Building Cross-Cultural Understanding One Classroom at a Time
During the 2010-2011 school year, TeachersFirst launched an initiative to promote cross-cultural understanding, especially between K-12 students in the United States and those in China. Here are some of the efforts and resources we have collected to begin this process. We will continue to update these pages as we discover and/or begin new activities for teachers and students to join.
A Thinking Teacher Blogs China
Follow Candace Hackett Shively, Director of K-12 Initiatives at TeachersFirst/The Source for Learning as she travels to China and meets with other educational technology teacher-leaders for an exchange of ideas and more. Please comment and ask questions during the December 2010 trip-- or after!
XW1W microblogging exchange
Leverage Twitter and other web tools in a simple way for your students to learn about real life from real kids across the world. What does your favorite pair of shoes look like?
Global Education Conference presentation:
Building Beyond Barriers: Experiences and ideas for U.S.- Chinese Cross-cultural Understanding
A panel discusses the barriers, victories, and challenges to building ongoing understanding between U.S. and Chinese teens through F2F and electronic communications in both formal and informal settings. The panel: an American high school student recently returned from China, a U.S. teacher of Chinese language--born and educated in China, and an American high school teacher planning an upcoming trip to China with American high school students. Moderated by Candace Hackett Shively of TeachersFirst.com, the discussion focuses on leveraging face to face and electronic exchange to include a broader audience and ongoing involvement. The panel shares their experiences and knowledge of classroom (formal) and outside school (informal) opportunities/challenges for exchange and dialog among teens in the U.S. and China and brainstorms possible scenarios to extend relationships to more schools and students in both countries.
Panelists:
- Nick Clark, U.S. high school student
- Rob Weed, U.S. high school student
- Donna Benson, former high school teacher and coordinator of cross-cultural travel experiences
- Lan Ziegler, Chinese language teacher in a U.S. high school, born and educated in China
Presentation links:
Nick's blog from his experiences during an immersion program in China and after his return to his U.S. high school
Lan Ziegler's teacher web page
NSLI-Y Language Programs, the program that funded Nick's trip to China
TeachersFirst's China and Cross-cultural Understanding resources
XW1W - a cross-cultural microblogging project.