November 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 1999 Vol. 8 No. 1
A Matter of Experience
Sidebar for Exploring the Real World Online
I understand the difficulties that teachers have in engaging students in the learning process. As a child I found it difficult to sit still in the classroom and pay attention. In my adult life, though, I came to understand this difficulty from the teacher's perspective.
In college I was a volunteer teacher of juvenile offenders in a lockup facility. These students seemed to have little or no awareness of the world that existed beyond their own neighborhood and no reason to become engaged in learning about it. I struggled to make the world relevant to them and found that they became far more engaged when they actively participated in the learning process.
So I created a narrative lesson in which the students “took a trip” from Detroit to Australia. As the leader of this “expedition” I created realistic problems and questions within the story and provided students with the tools they needed to answer them. By the end of the term these students had mapped the route with amazing accuracy, had practiced problem solving to overcome logistical snafus, and had become engaged in learning about places “along the way.”
Another
experience showed me the importance of personal connections. After I graduated
from college I traveled across the United States. Throughout the trip I sent
postcards, as I had promised to do, to two young friends, ages six and seven.
When I returned five months later I visited these friends and was amazed.
They had followed my travels by pushing pins into a big map, marking my route
and proudly displaying the postcards. Even more exciting was the fact that
they had eagerly made trips to the library to research the places I was visiting
and had hung up the results of their research alongside the postcards. I realized
that my relationship with these kids had given them a personal reason to learn
geography.
These experiences, along with the emergence of the World Wide Web as a new tool for educators, inspired me to create online expeditions. It is with great hope and ambition that we at www.globalearn.com continue to pursue our mission: preparing children for global citizenship and responsible stewardship of the earth.
—Murat Armbruster
President and CEO, GlobaLearn, Inc.
Click here to return to Exploring the Real World Online TECHNOS Quarterly article.