Note:
This book was published by Good Year Books, Parsippany, NJ Spring
1999.
Note:
This book was published by Good Year Books, Parsippany, NJ Spring
1999.
Dedication: The book has been dedicated to Dr. Jenny Springer, Associate Superintendent of Schools, Dekalb County School District, Decatur, Georgia, USA and to the memory of Mr. Vadim Zhudov, Director of Experimental Gymnasium 710, Mosow, Russia.
The book can be ordered from Amazon.com.
The Introduction from the book follows.
We have published these materials to make them available to educators who are interested in providing their students with opportunities for global communication and environmental study. We envision these print materials as being used in conjunction with the Internet. You might think of the GTP curriculum as a "Web-assisted teaching program." In other words, you will use a variety of tools available through the Internet to foster communication among other educators and students, in conjunction with local environmental investigations. You will use e-mail to send messages to colleagues and your students will use it to establish communication with their peers around the world. You might want to use video conferencing (which is very inexpensive and easy to use) to carry out Internet conferences. You will use a browser not only to search the Internet for relevant information about the environment, but to communicate, to share data, to look at other students' data, and to see images of students and teachers using the GTP.
A "global thinking educator" combines human values of concern and appreciation of others with a strong interest in science and social issues that affect humankind. In the GTP, science is in the service of people. It is used to help solve real problems facing communities around the world. We welcome you to the GTP and hope that you and your students will be able to construct personally meaningful experiences as you use our materials.
Brief History of the Global Thinking Project
The Global Thinking Project is a grassroots environmental education project conceived in seminar rooms and classrooms in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Atlanta. The project owes its existence to the efforts of a small group of American and Russian classroom teachers who were interested in working together to learn about each other, how they taught, and how to improve the quality of learning in their classrooms. Building on a network of relationships established during the 1980's, primarily through the efforts of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, these teachers visited and taught in each others' classrooms and participated in seminars in each others' countries on teaching and learning. In the fall of 1989, they met in St. Petersburg, and agreed to work together to develop teaching materials that would
1. Empower students and teachers to get involved with important global problems and concerns,
2. Introduce students to collaborative methods and strategies of inquiry that [could] be used to solve problems locally, and provide the knowledge and technological means needed to deal with problems globally, and
3. Develop computer literacy in students that [would] allow them to use microcomputers as a telecommunications tool to collaborate with counterparts in other nations.
The first version of these teaching materials was developed in 1989-1990, based on curriculum themes and strands identified by this original group of teachers. Since then, other educators from Russia and the United States, as well as from Spain, Australia, the Czech Republic and Singapore have made important contributions. The activities included in these materials have been field tested across many cultures in grades 5-12.
The GTP Materials
The teaching materials contained in this guide provide a framework for teachers in different cultures to engage their students in local environmental research projects, as well as to collaborate with their counterparts in other cities, states, and countries through the Global Thinking Project's home page.
The Resource Guide is divided into four parts:
Part I. Introduction to Global Thinking
Chapter 1. Using the Internet to Collaborate Globally, shows you how to incorporate the resources of the World Wide Web into the Global Thinking Projects.
Chapter 2. Project Hello, introduces students to cross-cultural communication, and provides an opportunity for them to practice using the tools provided in the Global Thinking home page for research and data collection and exchange.
Part II. Environmental Inquiry Projects
Chapters 3-8 are frameworks for environmental inquiry projects which may be completed in any order. Each framework includes suggestions for incorporating Internet resources into the inquiry.
Part III. GTP Extension Activities
GTP Extension Activities are additional activities related to the Global Thinking Project contributed by participating teachers.
Part IV. GTP Learning Log
The GTP Learning Log consists of student pages for recording data and observations as they conduct the environmental inquiry projects. These pages are perforated for easy removal and photocopying.
Using the GTP Materials
The materials in this book can be used in a number of different ways. They are meant to be a framework for planning environmental investigations with your students. Each Project is accompanied by a planning guide, which includes advance planning alerts, suggested times for each activity, and sources for hands-on materials that you will need to carry out the monitoring activities.. Please read these carefully before beginning a project, since some activities need a week or two of lead time for preparation of materials.
In Conjunction with the GTP Website
The GTP materials were designed to be used with Internet connections among teachers and students in different schools. In addition to the printed materials you will find here, you will also be directed to the GTP web site (http://www.gtp.org).
GTP Website Home Page
As a Web-Assisted Program. If you plan to use the printed materials in connection with the Internet, you should use your browser to visit the GTP website. Here you will prompted to join the GTP (there is no charge to do this). Once you join, you will be entered into the GTP data base, and other teachers and schools will identify you as a GTP school and teacher. Take some time to browse around the GTP website. The most important resources in the site will probably be the home pages for each of the projects that are developed in this book. The home pages will provide you with a virtual place to work, to send information, to retrieve information from other schools, and to post discussion comments, as well as with important links related to the content of the project.
If you use the program in this way, you will not only be surfing the Net for information about environmental science and issues, but sharing the data you collect in your environment with other schools by submitting it to the GTP data base. You will also be retrieving data and participating in Web discussions. You might also want to try to take part in video conferences using the software suggested in Chapter 1. In these ways, you will be using the Web to make your classroom a hub connecting your students to the world, and as an assistant to help you make your teaching interesting, timely and relevant.
Limited Use of the Web. You can also use our materials in such a way that the Web is used in a more limited fashion. For example, you might want to use the home pages for the resources that we have identified, but not want to be totally involved in data sharing and retrieval. Or, it might be that you want to focus on local problems and use the tools and activities that we have developed to involve your students in local environmental issues.
Another example of limited use of the Web would be if you decide to try to find one other teacher or a group of students in another region of your country or in the world who want to collaborate on one of the GTP projects. In this case, you can use our Web home pages and e-mail to carryout an interesting global project.
· As Stand Alone Projects
You might be in a situation where you have very limited access to the Web, but you are interested in involving your students in environmental activities. Using the hands-on science materials suggested for each of the projects, you will be able to carry out an interesting environmental research program. When you get Web access you will be ready to join in because you will already be familiar with the content of the GTP.
· The Global Thinking Learning Log
The Global Thinking Learning Log contains reproducible pages for each project on which students may keep observations, data, and other types of records. The data tables on these pages are formatted to correspond with the data sharing tables available on the GTP Website. We suggest that you make a journal for each team of students in which to keep a record of its work during a project. Student journals will be one important source of assessment data for you.
· Where to Begin
You should begin by visiting the GTP website at http://www.gtp.org. Take some time to explore this site, and if you decide you want to join the project and participate in its various activities and events, simply fill out the form which you will find from the "Join" link on the GTP home page.
You should begin your work on the GTP with Project Hello. This will introduce you to the project, and help your students understand the significance of working on a global science project. From that point on you can select the projects you wish to do from Chapters 3-8.
· The GTP Calendar
Although you can use the materials in the GTP in any sequence you wish, teachers typically followed the schedule outlined below during the period of development of these materials. During a year, most teachers did three or four projects, selecting one or more projects from Phases I and II, and joining in on the activities for Project Earthmonth.
|
Phase I: September-December |
Phase II: January-March |
Phase III: April-May |
|
Project Hello Project Green Classroom Project Clean Air |
Project Solid Waste Project Water Watch Project Soil |
Project EarthMonth |
The Global Thinking Curriculum
· What is Global Thinking?
Ask your students what "global thinking" means to them. Their responses will probably include notions such as these:
We believe that global thinking is a new way of thinking. It represents a shift in thinking from a mechanistic, hierarchical model to a new and more flexible model based on inquiry and interdependence. It includes both the ability to anticipate the consequences of current and future actions and to participate in developing solutions to local and global environmental problems.
The Content of Global Thinking Project
The Global Thinking project integrates environmental education, cooperative learning and technology, enabling your students to become part of community of global thinkers. They will look at the environment from local as well as global perspectives, learn how to investigate environmental problems, and be exposed to ways to take action on the problems they consider to be important.
From the student's perspective, the content of the global thinking is explored through a series of "projects." Each project is a module of learning focusing on one aspect of the environment. In these projects, students are active learners, constructing their own knowledge about the environment. We have not only identified key environmental questions that students could explore, but also learning processes (such as collecting data, communicating, and inferring), and themes (such as energy, systems, interactions) that students might utilize to construct knowledge. Figure I.2 outlines the scope and sequence of the Global Thinking Project, and provides a content analysis of the curriculum.
· The Global Thinking Learning Model
We believe that knowledge is not passively received but is actively constructed by students. Therefore, this curriculum consists of a series of engaging projects that involve students in monitoring important physical and biological aspects of their environment and in collaborating within their classroom and with students in other classrooms as well. As you begin to use these materials, you will notice that each project is organized as a learning cycle, and contains suggested activities for eliciting students' prior experiences and knowledge, exploring and developing concepts about an environmental topic, and applying their knowledge through action-taking projects (see Figure i.3). These four stages-invitation, exploration, explanation and taking action, define the constructivist learning model we have used in the development of the global thinking "projects."
Establishing a Global Thinking Classroom
The materials in the Global Thinking Teacher's Guide are designed to help you establish a global thinking environment in your classroom. Many of you will be integrating the activities in this guide into your science or social studies courses. Others will be using GTP in after school science clubs, or in Saturday science programs. We know that however you choose to incorporate the projects into your curriculum, the experience will have a profound impact on the way your students think about people in other cultures, the environment, and how technology can be used creatively and for the betterment of humankind.
· A Community of Practice
The Global Thinking Project links schools together using the Internet. Each classroom participating in the project should house a computer, modem, and printer, and be linked to the Internet. This technology provides a way to link students in distant places to collaborate on the study of global problems. To facilitate the concept of "community of practice," each school in the project is assigned to membership in a Global Community consisting of about 12 schools. The success of each Global Community is dependent upon the nature of the communication among the schools in the community. Responsibility for sending and responding to e-mail rests with each school.
· Cooperative Learning
The ultimate solutions to most of the problems that students will explore in the Global Thinking Project will require cooperation among people and governments from different nations. The deterioration of ozone in the stratosphere, destruction of trees and other plants by acid precipitation and ozone, and the gradual rise in the Earth's temperature are problems that have multinational causes, and will require global solutions. Students who are involved in cooperative learning activities develop the collaborative strategies and skills needed to do this kind of work.
Mixed ability teams comprised of from two to four students work best, and can facilitate work not only when students are doing activities in the classroom or collecting data outside, but when they use the computer as well. Assigning a role to each student is one way to promote interdependence among group members while helping each student develop personal responsibility for some aspect of the activity. Rotating the roles within a group from day to day helps to develop a sense of shared leadership and teamwork among group members. The roles we will refer to in Chapters 3-8 are:
o Communicator
The communicator is responsible for asking the teacher or another team's communicator for help if the team gets stuck. If the team cannot resolve a question or decide how to follow a procedure, for example, the communicator is the only team member who can leave the team and ask the teacher for help or talk with the communicator of another team. The communicator shares with other teammates any information obtained from another communicator or the teacher. The communicator is the computer Internet operator for the team, and is responsible for keyboarding team messages, and being responsible for informing the team of messages received from other teams.
o Tracker
The tracker is responsible for tracking the team's progress through the steps of a Global Thinking activity. The tracker might point to each step of the procedures as the team completes each step, or remind the team members to read the step again if they are moving too quickly onto to the next step. The tracker is responsible for recording information for activities that require only a single team record, and should work directly with the communicators when preparing e-mail messages to other schools, or working on Internet activities.
o Checker
The checker is responsible for making sure that the team understands and completes the team task. When the team begins a Global Thinking activity, the checker makes sure that everyone understands the activity, and helps the team discuss the task before beginning. During an activity, the checker should facilitate and encourage talk about the activity. In general checker are facilitators of the team actions on the activity, but should not be construed as the leader of the team.
o Materials Manager
The materials manager is responsible for picking up and returning all supplies and equipment that the team needs for an activity. Materials managers also take responsibility for the making sure equipment, especially monitoring tools, are in good working order, and if something is damaged or broken, informs the teacher. Materials managers facilitate clean up; all members should participate in clean up!
· The Role of the Teacher
The Global Thinking teacher is a facilitator of learning. During the global thinking "projects," facilitating cooperative learning among the teams in your class and helping them become linked with student teams in other schools will be your principal roles. Your role also will include helping your students ask testable questions, working with them to identify suitable resources for their investigations, helping them take responsibility for their own learning, and providing them with access to the Internet so that they can interact with their global partners and find resources on the Web to help them with their inquiries.
· Assessing student learning
Anything students do can be used for assessment purposes. Active assessments such as class brainstorming, student journals and reports, e-mail, questionnaires, and concept maps allow teachers to find out more about what and how students are thinking than traditional paper and pencil tests. Portfolios provide information about student learning over time. We encourage you to explore these and other forms of authentic assessment as you document the nature and extent of your students' learning.
Students' learning through the GTP takes many forms. During field tests of the GTP, teachers have noted that students learned actual physical skills ("how pollution can be measured," "how to make observations about our local study site), as well as higher order thinking skills related to experimental design and analysis ("designing scientific experiments to find out about the environment") and problem solving ("Everyone has a part in protecting the environment."). But the most important learnings, according to the teachers we've heard from, were the affective outcomes of using the Internet to connect with other students around the world. These include an awareness of student attitudes in different countries ("Students in other countries are environmentally aware and concerned;" "Kids are very much alike in different countries."), respect for different views, and excitement about the potential of the Internet for fostering international communication and collaboration.