of a lesson plan incorporating a global perspective within the lesson. The lesson ideally creates collaboration between the students in a local classroom and students from a classroom located in another country to form a global understanding of the chosen subject matter.

This collaboration allows students to see a subject from a perspective other than their own. Specific collaboration tools such as Skype, instant messaging, etc. are used to allow students a one-on-one interaction with their partner. Other tools such as digital storytelling software, Voicethread, Wikis, Photoshop, etc. can be used to encourage creativity and self expression for all students to explore and share ideas regarding the subject matter.

The lesson’s strongest point is the ability to bring together students and their perceptions of the world in which they live. It enables them to explore and understand different points of view as well as the similarities using the subject of the lesson as the common thread.

**Process**
The best way for students to get to know each other and bring the world closer together is to allow students to collaborate and see the world from another perspective. This was the main theme of my lesson plan. The students need to see both the similarities and the differences in their cultures before they can collaborate effectively.

By allowing the students to lead the collaboration with little guidance they develop a more natural way of working together. Skype was a good tool for this kind of collaboration, but certainly not the only tool out there. The lesson gives basic guidelines, but the students are the masters of their creation which is the digital story of what was happening during a particular month and year in their country’s history. There are many benefits to this exercise that include an overall understanding of one’s history and how it may relate and become intertwined in the history of other countries. This kind of process is something that can bring us together on a worldwide scale.

Another benefit of this lesson is that it gives the student the ability to be inventive by creating a moving, thought provoking, and inspiring presentation in digital story format. This part of the lesson allows the student to put a part of him/herself and his/her culture into the presentation. This is very enlightening to the students from the partnering country to view. It gives a personal insight they may not have otherwise received.

**Reflection**
I must honestly say that I have never developed a lesson plan from a global perspective. It took an unusual amount of time for me to come up with something fun, interesting and educational while keeping a global perspective. Once the idea came to mind, it seemed to evolve naturally.

This project was a welcome learning experience because it made me realize how essential it is to create lessons from a global perspective. It would be great fun to see students from different countries collaborating on a single project. This is essential modeling for what they will be doing as adults. Our world is becoming smaller and smaller because of the vast array of technological tools available for free on the internet. Through these tools and websites like EPals and Global SchoolNet it is easy to form these types of collaborations and partnerships with foreign schools.

I know that as a middle or high school student I would have welcomed the opportunity to work with students from another country. It would have opened my world and I would have had better understanding of another culture. The type of lesson I wrote needs to be encouraged within our school systems for the benefit of our children and our future.