Global Connections

This coming week brings an exciting new event to my students' learning. We are going to Skype with the Traveling Teacher, a member of our community, who is currently traveling the world as a global liasion between our school and schools all over the world. In anticipation of this exciting opportunity, I spent the past week preparing my students. We first looked at her blog. The girls were in awe of the 360 degree photos of the Moscow shopping mall and beautiful Red Square, created using the Kogeto Dot camera. They were fascinated by the videos of street scenes and school scenes in Moscow. We also looked at her travels using Google Maps and Google Earth. They used the zoom feature to closly look at the various geographical features of this part of the world.

My goal was to help them gain a sense of where she is in the world. We looked at how far New York City is from our home in Maryland, and then we compared that to how far Russia and Mongolia are from our home in Maryland. They decided that even though New York is far from Maryland, in a global sense, it is very close. We talked about the difference in time and the difference in climate between these other countries and our part of the world.

As we explored and read more, the girls began to think of insightful questions to ask the Traveling Teacher during our Skype session next week. They wondered what the people in these countries are like, the wondered what languages are spoken, they wondered what the food tastes like. I am proud of the girls for their inquisitiveness...and I am certain that the Traveling Teacher will be as well.