Think Globally, Learn Locally

How do we promote world-class education in our classrooms?

In February of 2008, the Wake Education Partnership—an advocacy group committed to improving the Wake County Public School System through business and community involvement—hosted a forum on the challenges involved in promoting world-class education in Wake County. The forum—attended by almost 150 leaders from the business, parent and school community—was kicked off by a keynote address from Martin Lancaster, president of the North Carolina Community College System and followed by facilitated discussions between participants.

Each participant group was asked to respond to a series of questions related to global education. The answers to each question are summarized below. See if you agree with their assessments:

What will our world look like in 2020?

  • more diversified population
  • higher tech and more evenly distributed
  • intellectual capacity more distributed
  • continuing issues with war, famine and environmental issues
  • Local economy will be more urban, strong, high tech, more dense and cosmopolitan.
  • greater competition from around the world
  • ease of travel between countries, more mobile, “blurred country borders”
  • live longer, more healthy, work longer
  • speaking and communicating in a language other than English
  • economy more service industry related
  • more well-rounded culture
  • Technology is key to society. Current training is not sufficient.
  • We could lose our economic edge.

What will a world-class, globally-competitive graduate need to know and be able to do?

  • continue skill acquisition (lifelong)
  • ability to communicate, strong interpersonal communications skills, reach out to diverse populations
  • critical thinking skills, ability to validate information
  • higher level thinkers, ability to work as a team
  • understand what the “global economy” is and how it is going to impact students
  • ability to bring disparate subjects together to understand the system (knowledge integration)
  • sound basic liberal arts education (foundation)
  • collaborate in a multi-cultural environment; global teaming
  • higher proficiency in a specialized area, ability to adapt
  • multi-cultural fluency (language, culture, history and government)
  • having the capacity to think about other cultures and how they live

(Wake Education Partnership, "2008 Education Forum Results." E-mail to 'author'.28 Feb 2008.)

Translating Tomorrow into Today’s Classroom:

Easily the greatest struggle that educators face in today's day and age is properly preparing students for a future that is poorly defined yet rapidly changing and increasingly borderless.While most educators, parents and business leaders know that something must change, we often struggle to imagine what those changesmight look like.

Thankfully, leading thinkers on teaching and learning are beginning to tackle this question in a very structured and systematic way. In a 2008 post on his blog, ( Richardson---widely recognized as one of America's most progressive educationalthinkers---worked to define the kinds of skills that would be necessary for students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world. He wrote:

Our kids’ futures will require them to be:

  • Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”
  • More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.
  • More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.
  • Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.
  • More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.
  • Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.
  • More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.
  • Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.

To succeed in creating the kinds of schools that Will Richardson and the Wake Education Partnership describe, it is essential to provide our students with opportunities to become networked, collaborative and globally active learners. While this may sound intimidating and expensive, it’s not! Efforts supported by free digital content creation and collaboration tools like wikis, blogs, Skype and Voicethread can give students across grade levels and content areas the opportunity to work with peers beyond their buildings on projects related to the curriculum.

What’s most exciting about these digital opportunities is that they can be used to engage children in ongoing conversations around issues affecting the entire world. Together, our kids can conduct experiments with peers abroad on the impact of global warming and deforestation. They can wrestle with the issue of poverty and consider the kinds of responses that are appropriate. They can learn to appreciate—rather than to criticize—the perspectives of those who’ve grown up in different nations with different priorities.Like the high-tech, borderless partners in the businesses of tomorrow, our students truly can read, think and invent together.

By doing so, our students will begin to see beyond themselves, understanding that global challenges are our challenges and that global citizenship is essential for the continuing success of our community. We simply must recognizethat our students will leave our schools better prepared for the future having had real-world opportunities to work beyond the walls of their classrooms today.

For more information on how to incorporate digital tools into your classroom or school, contact Bill Ferriter at .