Empowering students: Global Digital Citizenship Project

Intercultural Understand & Global Citizenship

These images are from Flat Connections, Global Digital Citizens, Langwiches Blog, Write our World and American TESOL Institute.

This blog is about an intended project for my international English as a Second Language (ESL) students. These ESL students recently participated in the Flat Connections Global Project in semester 1. This semester, I want to build on their new technological skills to connect and to deepen their understanding of what it means to be a responsible global citizen.

Taking challenges and risks

The project aims for students to take leadership, in a safe environment, to connect, collaborate and create with other students from diverse cultures.  Intercultural communication will challenge my students but as George Couros says,

If we are really wanting to serve our students and help them to develop to become the leaders and learners of today and the future, taking risks in our practice is ..necessary.

Intercultural Understanding

Through researching the topic of global digital citizenship and by making connections with other students, students will be engaged in discovering intercultural understanding.

Australian Curriculum:

Intercultural understanding is an essential part of living with others in the diverse world of the twenty-first century. It assists young people to become responsible local and global citizens, equipped through their education for living and working together in an interconnected world.

Collaborative Technology

By using collaborative digital technologies  – blogs,  Google Hangout and iBooks- students  will research what global digital citizenship means in theory and how they can become active responsible world citizens.

The Learning Process will be driven by student research, curiosity, student leadership, and team building:

  1. Connect: Students will write a series of blog reflections based on class activities and their own research on global digital citizenship. These blogs will be hosted on My Class Edublog site and other schools will be invited to post comments and make connections.
  2. Collaborate: Through their blog comments,  my students will respond and hence build connections and research other cultures. The aim is for students to take leadership and organize a Google Hangout on the topic of intercultural understanding and responsible global citizenship.
  3. Create: Here the aim is for students to create a collaborative iBook on the topic of what it means to be a world citizen.

Crosscultural Connections

Recently, I read an article by Alyssa J O’Brien and Anders Eriksson, Cross-Cultural Connections: Intercultural Learning for Global Citizenship. The quote below  describes the importance of taking risks, to use innovative, communicative technologies with our students to assist them in becoming safe and responsible global citizens.

… crosscultural connections can foster greater political understanding, ethical awareness, and intercultural competencies in order to bring about improved international and social relations for emerging global citizens.

Resources

As my students research and we curate our findings, I will post more resources and share. So far, the resources below have provided insight and guidance for my learning on intercultural understanding and global digital citizenship.

Intercultural Understanding & Digital Global Citizenship

TESOL

American TESOL Institute: Understand and Improving Intercultural communication Skills.

A Blended Learning Approach 

Blogging 

Mindfulness:

iBooks

Write Our World

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
4 Comments
  1. Hi Ann, this is a great project and I have a group of girls, most of whom were also in the Flat Connections project who would participate.

    • Hi Anne, I’m so happy that you and your students can collaborate. Next week we will be back at school and will start our student blog ‘About Me’ pages. Such an exciting start to semester two.

    • Hi Julie, we will share our Global Digital Citizenship iBook with you as soon as it is published. Thanks for your support. Ann

Leave a Reply to Ann Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *