Education today: Head in the sand?


In another recent book chapter, Global Education Greenhouse: Constructing and Organizing online Global knowledge, Karen and I delve into the possibility of online collaboration in the makings of global knowledge. We were really astounded by how insular our educational systems are in spite of so much talk on globalization! While companies are merging and partnerships across industries are happening across borders that were unthinkable even a decade ago, somehow our educational system continues to be very "local"...very nationalistic.

How do we make education globally relevant and applicable? Can we inspire students to think transnationally and cross-culturally? How is global thinking related to innovation?

We basically acknowledge that there is a crisis in our current educational system as we are poorly preparing our students for this global era. Tye states that "global awareness will become the first new basic skill of the twenty-first century, as computer literacy has so rapidly become a basic skill in the final decades of the twentieth century.” So true.

So Global Education Greenhouse (GEG) is one attempt to address this need - basically a portal or Google of curriculum if you may across cultures and nations. This is based on Karen's prior work on connecting cultures through online learning in her peace diaries initiative. After all, isn't it time we start to look at what's around us?

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