Using the Spotlight on Strategies "That Sums it Up" from Discovery Education, I am examining three different articles and distilling them from big idea notes to important ideas -- and then, at the end of this post, I am pulling the big ideas from the articles and combining them for a broad picture. (See the references for the article information!)
What Do "Future Ready" Students Look Like?
"Big Idea" Notes
The Hult Prize is an award given to the winner of the global competition run to find sustainable "social businesses." The competition focused on in this article was for improving early childhood education in urban areas. There are several important characteristics that bond together winning teams and ideas: learning quickly about new ideas; using communication to work through differences and leverage different experiences; use setbacks, mistakes, and challenges to refine your process; and share your ideas for feedback and refinement as well as making them available for the largest impact.
Four Important Ideas
- Become passionate by learning about new subjects.
- Communicate with each other to collaborate.
- Try again!
- Communicate your ideas to others.
How to Bring Global Learning to Your Classroom
"Big Idea" Notes
Personal experiences can be shared to create empathy with non-personal challenges or problems, such as a Michigan teacher sharing water shortages and management in California with her class. Ways to help students connect and become a global citizen including using project-based and authentic learning; use tools such as globes, Google Earth, etc. to help students "see" other areas; and connect with a professional network to meet others for ideas and experiences.
Three Important Ideas
- Students connect best with authentic experiences.
- Tools are available to explore distant places.
- Experts and like-minded professionals can help bring global learning to the classroom.
Future Ready Framework Definitions
"Big Idea" Notes
The Future Ready Framework embraces a personal style of teaching and learning to help students learn "deeper" skills such as creativity, innovation, self-direction, and critical thinking. It creates flexible learning opportunities by using technology -- however, this requires support for network systems, devices, and managing data and privacy. It also creates personalized learning by bringing students into the community to see how local business and communities connect with the world at large. This all requires teachers to also embrace continuous learning and for administration and leadership to embrace collaboration in order to plan and transform policies before implementation.
Five Important Ideas
- The Future Ready Framework teaches adaptable skills.
- Technology is necessary for flexible learning.
- Communities can help facilitate global learning.
- Teachers need to continuously work on professional growth.
- Administration and leadership need to share a culture of innovation to transform.
Final Big Ideas!
1. Communication is key.
Future-ready students need to communicate and collaborate with each other. Teachers also need to communicate -- not just with their students, but also with professional networks, like-minded individuals, and administration in order to effectively create global experiences for their students with support from administration. Communication is what lets us share ideas and experiences with people from different places and backgrounds to become global citizens.
2. Technology is an important resource.
Global learning can happen without technology, but technology creates flexible learning experiences and also helps connect people from anywhere to a diverse range of cultures, challenges, and places. Technology is also an easy way to implement global exploration when travel is prohibitive.
3. Continuous growth leads to global citizenship.
Failure and setbacks are obstacles but should not stop a global citizenship; this ties back to Final Big Idea 1: communication. Failure is just a communication that something can be improved. This means we can go back and find a better way to effect change for a problem or challenge to help others. Beyond failure, continuous growth means embracing a life of learning.
4. Authentic experiences produce authentic learning.
Hypotheticals may not have the same effect on student learning as authentic experiences. Examples of this are experiencing a problem themselves, hearing from people who have, or trying to develop actual solutions and experiences instead of hypothetical solutions. This helps students empathize with people around the world as they learn to think creatively and globally
References
Boss, S. (2015). What do "future ready" students look like?. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-do-future-ready-students-look-suzie-boss
Future Schools. (n.d.). Future ready framework definitions [Microsoft Word]. https://futureready.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FutureReadyFrameworkDefinitions.pdf
Tate, S. (2018). How to bring global learning to your classroom. eSchool News. https://www.eschoolnews.com/2018/01/30/global-learning/
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