The Cosmopolitan Classroom 2.0: Inventive teachers connect classrooms 7000 miles apart

Online networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have made it easier for young people to socialize and for professionals to conduct business around the world, but using web tools in the classroom to bring lessons to life for students requires a particularly innovative teacher.

“Using technology that my students take for granted has helped them realize that the world is both smaller and larger than they ever imagined,” observed Joel Fouser of Del Norte High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Fouser was one of 15 outstanding teachers awarded grants to travel to 10 countries for team teaching and joint educational projects in April 2009 as part of the Teaching Excellence and Achievement (TEA) program, funded by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by IREX.

During his 10-day exchange to Sayram, Kazakhstan, Fouser overcame the 12-hour time difference to link his host school students with his students back home through an internet-based video conference.

“I was beyond nervous that everything would fall into place,” Fouser recalls. “When local Kazakh media began showing up, I knew that this was a big deal.”

The live webcast featured songs in four languages, dancing, and an opportunity for two classrooms to discuss in real time the similarities of student life and interests in two very different places. Kazakhstani host teacher Dilorom Mirsaliyeva believes the experience opened a window on America for her students and plans to host more webcasts in the fall when the students return to school.

“My students had a great opportunity to interact with American students,” Mirsaliyeva reflected. “For several minutes they could not believe that they could see real American schools, classes, teachers, and students, and could communicate and exchange information with them.”

English teacher Chon Lee of Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, California didn’t have the ability to create a live connection with his class back home from his host school in Azerbaijan. Instead, his class mobilized school and community groups in Santa Monica to raise more than $500 to lend through an international microfinance organization.

Lee’s students connected their funds to motivated borrowers back in Azerbaijan with web-based management tools. Lee’s students also followed Peace Corps volunteers’ blogs and resources adapted from the Peace Corps’ Paul D. Coverdell World Wise Schools project to deepen their knowledge of the regions they studied in class.

Lee developed lessons about Azeri poetry, which the Santa Monica students then compare to South African and Cambodian poets. Their connection to people in Azerbaijan through microfinance efforts and their teacher’s personal stories helps the students relate to the poets they are studying and see how culture is reflected in writing, Lee says.

Without reliable internet in Bangladesh, Clare Sisisky of the Center for the Humanities at Hermitage High School in Richmond, Virginia conducted a full-day workshop on creating teaching aids and using games for student assessment. The district teachers were so impressed that they asked her to make a training video to be shared at future workshops in the school and throughout the region.

“I had been to Southeast Asia,” Sisisky recalls, “but I was still surprised by the enthusiasm of teachers for learning and for change.”

Sisisky’s video is just one more way even simple technology is being used by innovative educators to impact students, as the tape is shared from teacher to teacher in one rural district of Bangladesh and beyond. By magnifying existing social and professional networks beyond the borders of a single country, TEA teachers are improving the quality of learning and building connections among students all over the globe.