And We're Off...

Global World History Project is off and running. I am working right now on getting schools to partnering with us. Today I posted on Facebook and Edmodo and within an hour I received contacts from a school in Haiti, Jakarta, and China. They haven't agreed to join with us on this yet but it is a start.

Global World History Project is something I have been thinking through for the last year and really hope to get it going for this next school year. My vision is to give students from different countries a more global perspective of the history of the world. Imagine how a student in Germany would view WWII as compared to a Japanese student or American student and this is just one major event in History.

What I want to do this first year is to pair up my students (I will have about 150 total) with other students from around the world like a pen pal. As we all study W. History in each school the students will teach other students what they are learning through a variety of medium (blogs, emails, letters, video reports, etc). In the classroom teachers will have the chance to use they varied perspectives for talking points and discussions to go further in depth on the history lesson.

Along with the normal W. History curriculum when world events occur students or classes will report on what they are being told about the event and teach each other what is going on in the world. This will make students have to pay attention to the news of the event so that they can share with others what is actually going on. Through this students will have a more global awareness that what is being told on their news isn't always the full story. Could you imagine something like this when the earthquakes happened in Haiti and Japan or the revolution in Egypt? Each country had a different perspective in the news and it would have made for some interesting discussions for our students.

We can also have discussions on world economics with lessons on costs associated with similar products in other countries. Could you imagine how humbling a discussion would be for an American student talking to other students throughout the world about gas prices, or taxes, or even health care. The hope is that over time these students and become culturally aware of what other people have or don't have so they can have a larger perspective of the world.