Special Focus on The Learner

By Douglass Crouse

The Learner
globally ConnECtEd and Collaborating
Meaningful Projects Can Bring together students across the World

or language students, learning about

the daily world of native speakers once
meant reading watered-down accounts in
textbooks. Pen-pal and key-pal exchanges
represented a leap forward, allowing distant
peers to interact with one another directly
by writing letters and e-mails, and through
instant messaging. Then came Skype, with
its face-to-face, real-time immediacy.
That progression of possibilities continues in the hands of a growing number of
the worlds educators, who are marrying
online communication to the 21st century
imperatives of critical thinking and collaboration across international boundaries. From
classrooms in far-flung states and on different continents, many learners today possess
the means of exploring common ground
between their personal and global realities,
using online resources that offer access at
any time at little or no cost.
In some of the most innovative examples,
global collaborative projects offer ways of
deepening student learning about the worlds
common challenges while engaging citizens
of all ages and backgrounds in the search for
creative solutions, says Honor Moorman, one
of the movements leading advocates. The
ultimate goal, she and other proponents say, is
for students to learn not merely about, but together with their peers from around the world.
Several years ago, Moorman and Cassie
Allen, her colleague at The International
School of the Americas in San Antonio, TX,
created a course on global leadership that
initially focused on allowing students to
pursue their own topics of interest. That idea
evolved as the two teachers considered the
elements of deeper learning they ultimately
sought for their students: mastering core
academic content, thinking critically and
solving complex problems, working together
and communicating effectively, and learning
how to learn.
38

If our students are going to need to be

able to collaborate professionally with colleagues from around the worldand increasingly they areI believe we need to give
them the opportunity to develop those skills
in school, says Moorman, now Associate
Director for Professional Development and
Curriculum at Asia Society in New York City.
I see global collaborative projects as the key
way to help prepare students for the global
workforce and for active global citizenship.
Moorman connected with the Flat
Classroom Project. As in the case of similarly
minded groups such as TakingITGlobal and
Global Nomads Group, Flat Classrooms
website offers access to thematic projects
and a platform for group communicationa
complete set of tools, in other words, allowing teachers and students to stay in touch
and create content.
Moorman has completed seven projects,
each time seeking to sharpen her rolein a
term she heard from education blogger Will
Richardsonas connector: linking her
students to teachers, students, and experts
here and in other countries as they take on
the planets big issues.
Indeed, preparing learners for the workforce requires school curricula that put a heavy
focus on real-world problem solving, says
Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup
Education. Young American workers who
report acquiring and practicing 21st century
skills in their last year of school are more likely
to say they have higher work quality, according to the results of a study Gallup conducted
in collaboration with Microsoft Partners in
Learning and the Pearson Foundation.
Educators increasingly see the importance
of bringing the outside world into the classroom. Connect All Schools, a consortium of
partner groups that include ACTFL and the
National Education Association, aims to con-

nect every school in the United States with

another elsewhere in the world by 2016.

Initial steps
So, how might one get started with global
collaboration? Teachers can create their
own projects from scratch with domestic
or overseas partnerssites such as epals.
com allow educators from around the world
to pair up their classesor join an existing project based on country and language.
Many U.S.-based teachers choose to pair up
with international schools because they have
similar curriculum, educational methods and
levels of technology, and because English is
usually the language of instruction. But finding a good match among foreign schools is
becoming easiergood news for those looking for authentic language interaction.
Agreeing upon a common set of objectives, timetable, and schedule of deadlines
and assessments is critical for success, while
posingand postingcarefully considered essential questions helps maintain the
projects momentum, Moorman says. What
is a community? is a good start, but she
proposes this expanded version: What can
we learn about how to improve our community by exploring the way other people in
the world think about theirs?
In articulating objectives, project architects often incorporate 21st century skills (i.e,
communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity) and global competencies
as spelled out in the Council of Chief State
School Officers EdSteps Project, a partnership with the Asia Society Partnership for
Global Learning. Those competencies consist
of students investigating the world, recognizing their own and others perspectives, communicating clearly their ideas, and turning
those ideas into action.
Deb Blaz, an author of several books on
language instruction and chair of the world

The Language Educator

August 2013

Personalizing the Language Learning Experience

languages department at Angola High School

in Indiana, had those considerations in mind
when she launched a project linking her
French students with schools in France and
Poland. Their online exchanges ultimately
culminated this spring in a Web-based almanach with culturally based articles written and
edited by the students, a project that garnered
national awards for her European partners.
Communication during a project can be
synchronous (such as through videoconferences or other interactions that happen in real
time) or asynchronous (through blogs, wikis,
podcasts, or other types of recordings designed
for anytime access). In both cases, the success
of collaborative projects is often determined by
how well all parties meet their deadlines.
Blaz has had experiences with foreign
partners who have come through consistently in that regard, and a few with others
who couldnt carry their weight. For this
type of work, its important to find someone
as enthusiastic as you are and who is able to
commit to meeting the time demands, Blaz
says. It works well only if the other teachers
are conscientious and meet deadlines.
To date, the majority of global collaborative projects undertaken have been conducted in English. World language teachers
face the added challenge of getting students
to use the target language not just in the
content creation phase of the project, but
during planning activities and discussions
in the classroom. This can be especially
tricky during the project setup period, when
discussions focus on the project rationale,
logistics, and relevant technologies.
It is easy in the early stage for students
to get frustrated regardless of language, says
Moorman, whose projects were in English. She
spent the first few days of each project making
sure every student understood the technological ins and outs, regularly repeating her mantra
of patience, persistence, and problem solving.
In her case, Blaz found that students
either already had used a particular technology or, in the case of presentational tools
such as Voki (www.voki.com) and Prezi
(prezi.com), they quickly learned how each
worked. That limited the English she needed
to use in class. Coordinating language use
with her partner schools was trickier, but
The Language Educator

Above:

Oroville High School hosts visiting students

from the Dominican Republic. They are shown here
at a baseball game in Washington.

left:

Authentic activities teach learners about life in

the target culture. Shown here, Oroville students
visiting the Dominican Republic.

the teams found a system that worked: the

French students would write in English and
Blazs students would write back in French,
with each group offering gentle corrections to the other. It helped, Blaz says, that
the students proficiency levels were fairly
evenly matched.
Students were grouped in twos and
threes; they then joined together with students from each of the other schools, with
each school pair or trio posting as a group.
That way, if you have a kid who is absent
the group can keep going, Blaz says. With
e-mail exchanges, if a student is absent, it
kind of falls apart. With the group approach,
one student would be typing, one would be
looking things up, and the third would be
praiserproofreader for the international
students work.
How do learners feel about collaborating across borders and cultures? This past
years almanach project was Liz Lungs second
international collaboration as one of Blazs
students. Working around the differences in
vacation time between Europe and the United
States was one of the biggest challenges, says
Lung, who was a junior French 4 student at
the time. Another was the six- and seven-hour
time difference, which allowed for just one
live chat during the spring project. Posting
comments on a blog proved more effective in
any case, however, because students could go
back repeatedly and read them. And ultimately, the participants chatted online on their

August 2013

own outside the confines of the project

exactly as Blaz had hoped they would.
Lung, a versatile musician who will be
returning to Angola High this fall as a senior,
says the project gave her insight into the lives
and interests of French teens, as well as the
confidence to consider international possibilities as she plans for a career in music therapy.
Doing this type of collaborative work
showed me that I can communicate with
people in other countries, that its not as
scary as I once thought, she says. A common thing you hear kids say in school is,
How am I ever going to use this in life? If
more students were able to do these kinds of
projects, theyd be able to apply what they
are learning as they learn it.

tackling the Planets Problems

Underpinning global collaborative projects is
the belief that our students can play a role in
addressing worldwide issues such as hunger,
poverty, and pollutionand that there is
no reason to wait until after graduation to
take action. Programs including Challenge
20/20 and TakingITGlobal help teachers pair
up their classrooms to investigate problems
identified in the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It was more than a decade ago that Pamela Valentine oversaw the first science-based
project between students at The International School of the Americas in San Antonio
39

resources

Organizations

There is much assistance out there aimed

at helping educators join an existing
global collaborative project or start their
own. Here are just a few resources recommended by seasoned collaborators.

Most sites include example-project

synopses and videos

Honor Moormans blog

honormoorman.me/

Additional resources on global

collaboration from Moorman
bitly.com/bundles/hmoorman/e

Kim Cofinos step-by-step guide to

getting started
tinyurl.com/cofino-guide

TakingITGlobals Making the

Connection guide

classroom20.com

Connect All Schools

connectallschools.org

ePals
epals.com

Flat Classroom
flatclassroomproject.net

Global Nomads Groups Pulse program

gng.org/programs/program/pulseprograms-2013-2014-3/

iEARN
iearn.org

Global Education Conference Network

QuadBlogging

globaleducationconference.com

quadblogging.net

The Global Classroom Project

(VoiceThread)

Skype in the Classroom

Student almanach (Deb Blazs threeschool project)

tinyurl.com/lf5tuyb

administered by the International Education

and Resource Network (iEARN.)
While the technology available at the Dominican school could not support videoconferencing, an exchange that included home
stays with Dominican families allowed students and teachers from Oroville to interact in
Spanish and explore the Caribbean countrys
culture. The Dominican students who had
been hosts then became guests in Oroville.
The first [exchange] was so successful
that students from our school raised funds to
be able to not only go to the Dominican Republic themselves, but to support the group
of Dominicans coming to our town, says
Steve Quick, who was principal of Oroville
High School at the time of the project and
now serves as district superintendent.
Students from the three schools planted
trees in New York as part of the Million Tree
Campaign and shared their project experiences at the April 2010 Youth CaN conference
in New York. [View a video of the project by
searching for Success Stories at us.iearn.org.]
Many of the students have remained in contact
through e-mail and Facebook, Quick says, and
plans are in the works for new collaborations
and international exchanges this year.

Classroom 2.0

tinyurl.com/p5jdqbd

tinyurl.com/nvnu4t4

Special Focus on The Learner

education.skype.com/

Publications
Educating for Global Competence:
Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World
(PDF)
asiasociety.org/files/bookglobalcompetence.pdf

Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds:

Move to Global Collaboration One Step at
a Time by Julie Lindsay and Vicki A. Davis

Honor Moorman runs a simulated

collaborative project for session attendees at Asia Society's Partnership
for Global Learning Conference in
New York City this past June.

and peers at Takayama Nishi High School

in Japan. Students at each school took water
samples from nearby rivers and gathered
data on their local insect populations, then
shared data via videoconference.
This was in 2000 and we had lots of
technical challenges with district firewalls,
says Valentine, then the Texas schools
technology coordinator. But students loved
40

at every Level

interacting and making the presentations

and graphs. A similar project took place in
2003, with Valentine coordinating teachers
visits to each others countries. At one point,
she even took on the role of Japanese teacher
to ensure the program continued. Interest
and enrollment really took off because of
these exchanges, she says.
Protection of the environment is a
popular passion for student collaborators. In a project focused on the problem
of deforestation, students at Oroville High
School in Washington shared ideas online
and in person with schools in New York City
and the Dominican Republic, followed by
visits to each school. The Tres Bosques, Un
Mundo project spanned 20092010 and was
sponsored by the U.S. State Departments
Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs and

Many universities are also encouraging their

undergraduates to think, collaborate, and
even teach globally. At Kean University,
pre-service teachers soon will be among the
first in New Jersey to take required coursework aimed at cultivating student global
competencies in their physical and virtual
classrooms. The goal, says Janis Jensen,
Director of Keans School for Global Education and Innovation, is to provide learning
experiences that focus on the pedagogical
practices, perspective building and resources
[these students need] to teach the global dimensions of their specific content area and to
participate in field experiences that support
the development of global perspectives.
Many schools have made recognized
strides in globalizing their curricula,
including Indiana University, University
of North Carolina-Charlotte, and others
highlighted in a series of case studies on the

The Language Educator

August 2013

Personalizing the Language Learning Experience

Global Teacher Education site (globalteachereducation.org).

Randa Duvick, a Professor of French at
Valparaiso University in Indiana, launched
a communicative project this past year with
Amadou Sall, a Senegalese professor she had
met at an international education seminar
in Dakar in June 2012. Despite differences
in their academic calendars and some sound
quality challenges, they were able to hold
two, 40-minute Skype calls between Salls
two high school English classes and Duvicks
third-semester French students.
Prior to the call, students wrote and
shared short paragraphs describing themselves in their language of study. They then
brainstormed and practiced questions. Some
were predictable: What are you studying? What is the weather like? But others
grew out of the Valparaiso students study
of Senegalese culture, in particular through
a song called Ouvrez les frontires by
Ivoirien reggae artist Tiken Jah Fakoly. We
had talked quite a bit about the linguistic
diversity of Senegalmy students were
interested to know that most of the students
spoke Wolof at home, with a few Serere
speakers, Duvick said. To follow up, the
Valparaiso students created a wiki presenting their university and American culture for
their Senegalese peers to access.
Duvick and Sall remain in contact and
plan to continue their project this fall, applying a few lessons learned. It is important,
for example, that instructors planning to
connect via Skype test the technology in
advance, reproducing as much as possible
the conditions of the student groups call,
Duvick says. She also found it useful to have
a microphone at the front of the room and
rotate students as they posed questions.
Be sure to give students adequate time to
rehearse those questions, Duvick cautions.
Her students discovered that their Senegalese
peers had some trouble understanding their
American accents, and the Senegalese students had a tough time wrestling with certain
English idioms. Duvick recognizes that such
challenges are a big part of learning a second
language. But if I can reduce some of these
difficulties up front, well have a more effective communicative experience overall.

In giving language students adequate opportunities for meaningful online collaboration, U.S. colleges collectively have some
work ahead of them, says Kevin Gaugler,
Associate Professor of Spanish and Director
of First Year Seminars at Marist College in
Poughkeepsie, NY.
I have not seen the kind of growth in
collaborative endeavors that one would
expect given that the Web supposedly [has]
been world-wide for quite some time,
says Gaugler, who helped create and was a
lead instructor for an award-winning course
called iDentity Quest, in which students
traveled abroad and created podcasts based
on interviews with citizens on the theme of
regional and national identity.
One challenge, Gaugler says, is that many
instructors still link up and organize projects
on a class-by-class basis. Better, he contends,
would be a platform for collaborative work
across languages and cultures that bypasses
the need for instructor involvement, or
makes it optional. He sees great potential in

Getting starteD
Curious about collaborating? Eager to connect your students with peers in faraway
classrooms? Honor Moorman recommends
asking yourself the following questions at
the start of your planning process:
What are your project goals? How will you
incorporate your content area standards in
addition to giving your students opportunities for developing global competencies?
What time frame do you have in mind?
Are you looking for a long-term project or
a short-term one?
What scope do you have in mind? Are you
looking to connect with a single teacher/
classroom/school or multiple partners?
What kind of partner(s) are you looking
for? Grade level? Subject area? Location?
A good next step is to check out teacher
technologist Kim Cofinos step-by-step guide
to collaborative projects on her Always Learning blog. [See link in the Resources box.]
When you are ready to search for potential partners, check out channels such as
the Global Education Conference network
and Classroom 2.0 community. This latter
network includes a Distance Collaboration
Group page where teachers can list projects

the growth of Massive Open Online Courses,

(MOOCs), where in many cases students
self-organize based on language to work
through the material together.
What I find so compelling about the
groups that form on social networks around
MOOCs is that the exchanges are about
the context of the course and not about a
language exchange itself, he says. If we
are to seek truly authentic conversation, I
can think of few scenarios outside of foreign
study that would provide a student with
such a rich experience.
Giving students such outlets may require
universities to move further away from
course-based systems, he says. But would it
not be wonderful for our language students
to take part in a non-English-based MOOC
or other online course in order to learn other
subject material and interact with others in a
language not their own?
Douglass Crouse is a contributing writer to The
Language Educator. He also teaches French at Sparta
Middle School in Sparta, New Jersey.

and connect with one another. Other options

include ePals and Skype in the Classroom.
If you are looking to get your feet wet
with a structured, short-term option, Global
Nomads Group offers its Pulse Program,
which links up to four schools at a time
through interactive videoconferences on
specific topics. The program requires that
you view an introduction video and gives
step-by-step instructions for registering
and ensuring you have the right technology
in place in advance of the first interactive
videoconference.
Another basic option that is well-suited
for language learners is QuadBlogging, in
which one focus group of students writes
blog posts on a given topic over the course of
a week and groups from three other schools
comment. The groups rotate weekly until each
has taken a turn as the focus group.
Ready to move beyond the basics? For
those seeking in-depth training, Flat Classroom offers a course accredited through the
University of Northern Iowa.
Whatever path you take, global collaborative projects can help put learners firmly in
charge of their own education, encouraging
real world experience and interactions with
others in the target culture.