How can schools and learning environments for children and youth go global today?
This challenge had a large but interesting programme:
First we started to discuss about two terms: globalization and internationalization. Before I didn't realise that there was actually a (small) difference between these two words. I thought they meant the same.
After that we talked about what is important for children/pupils and students to learn on a global scale.
I give you a few example of what I think is important on this case:
I give you a few example of what I think is important on this case:
- Respect for other and new things.
- Curiousity
- Positive attitude towards other people.
- No prejudice or judging
- Knowledge about other cultures, languages, religions, traditions, ...
- Reflections: asking questions about other cultures and your own.
- ...
We also saw something about the Danish ministery of eduction. I think it is very good that they want to include the international dimension in all the subjects. In Belgium for example we don't have this yet. Of course we pay attention to the international dimension but I don't think that it is on the same scale that the Danish ministery intent to.
In the challenge we also saw some possibilities to go global today with the kids of elementary school. This is new for me, because I didn't had lesson about this during my education. However I find this very important!
I'll give an example that is completely new to me:http://www.etwinning.net/nl/pub/index.htm
Other possiblities: newspaper projects, projects about friends and postcards, Comenius project, ...
Reflection:
I learned a lot during this challenge because this was actually new to me. It was the first time in my education that we thought a whole lesson about how and why we should go global with kids.
I think it's very important to go global with young children because they are the future and they have to live in a very globalized world in a few years. You just can not ignore this fact. I'm also very happy with the new plans of the Danish ministery of education!! I hope that this will be also soon a fact in Belgium!!
Of the possibilities in going global I think E-twinning is the best. It's very new and modern and it offers a lot of possibilities, you can choose to talk with kids from all over Europe and you can choose between courses, ages, countries, cities, subjects, ... So I absolutely recommand it to everybody in the educational sector who is interested to global these days.
