Global Education Unit

As part of my fellowship with Teachers for Global Classrooms/IREX, I developed a unit based on developing global competencies with my students. Later, in conversation with a Global Education Team at my school, I enhanced the unit to include input and collaboration with teachers within the group. Although there are two grade levels within this group and both are participating in the overall unit, I have included only the Grade 7 plans here for the purpose of clarity. The Grade 8 teachers are developing a similar plan, but the Science focus will be on building solar cars, and Ms. Rice, the 8th grade Science teacher, is planning to send kits to our corresponding school in Raigad, India, so that they can develop the cars as well. Some of the Common Core standards included have been modified to reflect Global Competencies.

Using a student-developed rubric in Hyderabad

Here is a link to the plan, as it is now. It is flexible, and will undoubtedly change, especially after my peers in the CLMS Global Education Team have added their input!

Global Education Unit: Mythology and Science: Then and Now

Link to Travel Blog (India)

Here is the link to the blog I kept while traveling in India, before and after:

Dreams from a Traveling Life

Local Community Resource List

Since it's important to start from within our own community and tap the resource already available to us, here is a Pinterest Board with some links that could prove useful to us in terms of global and cultural initiatives:

Local Global and Cultural Resources

International Project-Based Learning Opportunities List

Last year we established the CLMS Global Education Team, which met to discuss global curriculum for this year.

We have planned correspondence and joint projects with 7th and 8th grade classes at Jubilee Hills Public School, in Hyderabad, India. Eighth grade students will develop solar-powered model cars in both countries, with Ms. Rice sending the solar car kits and instructional videos to the school in India. Seventh grade students will decide on a science project together with their Hyderabadi peers, based on local needs in both our areas.

As a part of the project related to Language Arts and social studies, students will read Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman, a novel that takes place in India during World War II and during the fight for Indian emancipation from the British. It follows a young teen's struggle to become educated in the face of traditional pressures towards early marriage. Students will compare the movement of Gandhi's followers to the Civil Rights movement in the United States, as well as controversial aspects of minorities in both countries joining the army during that time period.

The global Education Team is planning on showing the film Girl Rising to our students. We also plan on raising funds for the Girl Rising charitable organization. This international organization seeks to empower girls in various parts of the world where becoming educated is highly difficult for female students.

Also I have been matched through the Peace Corps with Sandy Noel, a former CLMS and PBHS alumna who is serving in Benin, West Africa. She recently completed a year of teaching through a Fullbright program in Kolkata, India.

For anyone who is interested in project-based learning opportunities, I would highly recommend the following sites:

Edutopia

E-pals

Global Kids

iEARN

Voice of Youth

Standard-based Global Education Updates

Digital Learning Inventory

This is an inventory of technology currently available and being utilized at CLMS.

1. What tools, software, operating systems, and equipment are available in your school and classroom? (including but not limited to: videoconferencing, streaming, photos sharing sites, video sharing sites, document sharing sites, podcasts, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, etc.)

Our school has been completely wireless for a couple of years now; most computers are Macintosh, but there are also a couple of labs with Windows-based operating systems. We also have a Tandberg for videoconferencing in our magnet coordinator's office. Teachers are starting to learn about Dropbox, Wordle, screen recorders, and other 2.0 tools. Until recently I used Delicious as a bookmarking/sharing tool, but the district blocked it, so now I use Diigo. Until this year few teachers used wikis and blogs, except for a technology teacher with whom I shared information about Edmodo, but I have been using them for four years now. Facebook and Twitter are blocked, but my 7^th grade students thought Edmodo was Facebook the first time they saw it.This year more teachers are using Edmodo both for idea-sharing and as classroom forums. Our district also has licenses with research databases like Gale/Infotrac and a host of other educational resources, including Discovery Education, which I sometimes use for videos and assignments. I have used Skype in my classroom to communicate with parental “experts”; however all the pen pals we have had over the past few years have been on different time zones. One grandfather did call us from China at three in the morning his time! I have found that Wikispaces is teacher-friendly and great for creating projects. We also have access to the Apple suite of software like GarageBand, iPhoto, and iMovie. I recently won two iPads with a grant, and my students have used them to create movies based on their research. The problem is, the district has made it impossible for me to dock them anywhere, so instead of sharing music and photos, I have to email them to myself all the time.

3. How does your school make use of school and/or teacher websites?

The school website is maintained on a regular basis, and it has links to teacher websites. The school site is a source of information and news for parents and families.

4. How are you currently utilizing technology for learning?

I have a Promethean Board with a learner response system, which I use on a daily basis, even though it is not always reliable. I ma moving more towards an app in Edmodo which students can use with their portable devices. The district bough a large amount of Promethean equipment but does not supply maintenance for it. The students in my classes learn how to use it, and they are the ones who wield the pen. Every year for the past three, I have had a computer cart in my room, which I share with teachers in my area. It is stocked with old Macs, and we use them for multimedia projects, research, and testing.

5. Which websites are blocked by your school's firewall?

Popular social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, Delicious, and sundry others not deemed to be appropriate for middle school.

6. What websites and tools are colleagues in your building using?

That varies a great deal; we all use district tools for testing, demographic, and behavioral data (we have just started to implement a new site for that); the district portal with a wide variety of resources for students, teachers, and parents; and an electronic gradebook.

All of our textbooks have online versions so that students can access them from home if they have Internet.

Many Language Arts teachers use Wordle and some of us use Tagxedo and Visuwords; the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary; teacher-friendly web-hosting sites; blogs and wikis; I also found some really fun classroom tools called Triptico, which the kids love; Survey Monkey; and Spelling City. There are many subject area-specific sites and tools that some teachers take advantage of. Edmodo is endorsed by the district as a blog site for teachers, classrooms, and parents.

7. Is there a system for evaluating student technology literacy in your school? If so, how effective or helpful have you found the assessment?

No, we have no such assessment in our school, although one does exist for teachers, and it was administered recently. I am not sure of its efficacy since no new technology workshops have been offered for teachers. The teachers in computer classes have such evaluations.

8. Gather suggestions from students on their ideas for integrating technology into their learning.

Suggestions:

1. Students want to be able to use their phones for quick questions and research; as calculators and dictionaries;

2. they want to become more proficient at digital tools for producing movies and music, and creating art;

3. they would like to be allowed to bring their own computers to school to enhance the technology we have now, for research;

4. they would like to play more educational games; design games; and use televideo like Skype to communicate with other classrooms or other places.

9. What tools that are not presently available, would help to achieve district objectives?

I am finding that the two iPad 2s in my room are great for simple productivity as well as for information. They are certainly less expensive that laptops, and if we had more of those in every classroom, it would help. I also think that the district should be less cagey about allowing these devices to be synched to teacher computers; right now it is impossible to get music playlists on the iPads because I cannot synch them myself.

10. Does your school promote BYOD (bring your own device) policies for students?
    

This is a gray area. In our meetings prior to the beginning of the school year, we were hashing out the school rules, and one of them was “absolutely no cellphones or electronic devices.” I pointed out that students often have books on their devices, and many have e-readers. Many other teachers weighed in and at the end it was decided that students could use them with teacher permission. Student-owned computers are not really favored because of problems with loss and/or theft.

B. Using your Digital Learning Environment Inventory, develop a solution or suggest an improvement customized to your school/classroom circumstances. Include a paragraph describing:

     1.  The solution/suggestion
     2.  Reflect on what you learned from this process
Despite last year's program offered by Comcast, which provided low-income families with basic Internet for a low monthly cost, and vouchers for low-cost computers, many of our students still do not have access. It seems that the obstacle here is relevancy: many parents do not see computers and Internet as being relevant to education. When we conduct events for parents, such as Parent University, Literacy, Math, and Science nights, the concept of technology integration is often ignored or marginalized. What we need to do is seize those opportunities to make parent aware of the essential nature of the incorporation of technology in education, and re-introduce them to the opportunities being offered by large firms like Comcast and Microsoft. After all, it is pointless to have online textbooks if we do not emphasize their central role to the curriculum. This week I attended a Symposium for the Gifted, hosted by the district, in which much ado was made of the district's new stance favoring project-based learning over the constant drive to improve standardized test results. This was literally news to most of the attendees, who came straight from schools like mine where testing is paramount because of district and state pressures. My suggestion is that our school needs to take a stand, broadcast to parents that we are integrating technology into the everyday curriculum, and then offer hands-on workshops to them so that they can see how it works. Two years ago at Parent University I did just that, and the parents were thoroughly engaged, especially the ones who had never touched a computer before. When I re-proposed the same workshop at Parent University last year, I was told to stick to the Promethean board; however I managed to do it again during Literacy Night, once again with great success. One of our technology teachers just held a fundraiser to re-furbish the antiquated equipment in her room, and I think that more of us should do the same. I asked my students if they would help with a fundraiser to get more iPads, and they were very enthusiastic. Our principal announced this year that she has bought battery replacements for all the Mac laptops, so that should help.



What I learned from this process is that whereas I thought I had very few allies in my school in terms of fighting for technology integration, it turns out that potentially I have the most important ones: the students, their parents, the principal, and other teachers who wish to place our school in the 21^st Century. The money is probaly out there; all that is required is the strong conviction that this is the correct path, and the determination to push through without giving up.

Essential Questions

Questions that I posed before my trip and after the intensive preparatory course centered mostly around gender equality in India.

• How does cultural/historical/religious tradition inform gender equality?
• How is the government implementing laws and regulations that are aimed towards leveling the playing field?
• How do Indian women in varying situations feel about their roles?
• Do younger women feel more empowered? Does this differ between urban and rural areas?
• How do curricular agendas impact gender equality?
• How great is the difference in gender equality between castes/classes?

Assumptions:

• Urban environments are more conducive to advancements in gender equality
• Attitudes towards women are culturally reinforced
• Attitudes are difficult to change
• Many women are demanding change
• Many others accept their roles

Tools I used for research:

• an investigation of Indian laws regarding hiring property ownership, inheritance, dowry practice
• polls conducted nationally in India
• observations, conversations with women in different environments
• observations, survey of curricula, conversations with teachers'
• study of the actual changes since the abolishment of the caste system; observation

Essential Question Essay

India is a vast country with twenty-eight states and union territories, each one different in may ways from the other, so generalizations about gender equality may be inappropriate. One generalization that I heard often was the southern region of India is more favorable towards the empowerment of women and more advanced in terms of societal acceptance of women as equals to men; at the same time however, a 
recentTrustLaw poll pf G20 countries shows that even in southern states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh, incidents of domestic violence against women reported on the survey are more frequent than those reported to the police. This is attributable to lack of effective police response. Overall, India ranks 105 among 135 countries according to the 2012Pew Global Gender Gap Report. This is up from 113^th place in 2011, mainly due to improvements in women's educational attainment and political empowerment . On the other hand, it ranks very low in terms of women's participation in the economy and the “health and survival” category, brought down by the numeric disparity between male and female live births. Interestingly enough, female infanticide or foeticide (the deliberate termination of pregnancies because of gender) seems to be more prevalent among wealthier Indians, meaning that there are much greater chances for boys to be raised in more comfortable and privileged conditions than there are for girls.

Women who are employed mostly work due to financial necessity; they earn about 60% of what men do for similar jobs, and only about 35% of women are in the work force. There are no numbers available for women employed in high level positions or as professional and technical workers. Although the rate of girls enrolled in elementary school is high compared to boys (practically equal) the numbers drop off considerably by the time they reach secondary school. There are a number of reasons for this: most Indians, according to the survey, feel that education for boys is more important than for girls, so if families need financial support at home, they will be more likely to pull a daughter than a son out of school so she can work. Another reason is that in many schools (and I experienced this myself in a Bangalore government school we visited) there is only one bathroom, with absolutely no accommodations made for girls who are undergoing menses. In areas where water is scarce, girls are expected to fetch water in containers from government tanks, and this could take up several hours a day. Although marriage for girls is illegal under 16 years of age, there are still areas where girls are married very young, truncating their school career.

Attitudes are slow to change, although there are NGOs at work such as the TeacherFoundation, which includes the importance of female literacy as part of its training. As one Teacher Foundation staffer expressed it, female literacy is “the single most important factor in Indian economic growth.” At least half the potential talent pool in India is left mostly idle, which ultimately will make India less competitive, unless women's education and inclusion in the workforce is accepted much more widely than it is now. Another organization, the Institute of Human Rights Education¹, working with other human rights-oriented NGOs, combats violence towards women as part of its agenda.

In classrooms, girls and boys sit on opposite sides of the room, only sitting on the same side if there is a majority of one gender (in the upper grades usually boys). In one science class I observed (5^th grade at the elementary branch of the same government school I mentioned before) the male teacher was asking, in the Kannada language, review questions, the majority of which were addressed to boys. Although occasionally a girl would raise her hand to answer, almost all students called upon were male. This to me reflects the mentality that education for boys is essential, but negligible for girls.

Conversely, at the private school I was assigned to in Hyderabad, the gap between consideration of male and female students seemed far more reduced. The first day I was there, a science fair was being held at various grade levels, and there seemed to be a fairly equal number of presentations by female students compared to male students, with the same levels of confidence and knowledge. When I asked the 7^th and 8^th grade students whether they felt that women in India had attained the same levels as men in education and in terms of opportunities, they overwhelmingly responded that inequality was a thing of the past – for them, even though boys occasionally booed the girls. They acknowledged that in some parts of the country, above all rural areas, conditions for women were still “backward.” When I spoke with a class of Standard 11 students, boys were far more outspoken in our discussion comparing American and Indian education, and girls were far more reserved. One girl asked me after class, however, about ways to improve her SAT scores, as she wished to apply to an American college.

The majority of teachers at the school are women; I found out that the average salary for a teacher there was equivalent to a year's tuition per student, which I thought meant that teachers couldn't send their own children to the school. However, since I met at least two teachers who introduced me to their student children, it seemed that they may have a steep discount. Since there is no government provision for daycare by law, this may be an employer initiative to aid female teachers. Even in Hyderabad, social life appears to be very hierarchical. even though the caste system was abolished long ago. There was a group of uniformed women at Jubilee Hills Public School who performed the cleaning, serving and other custodial duties in the school. What was unusual for me was not their presence, but rather the way in which they were treated and the deference with which they behaved towards everyone else. Teachers and administrators were dismissive, giving these “custodians” peremptory orders; otherwise they were more or less “invisible.” They themselves seemed to accept their lowly station for the most part, and were startled when in return for many days of their bringing me tea and snacks, I offered them gifts and candy. It seemed that these women were of the former “untouchable” caste; the caste system, like attitudes towards women, seems slow to change completely.

Education in India is faced by these and other challenges, such as the frowned-upon but continuing use of corporal punishment, the difficulty of communication among the states, which would like to preserve traditional languages but cannot communicate effectively without relying on English (an idiom that unites, but also places traditional values and customs at risk) and the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. Along with progress in these areas, I believe that changes are being made towards forging new attitudes towards women, especially since many male students are learning the essential value of an equal place for women in society.

¹Bajaj, M. Schooling for Social Change. Continuum, New York: 2012