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CONNECTING CLASSROOM COMMUNITIES IN THE WORLD PROJECT 

 

 

 

1. Can global education and technology be effectively integrated into and significantly enhance social studies, world languages and other major subject areas of teaching and learning rather than treated as separate and distinct subject areas?
   
2. Can a diverse cadre of teachers, already stressed by the current demands of teaching, create the necessary time and motivation to learn and apply new international uses of technology  in their classrooms?
3. Can a cost-efficient model for teacher development be created that results in positive and significant transformation of teaching and learning in classrooms to promote effective global education and make a positive difference in student achievement?
4. Can teachers, administrators, policy makers, community leaders and citizens within local, district and state educational infrastructure collaborate around the success of this demonstration project to successfully scale-up the project in the following years?
5. Will students demonstrate a significantly higher level of motivation to learn and meet education goals when offered the opportunity to engage in meaningful collaborative projects with other students around the world?
   

The C3 World Project Design

• Six professional development seminars over a 12 month period focused on utilizing existing iEARN global education curricular projects, understanding and implementing curricular uses of technology, and effective teaching pedagogy based on Harvard Universityís Graduate School of Education research into practice framework of Teaching for Understanding with Technology (Wiske, Rennebohm Franz and Breit, Jossey-Bass, 2005).
• In-class mentoring and co-teaching in which teachers could apply the new learnings in their classrooms and gain immediate collaborative support from the coaching skills of the Project Director.  Particular attention was given to coaching the alignment of the global curricular projects with district and state standards including ongoing assessment and documentation of student learning using technology.
• On-line professional development courses in which teachers could learn specific skills and gain expertise in utilizing particular curriculum in collaboration with global colleagues.
• On-line mentoring via individual and group email with the Project Director and iEARN global education lead teachers in many countries.
• Attendance at the annual iEARN International Conference for 7 days to meet face to face and plan project collaborations with other teachers engaged in this work from around the world.
• Access to iEARNís comprehensive curricular projects, interactive website, and access to its base of teacher contacts in over 110 countries.
  

Summary of C3 World Project Findings

1. Professional Development Model for Integrating International Education in the Classroom Curricula Using Technology: The successes of this demonstration project resulted in a C3 World Project Model of Integrating International Education into Classroom Curricula with three major components:

• Introduce Teachers to Possibilities for Integrating Global Education into Our Schools: What can be done to bring classrooms to the world and the world to the classrooms?
• Mentor Teacher and Student Classroom Participation in Global Curricular Collaborations:  How can it be done? 
• Build Learning Success for All Students Through Global Learning: Transformation Classroom Teaching and Learning for Todayís World: How does it make a difference for students? How does it become sustainable?

2. Speed and Depth of Implementing International Education into Classroom Teaching and Learning: Implementation of teacher professional development strategies leading to studentsí active participation in international curricular collaborations and implementation of a process for building an ever-widening collaborative community of support and involvement in international education by leaders at the local, district and state levels of education proved to be highly successful in just 12 months time.  Each of the five questions posed above was answered affirmatively. Within the C3 group, teachers planned for and participated in a more than 20 iEARN curricular projects across multiple subject areas.  They engaged directly with teachers and students in more than 20 countries.  Several C3 world teachers designed new iEARN projects including: project collaboration between a classroom in the Seattle area with a school for Arab students and a school for Jewish students in Israel and a project between a Seattle school and a school in Dakar, Senegal on the impact of cultural histories on their lives today. 

Teachers integrated the global projects into existing curriculum plans so that the projects were not added onto already demanding curriculum plans, but rather made a part of the curriculum subject areas. One C3 World Teacher expressed how the professional development project helped with integration of important subjects:

ìBefore this project (C3 World), my teaching was very segmented.  One of the problems I always had was I wanted to teach social studies, but I had to teach English and Math.  What this project did was completely turn it aroundÖI have no problem teaching social studies because thereís an English component now ñ itís just all together.  The curriculum is much more integrated.î

(Irene Hrab, C3 World Participant, Intermediate Classroom Teachers, First Place School, Seattle, Washington)

Teachers reported that students were consistently more motivated to carry out the curricular assignments using interactive technologies and carry them out with excellence because they knew other students were going to read or see their work.  A C3 World participant who teaches a Japanese Immersion classroom reported improvement in studentsí learning when preparing and doing videoconferencing and when writing email:

ìItís easier now for students to learn Japanese because they have a real connection! Videoconferencing really changed [everything]Öbefore I had a hard time asking them to write in Japanese. Because we are going to have another videoconference, I asked my students to write what they are going to ask them [their Japanese student peers].   They didnít mind to write it down ñ to write in Japanese!  Before I never thought of sending homework of writing someone [email] in Japanese, but they donít mind to do it at ALL because they know someone is reading and responding to them!  I am so impressed!  The second graders work hard. It takes a long time and they are happy to do it!î

(Hiromi Pingry, C3 World Participant, Japanese Immersion Elementary Classroom Teacher, John Stanford International School, Seattle, Washington)

Teachers learned to utilize technologies in new ways, not only to effectively communicate by email on curricular collaborations with teachers and students around the world, but also to collaborate through interactive websites, digital images, video and video conferencing. 

The C3 World model of in-class mentoring combined with one-on-one email collaboration with the project director was deeply valued by the teachers, ensuring that what was learned in seminars and through iEARN online resources was then actually implemented in classrooms to create real change in the classroom learning environment.  The teachers identified the opportunities to: 1) build a face-to-face C3 World teacher local collaborative community within an already existing national and global community of iEARN; and 2) build those relationships around a publicly stated common goal of having global connections make a difference in student learning and student lives  - were significantly important elements for integrating international education curricular projects into classroom teaching. 

Most importantly, teachers and students in these classrooms have gained an understanding that with any unfolding global event, they now have an immediate network of teachers and students around the world with whom they can immediately communicate and collaboratively build classroom learning projects.  As example, the Tsunami disaster in SE Asia was met with scores of students not only saying they wanted to help and C3 World teachers mentoring their students response using the existing iEARN interactive website,  curricular projects and their global relationships with teaching colleagues in the iEARN global community.

3. District and State Leadership for International Education in Schools: The project has proven to be such a success that local and state education leaders from the leadership in the largest urban school district to leadership in the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, have given strong encouragement to scaling up the project and bringing it to more classrooms.

4. Next Steps: It is clear that individual teachers have become highly motivated to carry out this work in their classrooms. Several of the teachers are now mentoring other teachers in their school and other schools in the community to expand this work to other classrooms.  Others have presented at state and local teacher conferences to encourage colleagues to become similarly engaged.  The next challenge is to build an ongoing support in each of their schools to: 1) continue developing the global collaborative curricular projects in C3 World teachersí classroom as onsite school models that demonstrate whatís possible for local, regional, state and national educators, including university faculty and students and policy makers; and 2) scale up international education within whole school communities.

As a result of this project, others in the community have been encouraged by these impressive results and plans have been laid to take this model to whole schools throughout the region.  In this way a model can be created that builds in the necessary school-wide support systems to encourage more teachers throughout a school to become newly engaged and to help teachers already engaged to undertake projects that lead to even more understandings and critical thinking skill building among students.

As the C3 World Model goes to scale beyond the participation of teachers and schools in 2004, the opportunity exists for transforming todayís classrooms through wide-scale implementation of international education opportunities where all teachers are integrating international collaborations throughout the curricula using new technologies and all students have opportunities for learning with global peers and shaping their world in positive ways with what they learn together in school.

Recommendations for Scalability of C3 World Professional Development Model
To build upon this successful demonstration project, it is recommended that there be support for a significant expansion of the model to include:

• Expanding the professional development model from initial one or two individual teachers per school participating in the C3 World project to a critical mass of teachers within schools to ensure sustainability of the program and increase the depth of learning among students and teachers over several years in each school. This includes increasing the cadre of mentor teachers experienced in implementing international collaborations into classroom curricula.
• Providing dissemination of the C3 World model to additional schools that have requested professional development and made a commitment to integrating international education into their school curricula.
• Providing US Department of Education  and Department of State grant funds for an expansion project in the Pacific Northwest as a match against local contributions from participating schools, local foundations and local philanthropists to ensure longer-term sustainability and commitment to insuring that every teacher and every student engages in education internationally.
  

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