21st Century Education Presents:

Globalization

By: Johnathan Woods, Kacey Blatt, & Anne Marie Maynard

What is Globalization?

It can be defined as the process of spreading ideas, products, and other aspects of culture due to the interaction between different areas of the world.

Globalization in the classroom requires:

• technology for students

• technology for teachers

• advancements in teaching methods

“Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too

many of our schools do not prepare them for. In a global

economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your

knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to

opportunity - it is a prerequisite.”

–

Barack Obama

A student educated on globalization can:

• Investigate the world

• Recognize perspectives

• Communicate ideas

• Take action

As the world is becoming more of a global culture, with

many subcultures within, there becomes a need to

incorporate everyone's opinions, values, and ideas.

Globalization also plays a role in communication

between the subcultures, which creates the need to

move with the flow instead of pushing against the

current. It has created a whole new database for

information, and a new way of interpreting information

as it comes in. This has allowed for unturned stones to

now become accessible, which gives students

opportunities that were previously unavailable.

Applying Globalization to 21st Century Education

• Video conferences

• Large scale group work

• Blogs

• Podcasts

• Second Life

• Twitter

• Television

Example:A teacher in the United States is able to use a podcast to teach a Spanish class by sharing information from a primary Spanish-speaker with his or her students. The teacher can assign a reading from the textbook (which comes from Japan) to the students concerning greetings and wellbeing. The teacher uses a computer (which was made in China) to interact with a person from Venezuela (who also is using a computer from China). The person from Venezuela, we’ll call him Harold, uses podcasting software that was made in India to create his podcast for the other teacher’s Spanish class.

In the previous example, we see a person from the US interacting with someone from Venezuela while using technology created in Japan, China, and India. This illustrates how information and culture is able to spread through globalization due to the already globalized technology.

Role of Technology

In the beginning of globalization, the spread relied on the actual movement of people while cultures piggy-backed with them. As trade routes developed, so did the lines of communication among these cultures. This began in Europe and Asia and then slowly moved to the Americas as technology created better transportation. As technology continued to improve with the creation of computers and phones, the movement of people didn’t matter as much as their actions did. The 21st

century saw globalization become a viral movement. Although this is an advantage for the wideness of the spread, it can be a disadvantage for some countries. Countries that do not always have the needed technology to access the global culture can miss out on international information.

Work Cited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization

www.philaglobaled.org