Is “Never Again” little more than a catchphrase?

Having been teaching for only a few years, I am often taken by surprise that students know little or nothing about international events or historical personalities. For example, most students have no idea who Bill Clinton is; they have never heard of Yugolslavia; when I mention Lenin, they only know John Lennon; and recently, when I referred the Holocaust, most students had a vague idea (at best) of what I was talking about.

Learning about genocide is an important lesson in how prejudice and bigotry can destroy democratic societies and result in the deaths of millions of people. The UN Genocide Convention, passed in 1948, was based on the sentiment of “Never Again”. Never again, it was supposed, would the world remain silent and allow systemic racial hatred to fester into genocide. However, 50 years on, we now know that we have been doomed to witness history repeat itself in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and today in the Sudan. According to the Genocide Education Project, genocides and other forms of mass murder killed 170 million people, more than all the international wars of the 20th century combined. At a time when we talk more and more about globalisation, an awareness of tolerance, human rights, ethics, personal responsibility, and the consequences of their absence, is vital.

The World is Witness, a new “geoblog” from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative, in partnership with Google Earth, documents and maps genocide and related crimes against humanity. The blog has first hand accounts of the effects of genocide and war. The blog also hosts, the Voices on Genocide Prevention, a bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, with insights from human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials.

Via its mapping initiative, USHMM has been using Google Earth and animated maps for a few years now to help people better understand Holocaust history and to raise awareness of the current threats of genocide across the globe.

“The Holocaust took place across the entire European continent, and for all of Europe’s Jews, as well as other victims of Nazism, geography played a major role in determining their fate. The Mapping Initiative shows key Holocaust sites and historic content from the Museum’s collections. The initiative also includes information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.”

The Cambodian Genocide Project has compiled and published 22,000 biographic and bibliographic records, and over 6,000 photographs, along with documents, translations, maps, and an extensive list of books and research papers on the genocide, as well as the interactive Cambodian Geographic Database, CGEO, which includes data on: Cambodia’s 13,000 villages; the 115,000 sites targeted in 231,00 U.S. bombing sorties flown over Cambodia in 1965-75, dropping 2.75 million tons of munitions; 158 prisons run by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime during 1975-1979, and 309 mass-grave sites with an estimated total of 19,000 grave pits; and 76 sites of post-1979 memorials to victims of the Khmer Rouge.

Genocide Intervention Network empowers individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Its “members envision a world in which the global community is willing and able to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities. As part of the anti-genocide movement, we raise both money and political will for civilian protection initiatives around the world.”

Other Resources:

Maps of War is a really useful resource with interactive maps that cover a wide range of conflicts from the Western Front of WWI, WWII, Iraq, Darfur, failed states index and global migration.

I’ve written before about the possibilities and difficulties associated with global or “flat world” projects. This is an area of learning that I am really fascinated by and hope to get a feasible project off the ground next year (as we only have about five weeks of class time remaining until the summer holidays).

[slideshare id=140143&doc=global-projects-presentation-1192860619592528-3&w=425]

I gave a workshop on global projects last week because this is one way that we can meaningfully use the new 1:1 environment to create engaging and authentic learning rather than using the laptops as glorified typewriters. The aims of global projects are to empower, enable and connect students around the world using technology.

Global projects can foster:
* Cross-Cultural Communication
* Collaboration
* Citizenship
* Creativity

Skills developed by global projects can include:
* Multiple Literacies: digital, cultural, media,
* Communication
* Critical thinking
* Synthesis and summary
*Information literacy, research, validation, authentication of facts
* Negotiation and collaboration

Examples of projects we had a look at included:

Flat Planet Project
1001 Flat World Tales
International teen life
Global Cooling Collective
The real world actually
Young Writers 07
Mission Possible
Charlotte’s Web Writing Project
The Flat Classroom Project
The Flat Classroom Project overview video
Download Video: Posted by julielindsay at TeacherTube.com.

I also pointed colleagues who were interested to the following sites, which are dedicated to globalised education:

TakingITglobal
Global education collaborative
The Learning Foundation
Global SchoolNet Foundation
International and Educational Resource Network
1:1 Flat Classroom Network

Kim Cofino, has uploaded this Developing the Global Student presentation, which discusses “Practical Ways for Infusing 21st Century Literacy Skills in Your Classroom.” She has also created a global collaborations wiki that lists a range of projects from the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai

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I have just returned from an excursion to Vietnam, which as a teacher was one of the most fulfilling experiences ever. It’s hard to reflect on it without sounding trite and cliched but it was amazing. We embarked on an intense 12-day trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and explored the geographical, historical and cultural aspects of life in this exciting, rapidly developing and densely populated country. I travelled with a fantastic colleague and eleven 15-17 year olds and it was amazing to experience the thrills of international travel with students who were enthralled and, at times, overwhelmed by the sensory overload that accompanies travel to a very different place. It is interesting that coming from a huge country with a small population such as Australia, students were incredulous at the sheer energy and density of people in major cities like Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi. The trip was organised to gather primary source material on the Vietnam War and Ho Chi Minh, which together make up 50% of our Modern History course. The students were able to appreciate the multiplicity of perspectives involved in historical research in a way that I think is simply impossible within the confines of the classroom. We went to war memorials that represented the “American” War from a Vietnamese perspective, the Cu Chi tunnels complex, the My Lai massacre site and students discussed with Vietnamese students how they perceived the “father of Vietnamese independence”, Ho Chi Minh. They were able to contextualise events that from Australia seemed foreign and a long time ago. The realities and long-term consequences of war were brought home to them and a number said that they “finally got” what empathy means.

The planning that is involved in such a trip seems minor when you look at the level of learning that takes place by simply immersing students in the sights, smells and feelings that travel brings. We completed a group blog along the way and documented the trip so that parents and others in the school community could in a virtual sense, come along with us. You can check it out here. This was a wonderful way to record in a collaborative and multimedia way what was, quite literally, the trip of a lifetime.

Sylvia Martinez in technology enabled service learning projects writes how the effective use of technology is about “providing students with context and real life projects [that] makes learning come alive.” “This means students can go beyond “tech skills” to authentic learning and citizenship that lasts a lifetime”.
“It’s harder to argue that blogs or social networks are just time wasters when they are being used to discuss cultural issues with students in Tibet, or say that student email is unnecessary when students are key members of a city-wide safe water campaign.”
I’ve been thinking about this lately as I’m currently planning a cultural study tour to Vietnam for the senior Modern History and Geography classes. We are looking at incorporating a meaningful service aspect into the trip. I don’t want to do this in an ad-hoc or superficial manner and am looking at how to blend the experience with the aim of helping students understand Vietnam’s history more deeply. One idea is for students to raise funds and visit orphans who have been affected by dioxins – an ongoing consequence of the war in Vietnam. From ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, it is estimated by the Vietnamese that “three million of their people – including third-generation babies being born today – are victims, suffering from high levels of cancer and birth defects. They blame the effects of the deadly poison dioxin [Agent Orange], contained in the 42 million litres of the herbicide that was sprayed over their countryside for eight years in the 1960s.”
Teaching students the value of giving is crucial as is helping them develop a wider view of the world, especially being conscious that there is a level of poverty that is beyond our middle class experiences. I’m thinking about how to do this in a way that extends beyond a self-indulgent “servi-tourism”.
Students from our school have been involved in the past in a range of projects, including building stoves in Peru, painting a school in PNG and delivering bicycles to an orphanage in Fiji. To hear students talk about how much these experiences meant to them and the people involved and how it changed their thinking about the world was moving.
Sylvia links to the new K-12 Service-Learning Project Planning Kit, from the National Service Learning Clearinghouse in which includes the following steps:

• Choosing a meaningful problem for your service-learning project
• Linking to curriculum standards, citizenship and social-emotional goals
• Developing an assessment plan
• Implementing a high quality service-learning activity
• Designing reflection activities
• Organizing a culminating event

A Season of Service: Introducing Service Learning into the Liberal Arts Curriculum
Benjamin R. Barber, Richard Battistoni
PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 235-240

Photo: Tim Barnsley

Blogged with Flock

The following is attributed to Warren Buffet, who when prompted by a question regarding the obligations of the wealthy to society, posed the following scenario: “Let’s say that it was 24 hours before you were born, and a genie appeared and said, ‘What I’m going to do is let you set the rules of the society into which you will be born. You can set the economic rules and the social rules, and whatever rules you set will apply during your lifetime and your children’s lifetimes.’ And you’ll say, ‘Well, that’s nice, but what’s the catch?’ And the genie says, ‘Here’s the catch. You don’t know if you’re going to be born rich or poor, white or black, male or female, able-bodied or infirm, intelligent or retarded.” I’m going to use this as a starter activity for Lord of the Flies.

This is brilliant - Music and Life, a production by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, was created using recordings from libertarian Alan Watts.
If we apply the metaphor to education, this short film encapsulates how we undermine the joys (the singing and dancing) of learning with our obsession with the finishing point (high stakes test results) and getting there in the fastest and most “efficient” way. Maybe it’s an age thing but I had only vaguely heard of Alan Watts (very famous in the 1950s and 1960s) prior to seeing this – it really made me think about realigning my priorities to make time for a bit more singing and dancing…

While 1:1 laptop programs have recently attracted some negative PR, most schools who have taken the decision embrace a 1:1 environment do so because they value collaborative and constructivist approaches to learning and the development of post-industrial skills, such as multi-modal literacy, critical thinking and problem solving.
Web 2.0 has made global interaction so much easier. Projects that allow communication outside the classroom, school, region or country have the potential to engage students in a way that hasn’t been possible before and to add an authenticity to outcomes/standards such as “students become global citizens”.

My class, along with a school in Shanghai and Serbia, began a second Flat World High Schools project, which unfortunately hit some considerable bumps. These included three different sets of holidays, which meant that there was a six to eight-week lapse, which fatally undermined the flow of the project. From my end, our three-week holiday was followed by an excursion week and exams and the whole endeavour came to a halt. Having said that, students in my class were still checking out the site, reading other people’s stories and comments this week even though the project had stalled and there had been little activity for weeks. This demonstrated that in terms of engagement, students are very excited by the prospect of global collaboration and communication with students from other countries. I’m sure this is probably the case for most students, but as a school in regional Australia (five hours from a major city in any direction), we are aware that we are geographically isolated in a national and international sense and this is a reason why using laptops (especially when they are the students’ own) to facilitate genuinely international communication is potentially very powerful.
The main problem, other than a lack of planning, was that this was essentially an “extension” project that was in addition to syllabus content my class was covering. One of the main impediments to initiating these projects succcessfully is that teachers, and students, are “time-poor” and that’s why working with teachers who are teaching in the same area may be a way to address this issue. For example, imagine if students studying World War One or the French Revolution could interact and discuss these topics. Or students reading “To Kill A Mockinbird” or “Hamlet” were able to analyse and explore concepts together, and compare how their cultural contexts can lead to different interpretations and critical readings. There are many teachers who can see the value in these projects but I think they are unsure about how to get them off the ground. Many are asking how to make these projects part of “mainstream” classses and I think that modelling successful projects and sharing tips and guidelines on planning and implementation are practical ways to do this.

Image: http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2006/09/leading_teams_i_1.html