Gone Global

Gone Global

Global awareness is not just a standard on our evaluation rubric, but rather it is an essential part of our students' learning to become successful adults in our world-wide community. I have never stepped foot on foreign soil, but with my students, I travel around the global visiting communities I would never be able to see without the help of the following resources.


ePals is the best place that I've found to really connect with other cultures. As a teacher, you can set up your own profile, posting a request to connect with a specific country. Or you can collaborate with other classrooms around the world on projects sponsored by National Geographic. My class, just this week, received our first email from a private school in Greece that is interested in connecting with us via email and Skype.

National Geographic Kids is a site that we use almost everyday with my third graders. We view the photo of the day, study facts and photos of different countries, and learn about National Geographic projects that are going on around the world. One recent project called Let's Jump was encouraging kids to join together one day to try to break the world record for the most people doing jumping jacks on the same day!

Global Bros is another amazing project that National Geographic Kids has available: A blog that follows two brothers on their awesome year-long trip around the world. Students can read the brother's blog entries, view photos from their many adventures, track their stops on the world globe, and watch video highlights. 

World Portrait put together by 100people.org is a collection of biographies that schools from around the world put together. These schools were assigned to choose one person in their community to nominate as a good representative of their culture, and share their biography on 100people.org. I've used this site to teach students about biographies, and encourage them to "meet a new friend" to write a biography about.
Through Our Lens: Education
There are so many more great resources available that take our students so much further than we could ever on our own.

Time for Kids: Around the World invites our kids to travel the world by allowing them to research other countries through a number of different links, including: Sightseeing Guides, History Timelines, Native Lingo, Challenge questions, and most interestingly Day in the Life, where the user follows a child through his/her daily routines to learn how life would be like in that country! An amazing way to enlighten our students understandings of other cultures.

UNC Global Initiatives UNC will send you a Culture Kit from countries around the world. They also have video