Last weekend, I attended the EARCOS Global Issues Network Conference in Beijing at the Western Academy of Beijing. Centered around Jean-François Rischard‘s book, High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, people gathered from around the world to discuss our planet’s most pressing problems and our efforts to address them. Keynote speakers, including J.F. Rischard himself, and students alike shared with us their service projects designed to solve the global problems threatening our planet. I tweeted the keynotes here, posted my presentation notes here, and Jason Welker live blogged the conference here .
The stories, projects, and visions of keynote speakers at this three-day conference showed me again and again that the life-changing experiences, the ones that inspired them to take meaningful action, occurred outside of the classroom. People like Marc Kielburger, today an award winning social advocate who delivered an emotional keynote address, discovered his moment as a 17-year-old working in a hospital in rural Thailand where patients were dying of AIDS complications. The other presenters shared their stories about making a difference. All of them took us beyond the walls of a classroom.
Inspired by this activism at the EARCOS GIN Conference, I encouraged my students to take on a project that would take them to the streets of Tianjin. They decided to create a series of three-minute videos that show the local expats how to live in Tianjin with a more earth-friendly carbon footprint. Their first global citizen video will highlight the impacts of plastic bags on our natural environment. It promises to deliver laughs, hard facts, and solutions.
This is a developing story about students taking meaningful action, using technology to leverage their action, and getting out of the classroom and in touch with real problems, real people, real solutions. So in my next post, I’ll share our first global citizen video, discuss our filming experience, and explain how we connected with expat networks to reach our intended audience. My students have heard me say it but this guide to greener living project is about to prove it – students do have the power to make a difference…today.
I live in Tianjin, China with my wife Tatiana and son Gabriel.
I am the NPK-12 IT Coordinator at International School of Tianjin.
I advocate teaching and learning with technology
that supports inquiry and action in otherwise unobtainable ways.
Global Citizen Videos for Expats /U Tech Tips/ – Last weekend, I attended the EARCOS Global Issues Network … http://tinyurl.com/4sh3euReply – Quote
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