On Tuesday night, I attended my first global education conference. The presenter was Jennifer Klein and the title of her presentation was 21st Century Pedagogies - Envisioning the Schoolhouse. She really believes in a solid "hook" to capture her audience from the beginning. She began the presentation with this video Playing for Change. It's an incredible video and I would recommend watching it. She did comment on the fact how in schools, we often end up creating tasks and jobs instead of looking at the bigger picture and the important pieces for learning. I loved the visual of this in her presentation.
This visual is a clear representation that the more important things to learn are the things that are more difficult to assess. As an educator, it is difficult to get caught up in assessments and meeting standards. I think what often gets lost when educators are pressed for time is the flexibility to focus on a lot of the things that lie in the circle on this diagram. Too often school days are driven by content knowledge.
She focused a lot on the importance of creating global citizens of the world. To emphasize her point she show this you tube video...another one worth viewing.
I really liked her vocabulary "glocal". I had never heard this before. To me, glocal means that even in the small communities of Vermont, if we can teach our kids to be part of the greater community, that is a huge step in the right direction. As great as it would be have them interact with people from around the globe, I think it begins with teaching them the importance of connecting with the community around them.
Global citizenship is so important in this day and age. Education shouldn't be technology driven, but rather technology enabled. Wouldn't it be better to have a student-driven, authentic curriculum that focused on the bigger picture of learning? On the things that are harder to assess?
The session ended with an incredible poem, read forwards and backwards.
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