Exploring Learning

Even as far back as 1988, Elise Boulding stated that to point of global education is to “create a peaceful, interdependent world which would be a good place for people to live”. Idealistically, this is what we all want - however, having worked in five different international schools, and having experienced global education in four different countries, the “tensions between the national and the global, as well as between unity and diversity, remain highly relevant in today’s increasingly globalized world” (Ho, 2009). Finding this balance, of retaining identity and culture whilst at the same time promoting tolerance and peace, is exactly the point, to me, of what a global education means, echoed by Global Education for Canadians (2017), which recognises that “relationships with emerging countries are becoming increasingly important” for a successful future. If the global workforce is increasingly dependent on technology (Adams, 2002; Karkouti, 2016) and the point of education is to ready...

Almost a year ago, I wrote a post about Split Screen, as a way of making notes from online reading. This involved having one screen as notes and the other as the source material. Recently, I have been using it in my role as Project Manager of Global Youth Debates , a Flat Connections project (read more about this  here ). In Global Youth Debates, teams from all over the world take part in an asychronous debate about a current issue - this year's theme is Global Peace and Security and the topic is, 'Revolution a Justifiable Means for Global Peace and Security'. Using Voicethread , learners record their arguments in stages; the opposing teams can then listen and respond, recording their opposition in the same place. Part of my job is to organise the brackets - who argues against whom - in each round. To monitor the progress of each team, I have been using Split Screen as a management tool: Tracking Debate Progress On the left is each bracket's Voicethread,...