HOW CAN SCHOOLS AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH GO GLOBAL TODAY?
In the last 50 years schools have changed very much. It has been possible thanks to technology which is everywhere; also in the schools. When I was younger, we used books and the firsts computers were starting. At present time every child has a computer, and nobody can imagine how it’ll be in a future.
Nowadays, there are a lot of settings you can use to go global; the most important: Internet. This is the door to know all the cultures in the world, but before learning you have to want learning.
In my opinion you can’t know another culture if you don’t know your own, if you don’t know who you are. For this reason, as a teacher, is important working every culture that there are in the classroom and making the pupils feel integrated. That could be quite difficult, especially if there are a lot of different nationalities and languages in the class. But, as a teacher, you should be able to give answer and find the riche of the diversity. The first step is showing all the cultures from the respect; working all these: each pupil, maybe in nationality groups, could present their own culture. It could be better to work cultures per parts; for example: food, traditional dances or music, traditions... After the explanations, it could create a space to make questions, a simple interview made by the rest of the class.
In that way, you learn another culture comparing (what you know/your background and new culture) so this is another reason to consider own cultures and asking why and what are different. Moreover, pupils are the best teachers among themselves.
This is the key to be open-minded; showing respect for others and positive attitude to learn about the others.
Another interesting and easy activity is called “invisible friend”. Each pupil write in a piece of paper some things about himself (answering questions): what he/she likes; what he/she does; how he/she is, etc. Then all the papers are mixed and each pupil takes one. Finally they have to stand up and find the person who describes the paper asking questions.
In my country, there are some schools which do “interchange programs”. Two schools of different countries get in contact and exchange students: each pupil has a partner of the other country and they talk together by e-mail, blog, chat, etc. After that one of these pupils comes to his/her friend’s house and spends 2-3 weeks there. And then the other student comes to his/her friend’s house.
There are a lot of versions of that program but I think it’s really interesting. Also so are other projects shown in the document. Is important make all of this following a collaborative and simple way.
Useful materials:
Differences between globalisation and internationalization:
