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Mind Expanding Experiences

Posted in Uncategorized, Weekly Post, tagged authentic data, big data, doctoral program, education theory, educational engagement, global competency, guided inquiry, makerspace, makey makey, media design skills, microbit, national air and space museum, pbl, steam education, stem-ah, students as makers, teacher innovator institute, udvar-hazy center, university of northern colorado on August 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »

A mural of the Lunar Roving Vehicle and an Apollo astronaut in the National Air and Space Museum, where we held our Teacher Innovator Institute

This past week I participated in two programs that will impact my teaching philosophy greatly over the remainder of my career.

As reported in my previous post, I attended the Teacher Innovator Institute sponsored by the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. This was a two-week workshop that focused on education strategies and technologies. I had to leave that workshop a few days early to travel to my second program, a mandatory orientation seminar in Loveland, Colorado for my Doctorate of Education (EdD) in Innovation and Education Reform at the University of Northern Colorado. Both programs spoke of education theories and reform movements, and I have been trying to wrap my brain around them ever since (and will continue to do so for the next 3-4 years).

Part of American University campus, where we stayed in dorms for the Teacher Innovator Institute

Let me attempt to explain the first half of the week, where we learned about Guided Inquiry and how to integrate Makerspaces into our STEM classrooms. Then I will give a brief introduction to our orientation meeting in Colorado, although I’m not nearly ready to summarize it all yet.

Group of TII teachers in the conference room on the third floor of the National Air and Space Museum, learning about Guided Inquiry and working on our lesson plans and projects.

Guided Inquiry

On Monday, July 22 we met in the third floor conference room in the Air and Space Museum to learn and practice Guided Inquiry with Leslie Maniotes, who has founded this strategy along with Carol Kuhlthau and Ann Caspari. It was a fairly specific set of steps for shaping and guiding inquiry, designed mostly for doing library research but certainly adaptable to science and technology education. Some of the main points include finding that “third space” where the students’ world and the curriculum align and gradually releasing the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student through a series of stages (focused instruction, guided instruction, collaborative learning, and independent learning) characterized by the teacher statements: I do it, we do it, you do it together, and your do it alone. This is similar to the guided practice model of Madeline Kahn I’ve often used for teaching skills such as algebra problem solving.

Working on our lesson plans using the Guided Inquiry model.

Their main model involves eight phases for the inquiry process, starting with an Opener or hook that provokes interest in the subject, then an Immerse phase to build student background knowledge as a community. This is done by the teacher so that students will have the proper schema or framework from which to understand the subject – without this phase, most research projects go astray or never get off the ground because the students don’t know enough to know where to begin or even the extent of their own ignorance. The next phase is Explore, where the students dig in on their own and follow ideas related to the topic, to dip their toes into the pool and look around. They skim and scan and write down whatever piques their interest in a research journal.

The next phase begins the actual work of research. Students Identify what ideas and sub-topics they are most interested in by reviewing their journals, pausing, and pondering what questions they have and developing a concept map of what they know so far. They analyze their research questions according to their interest level, the resources they have available, the task they are asked to produce, and their available time.

A group of teachers posing at Hamilton’s, a restaurant in Washington, D.C.

The final phases are fairly standard: to Gather information through research or primary sources, then Create the final product (paper, presentation, etc.), then Share their product in an authentic way (presentation, blog post, etc.), and to Evaluate what they have learned including the content and processes used.

I have blundered along assigning students to do research papers and other types of inquiry without the proper guidance or background knowledge, then have wondered why they flounder. This process, once I adapt it for science inquiry, will be of great benefit for my students.

A World War II vintage sea plane, similar to ones that my Uncle Dean flew during the war, at the Udvar-Hazy extension of the Air and Space Museum.

Makerspaces

On my final day at the Teacher Innovator Institute we were at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. Josh Ajima, a lead maker teacher evangelist in Loudoun County Schools, presented ideas for incorporating makerspaces into our curricula. A makerspace doesn’t have to be full of high tech CNC routers, laser cutters, and 3D printers. It can be as simple as a Ziploc bag for each student with a few simple items inside, such as a CR2032 button battery, a color LED light, a small buzzer motor, a few business cards, a plastic drinking straw, and a purple crayon. He leads a program called DesignMakeTeach and told us about the stone soup model of makerspaces – start with something, no matter how simple, then add to it as you can.

The Mr. Tetris Makey game, created by one of the teacher groups.

It is like the story of the man with the soup pot who came to a village and put water and a stone in the pot, then heated it up and claimed he was making soup for the whole village. As he sampled the hot water, he would say, “You know what would make this? A few carrots. Does anyone have carrots?” And someone would bring a few carrots. Then potatoes, celery, salt, and finally a little meat here and there until he had a tasty soup that fed the entire village. All he brought to the table was the pot and imagination, and the village provided the rest for itself.

D.C. Metro Mania Makey game. The idea is to see who can navigate the stations correctly to get to different destinations.

Our abilities as maker-teachers develop through stages. First, we have to become makers ourselves. Then we educate students as a teacher, then we become a coach to train other teachers. He spoke of the Three Conflicts in martial arts – how to master a martial art, one must not just train the hands, but also the head and the heart. It is the same with making. We focus too much on the hands part, but don’t apply the mind or the heart to engage students in how making fits in with their lives and gives expression to their feelings. I had never thought about the Zen of Making before.

Dance Dance Revolution Makey game

We began by watching part of the video “Harold and The Purple Crayon” on how all it takes to express imagination and make is a purple crayon. We used the contents of our Ziploc bag starter kit to build a light saber and make a Buzz Bot. This could be a great way to introduce electricity and circuits to my physics class for about $2.50 per student. I started thinking of what I will do with the grant money for this institute and how to build my own portable makerspace with a cart, plastic tubs, and a little imagination.

The Musical Chair Makey game. Tap your feet and hands on the legs and arms to play music.

After a presentation by two archivists at the NASM (which brought back memories of my time at the Chemical Heritage Foundation ten years ago), Josh continued by providing us each with a Makey Makey and a Microbit. I had only recently (one month ago) been to presentations at a Utah STEM education conference were I first learned about Microbits, and saw Makey Makeys, Ozobots, and Spheros in action. Now I have the means and some training to take this further.

Assistive tech Makey project – tap the contacts to play sounds that say “yes”, “no”, “sad”, “toilet”, “food”, and “water.”

We divided up into teams to use the Makey Makeys to create physical interfaces for games and other uses. Never having used one before, I wandered around and observed what the groups were doing and took videos and photos to gather ideas for my classes. The Makey Makeys use Scratch for a programming language, then allow contact switches to be made from pieces of aluminum foil attached by alligator clips to the Makey Makey, with another clip on the player’s wrist to provide a galvanic skin contact that would complete the circuit. As players touched different contacts, the Makey Makey would send different inputs to the Scratch program to play the game.

Learning to program Microbits

One group did a Tetris robot interface – press the hands to move the Tetris pieces left or right, touch the feet to rotate them clockwise or counterclockwise, touch a fifth contact to drop the piece in place. Another team did a Dance Dance Revolution, another team did a Whack-a-Mole using an aluminum foil hammer and different contacts for the positions where the moles might pop up. One team created a physical Pac Man game. Another team designed a literal musical chair – they took an office chair and put different contacts on the five wheeled legs and the arms so that each would play a different note. One team even made a D.C. Metro Mania game, with the Metro system stops as possible contacts so that students would have to navigate to get from one point to another through Gallery Place, Metro Center, or L’Enfant Plaza. My team created an accessibility board for students unable to speak so that they could touch different contacts to express needs, such as needing to go potty or to eat, drink or say yes or no.

Group of teachers learning to program Microbits

I had heard of Makey Makeys before and had thought them too basic to be useful for a high school class. I was wrong. Although these games are preprogrammed, learning how to make the contacts, hook up the boards, and provide the inputs to the game is a highly sophisticated but very doable project. I can get into this, so my students will, too.

Groups working on Microbits during out Makerspace training.

We also tried out Microbits, a small programmable board with USB input/output and programmability, a small LED screen, and thermometer and accelerometer sensors for only about $16. Carl Lyman had shown me these at the STEM conference, and now I have my own to play with. These could come in handy for various physics experiments.

A group shot of the 2019 cohort of the Teacher Innovator Institute in front of the space shuttle Columbia; July 23, 2019.

Stuck in Chicago

We took photos of our entire group by the space shuttle Columbia and in our red TII polo shirts on the stairs, since this was my last day with the group. As the rest were boarding the bus back to American University, I stood on the curve and ordered an Uber driver up to take me to Reagan National Airport. I had a great conversation with the driver, Mike, on the way through rush hour traffic. Once there, I discovered that my United flight through Chicago was delayed because of weather and that I would miss my connecting flight to Denver. I was able to transfer to a slightly earlier flight, but arrived in Chicago at 11:00 and still missed my connection. The next United flight from Chicago to Denver wasn’t until 5:30 in the morning, so I had to try to sleep on the benches in O’Hare international. Fortunately I had my hamburger pillow with me, and the lady at the United desk gave me an overnight kit with a water bottle, toothbrush, paste, deoderant, and even TicTacs in it. I managed to get about three hours of interrupted sleep.

An underground passage at Chicago O-Hare Airport.

Cohort 7

I arrived in Denver at 7:00 and got my bags and a shuttle van to the Payless rental car lot. I drove from there straight across the tollway to I-25 and north to Loveland, passing my motel just off the Longmont exit on the way but without time to stop and freshen up. I had trouble finding the UNCo extension campus – I finally drove past a building with the sign on the side more by accident than anything else – and was 30 minutes late for the initial meeting. I came in just as the last of my cohort was introducing herself, so I went next and apologized for being late. There are eleven people in Cohort 7, and over the next three days I got to know them fairly well. All are very sharp and experienced educators with varying research interests and backgrounds that will make the next few years interesting.

An almost deserted O”Hare airport at about 4:30 am. Not my favorite place to spend the night.

We had a presentation on how to use the university library system to look up articles and do interlibrary loans as an online program. I will now have access to most of the educational research available, a much deeper resource than I could achieve with a simple Google Internet search, which will help me learn more about my seven chosen research topics.

Thinking through my interests as I have prepared for this orientation seminar over the last two months, I have narrowed my personal research interests down to seven major topics. These are the following:

Project vs. Problem Based Learning:

I stumbled upon project-based learning as an educational strategy during my third year of teaching and have used it successfully ever since, with most of my classes completing 1-2 major projects per year. I want to see just how effective PBL truly is – does it actually improve retention and motivation? What effect does it have on test scores? How do other teachers effectively use PBL? Most specifically, I wonder about how teachers create a culture of excellence and quality with PBL – in other words, how can students achieve professional level results with their projects?

A photo of the Enola Gay, the B-52 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Since this was my last day at the Institute, I wandered around the Udvar-Hazy Center and took photos. It is a huge place!

STEAM Education (or STEM-AH):

I have successfully incorporated the arts, history, and humanities into my STEM classes (what I like to call STEM with Arts and History, or STEM-AH, because arts and history put the “Ah!” into STEM). Beyond my own anecdotal evidence I want to know how effective STEAM education truly is and what the theoretical frameworks are for using it. Why should art and history be part of STEM education?

Using Authentic Data in the STEM Classroom:

As part of our orientation seminar, we each went through a detailed analysis of possible research topics and how we would approach answering our research questions and disquietudes. I chose this topic since it is the most concrete of the six I have chosen. How can Big Data be utilized and translated for a high school STEM classroom? What datasets exist, how do I find and download them, what software is out there for analyzing the data, and what tutorials exist (or need to be created) to assist in this process? I will be attending the Teacher Research Data Conference again this fall and will focus much of my attention on answering these questions.

The Concorde supersonic jet, along with other airplanes.

Media Design Skills in the STEAM Classroom:

As a media design and STEM teacher in small schools and a magnet school, I have incorporated a lot of media design technology into my projects. Hopefully you’ve seen this in the various posts I’ve done on this site. This includes using 3D modeling and animation, video production, graphic design with both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and other skills. How do learning these skills assist STEM students and teachers? Why are media literacy and design thinking important in STEM classrooms? What models exist out there, including the use of Makerspaces, to effectively teach academic subjects? Josh’s presentation showed how his students use 3D modeling and printing to enhance history (such as the amazing Hidden Figures shadow lanterns he made) and I’ve had some success at this, but what models of excellent practice can I draw from and build a theoretical framework behind?

Global Competency in STEM Classes:

How can teachers best incorporate a global awareness perspective into their classes to enhance STEM learning? Here is where problem-based learning may come in. Again, I want to look at excellent models that are already out there and build a general community of practice, with help from all the resources I’ve gained from the State Department and elsewhere.

A Soviet MiG fighter on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Excellence in Education:

What does it take for a school (or teacher) to be considered excellent? I’m not looking for a list of factors, but more a set of excellent practices. This orientation class has cured me of thinking in terms of “best practice” because it implies that there is one best way of doing something, which isn’t true. Educational excellence is found in many different types of practices and classrooms from a wide variety of teachers and schools. So this would lean towards a more case-study approach, visiting classrooms and teachers and seeing what works for them and their students. I want to set up a mixed-methods survey of excellent teachers, those that have been identified through winning awards or being chosen for professional development opportunities. I’ve developed a preliminary questionnaire for this, but didn’t actually use it during my last two weeks even though I did talk to many teachers informally about the questions on it. But I will have more time next summer to do this more formally.

Levels of Engagement Model:

I also want to find evidence for my Levels of Engagement model and why we should train students to become teachers, scientists, engineers, programmers, makers, and artists. Do students move through stages, beginning with ignorance and progressing through passive, to active, to creative types of educational activities? What kinds of research have been done about student engagement and what kinds of research can I do to test my model?

The USS Enterprise NC 1701, on display at the National Air and Space Museum. This is the production model for the original series.

On this first day of our seminar we also saw presentations and posters by the previous cohorts on the history of education and social justice and educational theorists. I am still trying to wrap my head around all of this and the names that were flying through the air like leaves in a storm – Wittgenstein, Vygotsky, Bruner, Bloom, Piaget, Papert, Montessori, Eisner, and many others. I know there will be entire classes on these theories and theorists, but I hope to create some sort of diagram or study aid before we get too deep.

I will speak about these theories, and the other two days of my seminar class, at length in a later post.

My next steps, now that I am home, will be to work through my notes for both programs and try to work out a strategy for proceeding. I need to create lesson plans for this coming year, in addition to reorganizing my classroom. I need to analyze all six of these topics as thoroughly as I did the authentic data topic, then put them into a decision matrix and make a final decision within the next month or so. I will be starting fall classes online in a few weeks, so I have a brief window to think and plan before I have to hit the ground running. By then, it would be nice to have a direction to run and at least a preliminary decision on a research topic.

A group shot posed for TII (Teacher Innovator Institute) on the stairs at the Air and Space Museum

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A Chemistry Lesson; A Common Problem

Posted in teachers for global classrooms, Uncategorized, tagged banjarmasin, borneo, chemistry education, emission spectra, flame test lab, global competency, global education, indonesia, indonesian education, kalimantan, quantum leap, quantum mechanics, science as a universal language, teachers for global classrooms, tembago, universal language of science on September 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Borneo Day 5: Tuesday, July 25, 2017

The country road leading to SMAN 1 Mandastana.

On our second day at SMAN 1 Mandastana, I was faced with a bit of a challenge. During my presentation yesterday on my school (American Academy of Innovation) I showed slides of my students doing chemistry demonstrations, including the well-known flame test demo, where nichrome wires are dipping into solutions of potassium, lithium, sodium, calcium, barium, strontium, and copper salts, then heated in a Bunsen burner flame. These elements have fairly simple quantum structures (one or two electrons in an outer shell) and emit very definite colors. As the electrons are heated up, they absorb energy from the flame and jump to specific higher quantum levels. They then emit the same wavelengths of light as they fall back down to their ground states.

Doing the flame test lab with chemistry students at SMAN 1 Mandastana near Banjarmasin in Southern Borneo.

The students asked, through Nazar, if they could do the same lab. My response was, “I don’t know – let’s look and see what you have and maybe we can.” I didn’t want to commit the chemistry teacher to do a lab, but she seemed willing, so we looked through her supply of chemicals after the class and found cupric sulfate, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and barium sulfate. No lithium or strontium, which give off the best colors, but at least these four will work. Then we looked at her equipment. She has a lab assistant, and we unlocked the cabinets in her storage room. They have one nichrome wire, alcohol burners, and a good supply of beakers. So we could make this work.

So this morning I went to the chemistry classroom first thing, about 45 minutes before the students were to come in. The teacher got out the chemicals, and I discovered something interesting: none of the chemicals had been opened, not even the sodium chloride. The equipment also appeared to be unused – not brand new, as the storage cabinet had some dust on it, but sitting there for I don’t know how long. No stains on the beakers, and the alcohol burners had never been lit. We had to scrounge around to find a cigarette lighter. At least the container of alcohol for the burners appeared to have been used – about 1/3 of it was gone.

David Black helping students with the flame test lab at SMAN 1 Mandastana near Banjarmasin in Southern Kalimantan.

Now I know this is not the norm throughout Indonesia, as I had seen the Assistant Principal at the elementary school we visited do the Priestley Experiment, the chemistry equipment at the SMAN 8 Jakarta school was well-used, and I found out later that other teachers saw science experiments being done at their host schools. So I don’t know why the equipment and chemicals have not been used here. The teacher certainly knows her stuff, as I saw from the class the previous day when the students were taking notes on mole fractions. And she is very willing to do this lab. So it seems to me that she either hasn’t had the training/professional development of how to conduct labs and use her equipment or she is unwilling to use up her supplies.

It also appears to me that the chemicals and supplies were part of a package provided by the central government, with a set list of materials. As chemistry classes go, she was fairly well supplied, but the chemicals were stored inside the fume hood as well as underneath, and the hood looked as if it might not function or be hooked up properly. The school is 20 years old and all the sinks in the chemistry lab were rusted out and nonfunctional, so that I had to get water for my solutions from a container on the counter. It was not possible for me to inquire further to see if this condition is general throughout Kalimantan Selatan or other provinces, but I guess that this might be a common problem in rural schools in Indonesia. After all, it is a common enough problem in the United States. Many teachers in both countries do not do the types of inquiry labs that students need to understand the practical side of chemistry.

David Black posing with the chemistry teachers (left) and English teachers (right) of SMAN 1 Mandastana. I really need to get my name tag straightened out . . .

Once I had the solutions made, I lit an alcohol lamp and saw that its flame was orange, not the blue I’m used to in Bunsen burners or with methanol. But with repeated dipping and heating, the colors were visible except for the barium, which is always the hardest one to see. We were able to find or make five wires, and divided the students into five groups. They traded off the four solutions. I told them what the five chemicals were and what colors to expect. I found that most of the elements are named the same in Bahasa Indonesia, except that the ones with Latin symbols are also pronounced with their Latin names. For example, sodium is called natrium in Indonesia and potassium is kalium. The only chemical I had to learn was copper, which is common enough that an Indonesian word exists for it: tembago. I labeled the solutions A, B, C, and D and told the students that they would have to observe the colors in the flame, then make their best guess as to which chemical each solution was. It took some doing and many dips. The copper kept contaminating the results for subsequent chemicals, but the potassium was good and the sodium simply made the orange flame oranger.

Students in the chemistry class at SMAN 1 Mandastana conducting a flame test lab. I had to improvise for materials and chemicals, but the lab turned our fairly well. It was a true challenge in global education!

When we finished, I had the students shout out which solution they thought each was, and they got it right. I understood the names of the elements in Bahasa Indonesia by this time, so I didn’t need as much translation. Barium had to be guessed by a process of elimination. Given the challenges of the materials and the alcohol lamps, which simply didn’t get hot enough to really see the colors well, this lab turned out quite well. I will never forget this experience of teaching a science lab in a foreign language using scrounged materials.

As I observed the chemistry teacher the day before, and as I taught this class, I was struck by how impossible this would have been if this had been any subject except science. Yes, Nazar helped translate, but I was able to use Indonesian words for the elements and explain a few things where he didn’t know the words, since he is an English teacher and not a science teacher. Where Nazar couldn’t translate and I didn’t know how to explain, the chemistry teacher and her assistant were able to. Science is truly a universal language, but I have never put it to the test like this before. I was even able to do some explanation of quantum leaps and color emission, which the students seemed to understand. I don’t know if they have studied this before, but I saw comprehension on their faces despite some fumbling with the translations, more so than I usually see in American students’ faces.

Looking for the blue flame of copper (tembago) sulfate.

Nazar said we could treat him to American food today, so we drove back to the city. We passed a large mosque at a roundabout that we had stopped at on Sunday in order to say prayers and use the restroom, but now there was a protest going on in front of the mosque in the traffic circle itself. The signs said this was a protest in favor of Palestinians in Israel. We didn’t stop, as we had been told not to get to close to protests as the mood of the crowd can turn ugly fast. This protest seemed pretty peaceful, with a few banners and people chanting but nothing else.

Before the chemistry class, we went out with some of the students during their PE class to visit the junior high school next door and to see the area. Notice that the students are walking (and running) on a rough road surface in bare feet. The girls wear PE hijabs which seem very hot to me to wear in this heat.

We found a Kentucky Fried Chicken place near the Duta Mall in Banjarmasin. It was fairly standard KFC, except for the steamed rice they served. You can’t get away from that. But I think I’ve had about enough fried chicken for a while. I was running short of money, so we found a currency exchange place not far from the hotel and I exchanged the rest of my U.S. dollars (about $60) into rupiah, which was quite a pile.

We passed this store on our way to the school, and I got a photo of it this morning. It is the old logo of my college alma mater, a strange thing to see in Borneo.

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Our First Day at SMAN 1 Mandastana

Posted in teachers for global classrooms, Uncategorized, tagged chemistry education, global competency, global education, indonesian education, indonesian schools, kimia, mandastana, periodic table of elements, schools in borneo, schools in kalimantan, schools near banjarmasin, sman 1 mandastana, teachers for global classrooms, teaching in borneo on September 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Borneo Day 4: Monday, July 24, 2017

The chemistry (kimia) class at SMAN 1 Mandastana near Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan.

Today we got to do what we came all this way for: to teach at a school in Borneo.

All schools in Indonesia start Mondays with an early morning flag ceremony, so we had to leave the hotel early to make it. After breakfast, Nazar picked us up in the lobby at 7:00. We drove across the Sangai Martapura and onto the road leading north out of the city that we had used the day before. We turned onto Jalan Ahmad Yani and headed toward the Barito River Bridge, but before getting that far we turned north onto a narrow country lane. This traveled straight through rice fields and past scattered houses to a wooden bridge across a canal, then turned west. I could see the school to our north, a blue building next to a grass field.

Jalan Achmed Yani, or the Trans Kalimantan Highway. We drove on this out of Banjarmasin to the northwest, then took a smaller country road to the school.

I recognized it from looking up their website and talking about it to my students. This is SMAN 1 Mandastana, the school where Nazar and his wife teach. We passed the school and immediately turned back north onto a somewhat worn cement road leading to the front entrance.

The school is north of Banjarmasin about 15 km and is in the middle of rice fields. This is the view on the way to the school.

Nazar drove up to the entrance and we saw a sign hanging up welcoming Craig and I by name. We walked in through a breezeway into the school’s main office area and put our bags in the headmaster’s office (except my camera bag), then walked out into the main courtyard. The students and teachers were already assembled in ranks, waiting for our arrival. Our big moment had arrived!

SMA Negeri 1 in Mandastana, near Banjarmasin. This is the school the Craig Hendrick and I taught at for a week in Borneo.

It is hard to express how I felt. I was being given the honors of a master teacher, an education ambassador who had traveled all this way from America to teach at this school. It was difficult for my mind to accept that I deserved this level of respect. Yes, I had come from America to teach here, but although I have multiple award plaques and certificates attesting that I am a master teacher, I have never really believed it in my heart. I know I have so many ways to improve as a teacher, even after 26 years of doing it. I’ve known so many teachers who were more deserving than me, who should be here instead of me.

Our welcome sign at SMAN 1 Mandastana.

I wanted to shout out that they had the wrong guy, that the name on the banner must be some other David Black and not me. Yet here I was – half way around the world, about to attempt to teach in a place I’d never heard of before to a people I knew very little about. How very presumptuous of me. Yet buried under all that uncertainty was a part of me that knew I had finally arrived, that all my hard work at being an education professional and presenting at all those conferences was finally paying off. That I deserved all of this. I wanted to bask in the attention. I wanted to run away. I was thrilled to be there. I was scared to death.

Students at SMAN 1 Mandastana standing at attention during their Monday morning flag ceremony.

I finally decided that even if I didn’t know whether or not I was a master teacher, it didn’t matter. All I had to worry about was that I should be a teacher, nothing more. If the students will let me, I can find the common ground that will allow me to be what I know how to be.

Craig Hendrick standing with the teachers at SMAN 1 Mandastana for the Monday morning flag ceremony.

We were asked to stand with the other teachers, who were wearing khaki uniforms. The students were in white shirts and blouses, white hijabs, and gray pants or dresses. They stood with their backs to the morning sun, but it was directly in our faces and already blazing hot. As the ceremony progressed, I stepped out of line a few times ostensibly to take photos but also to turn away from the sun for a few moments, as it was making my eyes water and I was beginning to sweat.

Raising the Indonesian flag at the Monday morning flag ceremony of SMAN 1 Mandastana.

A squad of students marched in practiced formation to the flagpole and unfurled the red and white Indonesian flag. A group of girls sang the national anthem, and the squad attached the flag and slowly raised it until it reached the top as the anthem ended. A teacher recited the five Pancasila principles from a microphone on a podium while the students repeated. Then we were introduced and each made a few remarks while Nazar translated. The ceremony ended and we took some photos of us with the entire school.

David Black and Craig Hendrick posing with the students of SMAN 1 Mandastana after the Monday morning flag ceremony.

As the students moved to their first period classes, we went into the headmaster’s office for a few minutes. He offered us some snacks and we answered his questions through Nazar. We were then ready to meet the students.

Meeting the Headmaster (Principal) of SMAN 1 Mandastana.

There are two English teachers at this school. I went with Nazar and Craig went with the other teacher, whose English is also fairly good. The school is built in an almost enclosed letter C shape around a central courtyard, with the offices at the bottom of the C, the computer and language lab on the small right leg with the kanteen or cafeteria at the end and a separate wing almost completing the open part of the C. A new classroom was being built at the far end. On the left side, the longest side of the C, is classrooms with a tile walkway in front and a wooden walkway beyond along the inside edge. The front area of the courtyard is cemented and used for the flag ceremonies and for volleyball, basketball, and soccer. There is a small grassy area behind that, along with a greenhouse that is being built for the biology classes. The grass becomes more swampy as it goes further back, along the top curve of the C. The entire school is built up on stilts to prevent it sinking.

Nazar’s English class at SMAN 1 Mandastana. This is the class that I first presented to, showing a slide show about my home, school, and family.

I walked with Nazar on the left side of the horseshoe. Racks of plants and flowers are growing across the tile walkway, causing us to step down onto the wooden walkway next to the swampy area. I wheeled my blue suitcase around these obstacles as best I could, until we could step up onto the tiles walkway for the top section of the C, where Nazar’s first class is located.

Posing with the English class after our lesson. They like to take photos and selfies. They will pose seriously, then do a “freestyle” pose such as this one.

Since Indonesian students stay put in one classroom (except for PE or for classes that require specialized labs, such as Kimia or Fisika), the teachers are the ones to travel. Nazar’s morning English class was in the north wing. The students were excited to see me as I wheeled my stuff in and set up my computer. Nazar had grabbed a portable projector, as the one mounted on the ceiling in the room didn’t seem to be working. I had remembered to bring the power converter with me, so I was able to plug my computer into an extension power strip. I had remembered to bring a VGA cord and my conversion dongle, knowing that HDMI probably wouldn’t be available (but I had an HDMI cord, too, just in case – this is why my carry ons are so heavy). Fortunately everything worked, and I was able to project onto a light blue wall at the front of the class.

Posing with the girls in one of the chemistry classes at SMAN 1 Mandastana.

I had prepared two slide shows, one the night before about American Academy of Innovation and a second show with harder English about the trip my family made to the Four Corners region of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona at the end of June. This one was more about geography and geology.

Posing with the boys in the chemistry class. They wanted a separate photo from the girls. There were more girls than boys in the class. I don’t know if this is the case for all science classes or not.

I showed the first slide show during the first block of the period (45 minutes). Nazar translated for me. The students watched carefully, and exclaimed when they saw the photo of my school on a snowy day. They have never seen snow in their lives. After, I asked if they had questions but they were reluctant to speak, probably because they were afraid their English wasn’t good enough. A couple of students were able to ask a few questions.

When the bell rang, it sounded exactly like the tones played in the Hunger Games movies to announce that a contestant had died. Craig and I both found this a bit unnerving.

The inner courtyard of SMAN 1 Mandastana. Since there isn’t snow or cold weather, there are not internal hallways, similar to schools in California. The students wear gray pants/skirts and white shirts/blouses with hajibs and/or hats on Mondays.

During the second block of the 90-minute class, I showed my higher-level slide show on the geography and geology of the western U.S. They were interested in the comparison slide I had made between Borneo and Utah and the other four corner states, that Borneo is 3.38 times larger than Utah and just barely smaller than all four states. But as I showed the various national parks (Taman Nasional) and our route, I could tell that the English was too hard for them. They had fewer questions than I had hoped. I picked things up by opening up my blue case and handing out flyers, brochures, and other materials I had been given at the Utah Valley Visitors Bureau the day before I left Utah. They were excited to get them and have something to practice on.

A birthday cake for a student in the Language Lab room.

At the end of the class, all the students came up and insisted on taking group and individual photos, including many selfies. They wanted photos in normal pose and what they call “freestyle” which is to pose in a less formal fashion. As I was leaving the classroom, all the students came up and did something they had told us about, but which still came as a surprise. Each student took my hand and placed it against their forehead or cheek or kissed it. This is a normal sign of respect for teachers in Indonesia.

Craig Hendrick teaching in the Language Lab room to students at SMAN 1 Mandastana in Borneo.

The bell rang again (another dead contestant!) and Craig and I traded classrooms. The other English teacher was teaching in the chemistry classroom and we waited a few minutes while the chemistry teacher finished up her lesson. This was the second week of school, and she was reviewing mole fractions (mol fraksi), a subject I don’t often teach until deep into second semester. Even though she was speaking and writing in Indonesian, I was able to follow most of what she was doing as the language of science is fairly universal. Indonesians use Arabic numerals just as we do, and with many words transliterated from Latin in a phonetic alphabet, I was able to follow much of what was written. The teacher was lecturing and writing on the board while students took notes. I walked around and noticed that the students’ handwriting was extremely neat, better than any writing I’ve seen in America (including my own).

$Mole fraction notes$

Student notes on mole fractions (mol fractsi). Notice the neat handwriting.

Once the lesson was over, I set up the projector again and went through my slide shows. When I came to showing some of the activities my students have done, I had a slide showing two students doing a version of the flame test lab as a demonstration, a lab I’ve done many times. One of the students asked if they could do the lab (through the English teacher) and I looked at the chemistry teacher, who was still in the room, and said we’d have to see what materials she had.

The library at SMAN 1 Mandastana.

After the second slide show was done, I handed out more tourism brochures to these students. We took group photos and selfies again, and as they were leaving to go to mosque, they bowed their heads and kissed my hand as had the other class. This gets to the heart of my basic doubts about myself – that I don’t deserve the great respect they are showing me. Certainly I’ve never seen anything like it before. I wanted to bow back to them, but was told by Nazar later that I don’t have to do that.

Indonesian periodic table. Most of the element names are based on the Latin root words, such as Kalium for potassium (K). Some of the elements, such as Tembago for Copper, must be Indonesian words that predate the introduction of western science.

After the class was over and the students left, we looked through the chemistry supplies and discovered enough materials to make the flame test work. We’ll try the lab tomorrow. While looking through the classroom, I took photos of the periodic table hanging up at the back of the room. I could recognize most of the elemental names, based on the original Latin names, such as kalium for potassium and natrium for sodium. Only a few elements, such as tembago (copper) or beso (iron), were unfamiliar. These must be names that predate chemistry as a science in Indonesia.

Student crafts, including a traditional Bajarese house, on display in the library.

As I walked back to the teachers lounge, I thought of how things had gone and my impressions of it. All of my teaching career I’ve wanted to make a difference in the world, which I have done. There is a part of me that would like to be well known if not famous, perhaps even remembered by history. Whether or not this ever happens, I can at least say that for this week, I was shown the greatest respect I’ve ever known as a teacher.

Teachers’ Preparation Room at SMAN 1 Mandastana. Overall, this school had a lot more light and seemed more airy than schools in Jakarta. There was no air conditioning, so ceiling fans and open windows were the only ventilation. Teachers wear khaki uniforms on Mondays.

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A Symposium for Global Education

Posted in Uncategorized, Weekly Post, tagged capitol building, david black, eleanor roosevelt, embassy row, fdr memorial, fullbright scholars, global citizenship, global competency, global education, indonesia, jefferson memorial, model un, state department, teachers for global classrooms, washington, washington d.c., washington monument, world war ii memorial on June 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

A quote by Eleanor Roosevelt at the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. It sums up the philosophy of global citizenship.

On Feb. 16-18, 2017 I had the privilege of attending the Teachers for Global Classrooms symposium in Washington D.C. It was held at the Fairmont Hotel in Georgetown, not far from Washington Circle. I’ve written about our first day and evening there and the opening reception in my last post, so this post will focus on the actual symposium sessions and getting to know my Indonesia Cohort of teachers.

The main part of our symposium occurred on Friday, Feb. 17 and the morning of Saturday, Feb. 18 as we learned of our responsibilities through the U.S. Department of State and found out more about the culture and expectations of our host countries. In some sessions, we were all together as teachers but separate from our administrators. Some sessions we were with the administrators, and some we were just with our own cohort in smaller side sessions. We were given a complete packet upon arrival with detailed schedules, paperwork, and biographies of all the teachers. We were given a nice notebook to write notes, but I used my standard notebook that I write everything in, knowing that it will be easier to find that way. The following paragraphs are based on my notes.

David Black at the TGC Symposium, mugging for the camera . . .

Prior to my flight to D.C., I had familiarized myself with Indonesia in the best way I know how – by drawing a map of the country by hand in my notebook. I labeled the major features and cities, the volcanoes I’d heard of, and researched culture and cuisine trying to get a few words of Bahasan down. I found having a decent knowledge of Indonesian geography to be very helpful at the symposium.

My roommate – if I had one – hadn’t shown up by the time I got ready and went down to breakfast in the Grand Ballroom. It was served buffet style, and we were assigned specific tables with nameplates mixed across cohorts, with teachers and their administrator together. At our table was Betsy Devlin-Foltz of the State Department, and once we were done eating (it was all very excellent food), we were greeted by Jen Gibson of the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the State Department. She introduced our keynote speaker, Mark Taplin – the Acting Assistant Secretary for Education.

Exterior and entrance of the Fairmont Hotel in Georgetown.

Mr. Taplin spoke on how the Teachers for Global Classrooms program was an outgrowth of the ideals of Senator Bill Fulbright, who first created the legislation that became the Fullbright Scholarships. His goal was to promote mutual understanding through real experiences – no virtual experiences allowed, or “fake news.” We will truly be citizen diplomats and ambassadors for education in the countries we visit. This is meant to be a transformational experience for us and for our students so that they can become global citizens. He spoke of the craft of quality education and of his teacher, Mrs. Darling of Woodson High School in Fairfax, VA who inspired him as a student through her 30 plus years of managing the Model UN program, and how many ambassadors and Foreign Service people came through her program. He went on to say that Sen. Fullbright’s vision was more imperative than ever, and how we need more “outwarders” than “inwarders” with our recent turn toward isolationism and protectionist policies. He encouraged us to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into this experience, then share what we see and do in our communities and classrooms.

Washington Circle, near the Fairmont Hotel.

I enjoyed his remarks more than I expected to; he had a great sense of humor considering his high level diplomatic rank and wasn’t afraid to speak differently than what we hear our own national leaders saying. It’s good to know that programs still exist (and will continue to exist) that try to counter the inward turn we’ve made as a country, because we need a global perspective now more than ever.

Grand Ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel, preparing for the alumni panel discussion.

Following Mr. Taplin we heard from a panel of five TGC program alumni, including Kirsten from South Carolina who went to Senegal, Camille from Florida who went to Columbia, Jasmine from Philadelphia who went to the Philippines, Tyler from New York City who went to Senegal, and Seth Brady from Illinois, who went to Indonesia in 2012. They spoke of how their experiences changed their classroom practices and how they were able to connect their students with the outside world. Seth helped to promote and get passed legislation in Illinois for a Global Competency certification for Illinois teachers. He spoke of talking to stakeholders and not being shy to say, “Here is what I want to do. What is your advice?” We should take our mandate as global educators seriously and push for real change and buy in at our schools and districts. They finished with questions and answers from the audience, which included what we should bring as gifts/cultural exchange items.

The Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C. Our hotel was located near Embassy Row.

Rebecca Bell of IREX, the group that administers TGC for the State Department, spoke on the six years of the TGC program and lessons they’ve learned. So far, this is the most organized program I’ve seen – they appear to have thought of every detail.

We then moved into separate smaller rooms on the basement level of the Fairmont to meet with our individual cohorts. This was the meeting I was looking forward to – getting down to the details of what to expect. Sara from IREX led the meeting. She will be traveling with us to Indonesia and has previously led a cohort to the Philippines. Ashley, who has lived in Indonesia for a year and helped to coordinate our stay there, also led the meeting. They officially introduced us to Sofia from Ambon Island, who has been here as an ILEP exchange teacher this year. She will become a future host for U.S. teachers in Indonesia.

Some of the teachers in my Indonesia cohort during our breakout session.

They spoke of the two exchange programs offered to foreign teachers to come to the United States. The first is called TEA (Teaching Excellence and Achievement program), where teachers from developing countries come to the United States for six weeks and take courses at one of over ten universities. This year, teachers are here from 61 different countries. The second program is called ILEP (the International Leaders in Education Program) and allows selected teachers to stay in the U.S. for a full semester (five months) at four host universities.

They went over some of the logistics of who does what – we will be assigned as partners to travel to a host (ILEP) teacher’s school for at least one week. IREX will manage all the details of travel and our first week in Jakarta, where we will meet with U.S. Consulate officials, Indonesian Education officials, take tours, and visit schools. Then we will travel to our host schools for about 9-10 days, then return to Jakarta for 2-3 days of debriefing before flying home. Our agenda will be packed, but we can request items and will work with out host teacher on the agenda for when we’ll be in their school. We will find out our host teacher’s name and school in April. This delay is because the first cohort will be leaving for Morocco in three weeks and we will be one of the three summer travel cohorts. But that means we get a full three weeks trip (that’s why I asked for a summer slot) whereas the others get two weeks.

The Washington Monument with cherry blossoms just beginning to bloom; Feb. 17, 2017.

All our expenses will be paid through a stipend/grant for hotels, transportation, tours, and food while at the host teacher’s city, which we will need to arrange ourselves. All other details (flights, Jakarta hotel and food) will be arranged by IREX.

Our responsibility is to have fun, stick to the rules of our agreement, and be ambassadors of U.S. culture and education. This is an exchange program in every way – we will bring back Indonesian culture with us. We need to provide a guiding question, and develop our shared unit plan upon return, which is due by September 5. We will need to apply for visas on our own through their service using an online link to the Indonesian consular office.

Sofia provided a Powerpoint on her school, SMA Negeri 4 in Ambon. It has 923 students and they have one computer lab and five projectors for the whole school. She teaches for seven hours per day, six days a week (and Sunday School on Sundays). Students wear uniforms and must pay fees, which can be a difficulty for many families, but they are able to work off what they owe by cleaning classrooms, etc. She showed us photos of the Maluku Islands, where Ambon is the largest city. There are 1725 islands just in the Malukus alone, and up to 17,000 islands in Indonesia. 90% of Indonesians are Muslims, but the Maluku Islands were colonized for many years by the Dutch, so there are more Christians. I would love to go see the Malukus (if for no other reason than to say I’ve been where Columbus intended to go), but she will probably not become a host for another year or two since she is still here in the U.S. through May.

The Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. with remodeling completed.

We had lunch back in the lobby before the Grand Ballroom, with a choice of meats and salads – they are certainly keeping us well fed and hydrated.

For our next session, we talked about instructional design for teaching global competency. We were asked to bring examples of globalized lesson plans, and we proceeded to do a gallery stroll of our lessons. I shared my STEAM it Up class’ dyeing cloth inquiry lab, and how they research natural dyes used in world cultures. I was impressed with many of the ideas and hope to use them – using a database of newspapers from around the country to get an international perspective on current events, collaborating with students in other countries to collect and compare weather data of our local areas, figuring out the total supply chain of raw materials from around the world (and their true cost) for common products we use, and others. I was too busy looking through the lessons to take many notes, but I incorporated some of these ideas into the presentation I made at the UCET conference in March.

Part of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C.

In our next session, we talked about how we will bridge the gap between our field experiences and our classrooms, schools, and communities through the stories we will tell. We discussed what constitutes a great story or powerful narrative. How will we rise above the “single story” narratives we often hear about a country and its people? That people in China eat “fish heads and rice,” for example (this is one I heard before my LDS mission to Taiwan – all my family thought I would starve to death. I didn’t. I came to love Chinese food. And I never actually ate a fish head). How do the people in Indonesia see us? The fat, lazy, over-privileged, Bermuda-shorted, only English speaking stereotype? How will we show a different story about what Americans are like?

Jefferson Memorial. My iPad is hard to hold still for nighttime photos, so this is the best shot I have.

We also talked about redemptive versus contaminating stories, which I wrote about in detail three posts ago when I introduced this new chapter of my life. It was here that I thought of what will be my underlying guiding question (or at least one of them): In what ways are people in American and Indonesia alike? How do we all show our common humanity? This guiding question will be an ongoing theme as we write our blog posts and report on our experiences through the stories we’ll tell. There are many overarching, cross-cultural themes that we can explore,

Seth Brady was with us in our cohort meetings and gave us a presentation on his experiences in Indonesia in 2012. He went to a school on Bangka Island, which is between Sumatra and Borneo and has one of the largest tin deposits in the world. He shared some books we might want to read, and told us how he was treated as a celebrity – asked to sign autographs, sing at a wedding, speak at spontaneous neighborhood gatherings, take photos with people, etc. We will bring prestige to those we work with, and we will be asked to do some interesting things. He suggested that we just roll with it. It is a good thing that we will have individual rooms at night, as the press of people will become difficult without some time for personal space. The humidity and heat will exhaust us (this I know about from my experiences in Taiwan – but this is much closer to the Equator). He spoke of how to dress, health notes (bring mosquito repellent and get immunized for malaria). Yes, this will be an adventure. It’s going to be amazing, difficult, challenging, fun, and beyond any expectations!

Bronze statue of Franklin Roosevelt. And his dog.

This was the last session of a long and interesting day. As a group, we decided to go out to eat for Indonesian food. The IREX people had prepared a list of possible restaurants that served food of our nationality (that’s what I mean by every detail being planned out), so we made reservations for a restaurant called BKK Cookshop at 1700 New Jersey in Northwest Washington D.C. After resting in my room for a while, I headed downstairs and met the others in the lobby of the hotel. We arranged for Uber cars to drive us, and it was fairly close to where I had supper with the group at the Einstein Fellowship interviews last year – we passed the same metro station. Not everyone could come, but we had about 12 people at the restaurant, which wound up being Thai food, not Indonesian. It was still good and we had fun.

Afterward, five of us decided to get another Uber car to take us down to the Mall to walk around. I don’t have a smart phone (I pick and choose which technologies to use, but eventually I’ll have to make the transition to mobile connectivity), so I more or less tagged along.

Buildings in Georgetown near the Fairmont Hotel; Feb. 16, 2017.

The weather was cool and windy yesterday as I had taken a walk around Washington Circle, too cold for my thin jacket. But tonight the weather was warmer and we had a nice walk from the Smithsonian Castle down to the Washington Monument, then to the Korean War Memorial. It was nice to see the Capitol Building all finished from its remodeling, and cherry blossoms were just beginning to open around the Washington Monument. We crossed the road to see the Martin Luther King memorial (which was new enough that I had not seen it before). We walked on around the tidal basin to see the Franklin Roosevelt memorial, which I had never visited either. I took as many photos as I could using my less than ideal iPad as a camera. I took multiples of each shot just to make sure that most of them would turn out well. We found a final Uber driver to take us back to the Fairmont at about 9:30. I called home while we waited – Becca was still awake. These were my first experiences with Uber, and it seemed to work out well.

A photo of the TGC symposium taken Thursday, Feb. 16. I’m wandering around in the background.

I was very tired by the time we got back and basically crashed. I never did have a roommate – perhaps he paid to have his own room. Fine with me – it means a room of my own without paying extra.

On Saturday, Feb. 18 the symposium continued. After another excellent breakfast, we heard more speakers together as an entire group in the Ballroom. I won’t go into much detail, as this post is long enough. After hearing from two speakers we went into the Kennedy Ballroom next door for a “dealers room” style open house, where various organizations that promote global education had booths that we could visit. These included National Geographic (I asked about the Grosvenor Fellowship again) and many programs I had heard of and some I had not. I picked up quite a bit of freebies and information packets to go through when I get home.

We had a lunch and a final meeting in the Grand Ballroom, with a group photo. It has been an amazing conference and I’ve learned a great deal, met my cohort of exceptional teachers that I am excited to work with in Indonesia, and were even given three books to read to help us prepare. Now I’ve got to do my homework and go through all my notes and get ready. Five months will go by quickly.

The entire group of teachers and administrators attending the TGC Symposium in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 16-18, 2017. I am at the far right in back.

I had booked a somewhat later flight so that I would not have to be rushed getting to the airport. I’d already packed up and left my bags at the hotel front desk. I called a taxi and had him drive me back to Reagan National Airport. I had plenty of time to check in, go through security, and wait for my flight. I arrived home in Salt Lake City near 11:00 and landed in a mild snowstorm. Oh well, back to the reality of winter weather. At least I have a day to rest up before returning to school.

My room at the Fairmont Hotel.

The hardest thing about these expanding experiences is “pouring” myself back into my everyday life once I return. In the rush of normal events, the feelings I’ve had at these conferences soon evaporate. So I need to remember what I’ve learned, and that is why I write such long blog posts. It’s my way of remembering even if no one else ever reads them.

The Lincoln Memorial. I snapped this photo as I was being driven back to the airport on Feb. 18, 2017.

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An Online Course on Global Education

Posted in Uncategorized, Weekly Post, tagged bureau of education and cultural affairs, department of state, fullbright scholarships, global citizenship, global competency, global education, goethe institut, grosvenor fellowship, joides resolution education officer, teachers for global classrooms, technology and global education, transatlantic outreach program on June 5, 2017| Leave a Comment »

What does it mean for one to be globally competent?

I received word early in the summer of 2016 that I was accepted into the Teachers for Global Classrooms program created by the U.S. Department of State as part of their Bureau for Education and Cultural Affairs. During the rest of the summer, I filled out and sent in paperwork, got a thorough medical exam with more paperwork, and sent off to get my passport renewed. All of this kept me busy so that I almost forgot there would be a ten-week online course required. I was about to e-mail the program to ask what was going on when I received an e-mail from them that same day asking why I had not yet submitted any assignments; the class had already begun ten days before!

The core concepts, skills, values and attitudes, and behaviors of someone who is globally competent.

It reminds me of the old college anxiety dream. You know the one. Where you discover there’s a class you’ve completely forgotten about. It’s two weeks into the semester, and you’re already behind. You run to campus and you find the class is meeting in some obscure location in the cellar of the most labyrinthine building. You run into class an hour late and only then discover you forgot to get dressed. And everyone is staring at you . . . I still have this dream occasionally and I’ve been out of college for several decades. Only this time, I really was behind. Apparently my e-mail from my former school, which I had used in the application, had been shut off so I wasn’t getting the notices.

The Four Key Global Competencies: Globally competent students investigate the world, recognize multiple perspectives, communicate ideas, and take action.

Fortunately the program leaders and my teacher, Craig Perrier, were very understanding. I was always a few days behind and posting late, so I didn’t get as many comments and suggestions in the forums as I would have liked, but the assignments were certainly interesting and educational. I finally completed all of the course just before the last deadline. It took about ten hours of work per week during a time when I was already extremely busy trying to set up a new chemistry lab at my new school.

Here are some of the topics we discussed in the class:

Framing Global Education
Perspectives in Global Education
Developing Global Citizenship
Exploring the Global-Local Dynamic
Transforming Global Learning Through Technology
Globalizing Your Standards
Global Education and Competency in Your School

As part of the course, we had to learn to use various social media platforms for communicating ideas (the third global competency). I’m not much for using Twitter, as I tend to want to say more than 140 characters worth.

One of the core concepts of the TGC course is that to be globally competent, a person should do four things. They are: (1) investigate the world, (2) recognize multiple perspectives, (3) communicate ideas, and (4) take action locally to solve global problems.

We had weekly webinars with experts; watched TED talks and other videos related to global education and competency; worked on exercises, lesson plans, and unit plans that integrate global education into our own standards; and participated in discussion boards.

A still from the video we did on global competency and global citizenship.

One of the major components of the course was to learn various types of Web 2.0 and social media technologies that can be useful in teaching global competency and promoting innovation, collaboration, and communication between cultures. Here are links to two of the resources I learned:

Video and animation production tools: I used PowToons to create an introductory animation describing a cosmology research assignment for my astronomy class. Here it is: https://www.powtoon.com/c/bUypsA24f9K/1/m

The Vision of American Academy of Innovation. This is a still frame from my Teachers for Global Classrooms video.

ThingLink: A tool that turns Infographics into interactive experiences. This is my description of where my school is at regarding technology implementation: https://www.thinglink.com/ scene/853070881360969730

Here is a link to other Web 2.0 and social media tools: http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/101-web-20-teaching-tools/

As part of the TGC video, I interviewed some of my STEAM it Up students on camera before a green screen and had them speak on what global competency meant to them.

Another assignment was to create a video of how my school is integrating global education. I was teaching out of the school’s library at the time because my science lab was being built upstairs, and I hung up a green screen and interviewed my students on why they thought global education was important. They also videotaped me. Unfortunately, I got the lapel microphone a bit too close to my mouth and the audio got distorted. I still need to redo the video with better audio, but if you want to see it, here is the link: https://youtu.be/9FE78JTID9E.

Title slide from my presentation at the UCET (Utah Coalition for Educational Technology) conference in March, 2017.

In March 2017 I presented a session at the Utah Coalition for Education Technology (UCET) conference and shared some of the things I learned from my Teachers for Global Classrooms course, including what global education is and four technologies that can help in teaching the four competencies. I used Indonesia as my example of another culture and described my upcoming travel experience.

To Investigate the World, I shared a new resource by the U. S. Geological Survey called EarthExplorer. Here is the link: https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/. It acts as a one-stop shopping center for digital elevation models and includes worldwide DEMs in various formats and even Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data. All you have to do is type in the name or coordinates of the area you want to download and it will list the target. Click on the correct item from the list (if there is more than one) and it will move the Google Map pointer to the correct spot. You then choose the data set(s) to download. I chose the Aster Global DEM. Then click the Results button and it will open up a window with the target grayscale height map, which can be saved (best to rename it as the numbered file name won’t be of much use to you).

Using EarthExplorer from the U.S. Geological Survey, I downloaded digital elevation models as grayscale height maps, which I then modeled into terrains in Daz3C Bryce. Here I am showing (clockwise from upper left) Mt. Toba, Gunung Merapi, most of Bali, and the Wasatch Front of Utah. I live close to the mouth of the large canyon (Provo Canyon) emptying the Wasatch Plateau in the middle of the image.

I tried this out for various volcanoes in Indonesia, including Gugung Merapi near Yogyakarta, Gunung Tambora (the one that blew up in 1815 and caused the Year Without a Summer), Anak Krakatau (the Child of Krakatoa), and Lake Toba, which caused a six-year volcanic winter that almost wiped out the human race 74,000 years ago. Once I have the grayscale height maps, I can easily load them into my 3D modeling software (in this case Daz3D Bryce) and add textures, etc.

For Recognize Perspectives, I discussed creating Infographics and turning them into ThingLinks. I also talked about looking up English translations of newspapers from around the world to get another culture’s perspective on world events. Here is a good site to visit: http://www.world-newspapers.com/

For Communicate Ideas, I showed PowToons as a technology for easily creating videos that’s much more fun to use than Adobe Powerpoint or Google Slides.

My slide for Competency 4: Taking Action. I propose to collaborate with my host school in Indonesia to collect and compare weather patterns.

For Take Action, I spoke of collaborating between schools to gather global weather data (see: http://worldweather.wmo .int/en/home.html) or take astronometrical readings.

At the end of my presentation, I included links to several other programs that promote teacher travel for global education. I am including a PDF of my presentation here:

Global Education-Digital Tech-s

You can go to the final slide and link to the programs yourself. But be warned: I plan to apply for several of them myself in the next two years.

Links to other programs that promote teacher travel and global education.

The presentation went well, with about 12 people in attendance. I encouraged them to apply for the TGC program, which had a deadline of the following Monday. I hope some of them do. It has already been a valuable program for me just from what I have learned from the online class. Of course, what I will learn in Indonesia will go much further.

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The Stories We’ll Tell

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged building bridges between cultures, dan mcadams, generative people, global competency, global education, globalization, indonesia, information literacy, isolationism, nationalism, optimism, redemptive stories, self identity, self stories, teacher exchange programs, teachers for global classrooms on February 21, 2017| 3 Comments »

Martin Luther King, Jr. monument in Washington, D.C. He had a dream of a world without barriers or borders.

Over the next six months I’ll be writing a series of blog posts about a new adventure in my life. These posts won’t fit exactly into the parameters I originally set for this site, which were to tell the stories of the chemical elements. Yet I’ve reinvented this site more than once. It became a site about chemistry education, and I am now reporting on my efforts in STEAM education. I haven’t forgotten where I started, but I keep adding more subjects as my own career has expanded. Now I add one more subject area: global education.

My new adventure began in the spring of 2016 when I applied for a program created by the U. S. Department of State. It is a teacher exchange program called Teachers for Global Classrooms. Teachers from developing countries come to the United States to study English and learn our culture for up to six months, then return to their home countries to act as hosts for U. S. teachers. We travel there for 2-3 weeks to experience their culture and educational system.

Part of the Indonesia cohort for the 2017 Teachers for Global Classrooms program. We will be traveling to Indonesia July 13-August 2, 2017.

76 teachers were selected, and I am pleased to say that I will be going to Indonesia for three weeks from mid-July to early August 2017. When I found out in December that Indonesia would be my destination, I was (and still am) very excited. It is part of the Ring of Fire, and has more active volcanoes (125 in all) than any other country. As an Earth Science teacher, this is a very cool opportunity. It has amazing biodiversity, and since it is on the equator, I will get to see the southern stars for the first time. As a student of world religions, I am excited to see how Indonesia’s diverse culture is able to blend Islam with Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity.

Now I’m not being a Pollyanna or Pie-in-the-Sky. I know the challenges. I lived for two years in southern Taiwan and know what it’s like to live in a tropical climate, speak a different language, and eat unaccustomed food. It won’t be easy, but that is the nature of adventure. Adventures are the parts of our lives that we tell stories about, the parts that define us.

Sign for Teachers for Global Classrooms, a teacher exchange program of the U. S. Department of State. We met in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 16-18, 2017 to prepare for our international experiences.

We’ve been undergoing training in our online course in the fall and at our Symposium this past weekend in Washington, D.C. Part of our discussion has been on the types of stories we will tell about our experiences. We talked about the work of Dan P. McAdams concerning how we define ourselves by the stories we tell about ourselves. He divides these stories into two groups: Redemptive Tales and Contaminating Tales. Imagine that the same tragedy befalls two people. The first tells of the tragedy in terms of redemption – how the experience was difficult but ultimately transforming as the person overcame and transcended the experience. Such people are more likely to be generative, that is, they make positive contributions to society. The other person tells the story as a horrible experience that ruined their life and led to their downfall; the experience contaminated their life. Such people tend to be negative and draw from society instead of contributing to it. As McAdams put it in his introduction to his book The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (Oxford University Press: 2007):

Among the most eloquent tellers of redemptive stories are those midlife adults who are especially committed to their careers, their families, and making a positive difference in the world. These highly “generative” men and women embrace the negative things that happen to them, for it is by transforming the bad into good that they are able to move forward in life and ultimately leave something positive behind. Unconsciously, they find inspiration and sustenance in the rich store of redemptive tales that American culture offers.

As I write the stories of my experiences in Indonesia, I can choose to be redemptive (focusing on the lessons I learn, the great things that happen, the funny tales, the commonality of humanity, the beauty of the islands, etc.) or I can focus on contaminating people’s perceptions by focusing on the negative: the humidity, the bugs, the population, the traffic (I will be in Jakarta for over a week altogether, and I hear the traffic there is unbelievable), how I miss my family, poor sanitation, lack of personal space, etc. I can choose to be generative or destructive, positive or negative. My choice is to accentuate the good that I find; to build bridges instead of building walls.

Quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1967. Our Teachers for Global Classrooms experience will promote the type of world perspective he describes.

Just this weekend President Trump spoke at a rally where he again attacked globalization and trade agreements such as NAFTA. He reiterated the plan to build a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants. I’ve walked along the Rio Grande River in Laredo, Texas and seen the discarded wet clothes of those who swam across the river. They bring dry clothes in a plastic garbage bag, then change to the dry clothes and discard the wet on the north bank as they leave the river. I can understand how many people are frustrated because they’ve been left behind by foreign competition, because they’re unskilled laborers that can be easily replaced by automation or cheaper labor oversees. Many people are experiencing a kind of global whiplash.

But the solution isn’t to retreat into isolationism, nationalism, or “America First” jingoism. Every time we’ve tried this, we’ve regretted it. We didn’t want to get involved in World War I because it was “over there” and not our problem. Until it was, and millions died. We didn’t want to get involved in another war in 1939-41, until it rose up and bit us in Pearl Harbor, and then it cost us millions of additional lives. Now we talk of retreating from the UN, re-establishing trade tariffs, and putting limitations on immigration. This will be a bad day for us; historians will say this is where we failed as a country when our mandate was to move forward and embrace the future, not try to hide from it.

So here I am becoming part of a program that promotes global awareness and competence, that aims at peace through mutual understanding, and that strives for better education through teaching 21^st Century Skills of collaboration, creativity, and communication. Never has there been a greater need. I realize that Pres. Trump is merely the figurehead at the top of a larger American problem; it is the people who are dispossessed, afraid, underemployed, and unprepared for the reality of the new global economy that have elected Trump and that are cheering him on. Scared people are easily manipulated, undereducated people are easily deceived, and people without information literacy tend to accept whatever they’re told without thinking critically about it. We’ve been thinking these skills are going to be crucial for the next generation. We were wrong. They are crucial NOW. We have already failed to properly educate yesterday’s children who are today’s adults and voters. Now we have a populist president elected out of fear, not hope.

Statue of Eleanor Roosevelt, our first ambassador to the United Nations, at the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C. She promoted the type of global competence we still need today.

I realize that the last two paragraphs are negative and pessimistic in tone. But I want you to know the rationale for why I am doing this and what my theme will be for these blogs. I hope to promote global bridges of understanding to combat the “othering” and nationalism that seem to be sweeping the world. I choose to have a hopeful view of the future, where humanity will celebrate its commonalities instead of differences, where collaboration and cooperation will work to build relationships and capabilities instead of breaking them apart. Ultimately, I wish to see us become a multi-planet species, where borders are no longer important and barriers to progress are torn down. I want a world where we work together to solve mutual, global problems instead of pointing fingers and doing nothing (or denying they exist).

So these will be the stories I will tell as I embark on this adventure. Please join me! Help me build a few bridges.

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The Elements Unearthed

Our Discovery and Usage of the Chemical Elements

Posts Tagged ‘global competency’

Mind Expanding Experiences

A Chemistry Lesson; A Common Problem

Our First Day at SMAN 1 Mandastana

A Symposium for Global Education

An Online Course on Global Education

The Stories We’ll Tell

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