Bringing the World Together One Project at a Time

     When I studied abroad in India I had the opportunity to collaborate with a community called Reach The World. It was a program that allowed me to write blogs and field notes on different topics and be connected to an elementary classroom back home in the US. I was connected to a fourth grade class and they used my blog posts in their social studies class to learn more about India. I had the chance to video chat with the class twice allowing them to come up to the computer one by one and ask me different questions about India. I loved the idea of Reach The World; being able to bring various cultures straight into the classrooms of the students. 

     A similar program to Reach The World is EPals, except this site is more collaborative and natives of each country are able to work together on projects. The main categories of this site are divided into: challenges, find classroom, projects, learning centers, and ePals Central. All of projects and activities I have looked at so far seem to range from late elementary school age up through seniors in high school. I think one of the biggest benefits of EPals is that it can be used for any subject including science, social studies, language, etc. I wish that it were also geared to students who were beyond high school as well. While students learn about different people from different countries all over the world, this website gives students the opportunities to actually meet, (virtually) connect, and make friends with these students from places like Brazil, India, Japan, etc. This helps students gain a broader understanding of the world at an early age. 

I don't know if I would use this program specifically since it is geared more towards students in elementary - high school but I would definitely want to find a program similar to this in order to give my future adult ESL students an opportunity to engage and make friends with with native English speakers outside the classroom. 

A Learner is Like a Flash Drive

A learner is like a flash drive.

     Why? With today's technology it would be hard to say that a learner is like a sponge; someone who soaks up knowledge and keeps it with them forever. Flash drives are far more realistic because for the most part, we now rely heavily on computers and various other networks to access knowledge. We don't have remember everything we are taught; rather we are taught how to access knowledge and how to store it for later use. Flash drives are a small device with memory that allow us to do just that. We simple store information and resources on the flash drive in able to access it at any point later on. 

     At the beginning of "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" written by George Siemens he discusses new trends in learning. The last bullet on his list states, "Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed). This goes back to my earlier statements of how it is no longer important to remember everything you are taught; rather you need to know where to find the information you need and how to store it for later retrieval. 

     In George Siemen's video "The Changing Nature of Knowledge" he says, "[t]oday because of the complex environments we're in, learning isn't something that's exclusively limited or occurs exclusively within an individual's mind." Learning is no longer done solely in a classroom with a teacher and textbooks, it now consists of networks formed between people and information that can be retrieved from computers at any time of the day. With those capabilities and the rate of speed that knowledge is being created these days, it is impossible to remember everything. That is why it is important to know how to store and retrieve data and why a learner is more like a flash drive than a sponge that is able to soak everything up and remember it.