Project Description - Draft #2

According to the Michigan Department of Education, “The challenges of the 21^st century will require students to be globally literate regarding major global issues and the processes necessary to inquire about issues, gather information and make decisions that arise during their lifetimes.  They will need to be ready and willing to assume citizenship responsibility and to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a pluralistic, democratic society in an interdependent world.” (Sixth Grade Social Studies Grade Level Content Expectations)  There is no doubt that globalization is becoming more and more a part of our society.  American students often do not understand globalization or the importance of understanding people and cultures from around the world.  At a small school such as the one where I teach, students often become comfortable with their close-knit community without considering others in their greater world community.  However, it is becoming apparent that being a part of a global world is something that students will need to understand and yet this can be difficult to teach children.  We need to solve this problem and learn how to bridge the gap between a world that is not globally connected and one that is.

I see this problem with middle school students to be important because so many young adolescents are self absorbed.  Working in a charter school, I have additional goals that accompany our school's philosophy.  One goal we have in our charter is that students will learn to become globally responsible citizens.  How will we do this if we do not consider the ways that students will be impacted the most?  How are we to teach students to be globally literate and make informed, reasoned decisions, without taking them to experience these places first hand?  Technology may have an answer for this compelling problem.    

            For this project, we will use the Internet to create a survey that will be sent to students around the world.  We will start by marking on a map in the classroom where we know people around the world.  These people do not need to be people we know well, but to whom we at least feel comfortable sending something.  Students will then create lists of questions for the survey.  Since this will not be a project on which we spend all of our time, we will utilize Web 2.0 technologies so that students can collaborate online to decide what questions should be on the survey.  The survey will be created using Survey Monkey.  After we send the survey and students analyze the results, a team of students will create a website that will display what they have learned through this survey.  Other students will have the opportunity to look at different themes discovered while creating the survey and will create pages to add to the website.  The website will then be published and sent to the same people so that my students can communicate what they learned through this project.

 One group I hope to target with this survey is the middle school students my sister is currently working with in the north of France.  The ultimate goal with this group is to create a relationship with these schools where the students collaborate with one another.  For my students, this will be one way of them expanding their global knowledge and for my sister’s students it will be part of their English lessons.  I then hope to meet some of these students when I visit my sister in France and will be able to incorporate that into my classroom as well.  This is part of the project that will not be completed until after the course is finished.