Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Global Citizenship Education, Curriculum, and Classroom practice


Personally, I don’t think I’d need to make many changes to my present current or classroom practice to make my students see themselves as citizens, and thus behave as such.

The ICT courses I teach are universal in nature and I ensure my students see themselves as acquiring skills and knowledge that many others elsewhere in the world are also learning.

It really builds a sense of belonging to a global community in the students when they are guided to see the skills and knowledge they are acquiring as tools that will make them able to effectively interact with their peers and other people the world over.

Knowing that the Computer Applications they are learning are the same as is being used in China or Ghana , really helps them see themselves as members of a global community of Computer literate youths.

Being Computer literate and able to use the acquired ICT skills to interact with the outside world offers them an opportunity to share their stories and learn from those of other cultures through ICT tools that are universal in nature.

The ICT tools which they learn makes them see themselves as equal partners with their peers from other places, thus eliminating inferiority complexes which sometimes leads to unfounded prejudices.

The Internet appreciation component of our curriculum seeks to guide our students to learn the benefits of using ICT tools for communication, collaboration, and cooperation.

By being guided to acquire knowledge and skills about using the Internet for communication (email, discussion groups, chat etc), our students are able to participate in that the diverse online discourse that allows them to better the diverse socio-cultural realities that exist in our world. Instead of relying on half-truths and mostly false myths, they are able to learn about other cultures from direct sources.

Many of our students are already using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter for interacting with friends. Our task is mostly to guide them to understand the various ethical, privacy and legal issues about using ICT tools.

In my context, my curriculum is already designed to equip our students to effectively function in today’s ICT- driven world that is getting smaller by the day. By knowing that with a simple click and a few taps on their keyboard, they ;could be in touch with another part of the world, they feel part of something bigger than their local community.

Many of their practical learning activities lead them to research for information about other countries, which gives them a glimpse into the existence of other cultures, and they are guided to see similarities between these “foreign” cultures and theirs.

2 comments:

  1. Ibrahim,

    The internet has helped a lot in informing the world about each other. Used properly it can be a powerful tool for change. I have learned so much about the world through the internet. However, person to person contact is also very powerful. I have often thought that governments need to invest in sending young people out of their countries to experience other cultures and ways of thinking. This would be a great way to promote world peace.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gwen,
    I quite agree with you, traveling and experiencing new cultures is a form of education that will benefit youths and make them more committed to seeing the world's inhabitants as one big family

    ReplyDelete

Creative Commons License
This work by Ibrahim K. Oyekanmi (mallamibro@gmail.com) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.