Learning more about global education.

A comprehensive guide to teaching global competence and engaging our students with the world.  If you explore nothing else, this downloadable book is an invaluable resource for understanding the value and importance of developing our students' global competencies.  The text explores the four capacities associated with global competence and how they relate to teaching and learning.  The authors provide a rationale for engaging a curricular framework of global education, they describe four key 21st century skills (investigating the world, recognizing perspectives, communicating ideas, and taking action), they offer clear instruction on how to incorporate global education across disciplines and grade bands, and ultimately they explore how to create a culture of global education at your institution. 

I used this framework in developing my first global education lesson plan for Biology on emergent disease.  Visit my Teach page to learn more about how I'm embedding global education in my curriculum.

There is a lot of information about global education out there and it can be overwhelming.  I've curated five of my favorite web resources on global education below.  These resources represent perspectives on global education from around the world, from Australia to the United States and everywhere in between.  Click on the image to visit the site and explore available resources from lesson plans, to guides, to views on what global education is and what it can do for our students.

Assessing the global competency of students, teachers, and administrators.

Once you have a better understanding of global education, you might be interested in learning about where you or your students fall on a scale of global competence.  Below are some different assessment tools to do just that.    The Measuring 21st Century Competencies is a guide for educators from the Asia Society.  It is a fantastic and comprehensive resource on assessment - a worthwhile read.

An entire school might be interested in the Global Competence Aptitude Assessment to determine as an institution where they are at in order to best determine where they want to go and how they want to get there.

A multitude of assessment tools for you and your students from the University of Michigan.  

I really like the Global Perspectives Inventory and the Global Competence Inventory, but you may find others even more useful!

Great tool for teachers - find out where you are on the continuum of global competency and build capacity all in one place.

Doing a Digital Inventory In Preparation for Going Global

Technology plays an integral role in global education because it currently and will continue to drive how people interact, learn and do business.  Click below for a Thing Link infographic based on a  Digital Inventory I conducted at my school to assess our strengths and challenges.  Our major strengths include: one-to-one Mac computing, solid wireless infrastructure, strong and supportive information technology department, classrooms with LCD projectors and sound systems, teachers with current hardware and software, laptops come loaded with Office, Mac Suite, Logger Pro, iMovie, and other teacher requested programs.  We recently hired an Academic Technology Director to build capacity among both teachers and students for teaching and learning with and through technology.  Our challenge areas include developing faculty and staff technology capacity, identifying ways to use technology to teach better (not just teach the same with technology), and developing digital citizenship.  We also should truly harness the power of technology to connect with students around the world and to connect with each other when we are around the world.

All ideas and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent Teachers for Global Classrooms, IREX or the U.S. Department of State.