4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness.
Artifact: Diversity and Cultural Awareness Blog
Reflection:
The blog was created as a part of my portfolio for the Instructional Technology program. The blog was a place for me to reflect on how I was using the information and ideas that I received from each of my courses. It was also a way for me to share ideas with other teachers of technology and tips to use in their own classroom. One of the entries for the blog was entitled “ Diversity, Cultural Understanding, and Global Awareness” and was a place for me to comment on how to reach students of differing backgrounds and needs.
Students are able to communicate with anyone from around the world in a few seconds by utilizing the Internet and a website as simple as Facebook or Google. By communicating with people from different places, they gain a better understanding of the vastness of the world they live in and they people they share it with. Not that long ago, a student would look at pictures in a textbook from a different community and that was their only exposure to that culture. They now have access to almost limitless information about any culture they could think of and can communicate with individuals from that culture in a matter of seconds. Students can also communicate with other students about what they are learning in their classes and see that some things are universal, such as mathematics. That could be a motivating factor for students who are struggling to understand why they have to learn something. If they have to communicate with a pen pal in a far away place, they may be more motivated to learn about these topics.
I think all too often teachers forget about including other cultures in their classroom. We tend to teach to the majority culture and not only are we letting down students from diverse backgrounds, but we are also robbing other students of learning about other rich cultures. In the future, I would like to have my students do research on how mathematics is taught in different parts of the world and how that compares to their own learning experience, such as the age at which certain math topics are taught.
The blog was created as a part of my portfolio for the Instructional Technology program. The blog was a place for me to reflect on how I was using the information and ideas that I received from each of my courses. It was also a way for me to share ideas with other teachers of technology and tips to use in their own classroom. One of the entries for the blog was entitled “ Diversity, Cultural Understanding, and Global Awareness” and was a place for me to comment on how to reach students of differing backgrounds and needs.
Students are able to communicate with anyone from around the world in a few seconds by utilizing the Internet and a website as simple as Facebook or Google. By communicating with people from different places, they gain a better understanding of the vastness of the world they live in and they people they share it with. Not that long ago, a student would look at pictures in a textbook from a different community and that was their only exposure to that culture. They now have access to almost limitless information about any culture they could think of and can communicate with individuals from that culture in a matter of seconds. Students can also communicate with other students about what they are learning in their classes and see that some things are universal, such as mathematics. That could be a motivating factor for students who are struggling to understand why they have to learn something. If they have to communicate with a pen pal in a far away place, they may be more motivated to learn about these topics.
I think all too often teachers forget about including other cultures in their classroom. We tend to teach to the majority culture and not only are we letting down students from diverse backgrounds, but we are also robbing other students of learning about other rich cultures. In the future, I would like to have my students do research on how mathematics is taught in different parts of the world and how that compares to their own learning experience, such as the age at which certain math topics are taught.