Diary of a Lead Teacher: Making global connections!

The beginning of the summer term has been something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time (not just because it’s a short one!). This half term marks the official beginning of our school’s partnership with a school in Nepal, just outside Kathmandu. Following a link made through Connecting Classrooms of the British Council and a successful grant proposal, myself and a colleague will be venturing off to South Asia to visit our new partners and begin to plan a unique project together.

The aim is to enable schools to support each other and collaborate on global issues through a student project. In Nepal, the partnership themes include community engagement and global citizenship education, as well as the wider theme of developing effective school leaders in these areas.

So how does this all link to digital technologies? Well technology is integral to this project. Students from both of our schools will be collaborating on social enterprise projects looking into sustainable development. Technology will be key to ensuring an effective collaboration with peers half way around the world! When we meet next week, my partner and I will discuss how technology and digital resources can support the growth of our project from communication channels to interactive sharing of ideas and projects. How can we make the best of our computational skills and resources to build a successful outcome?

I am also really excited to find out about how our partner school engages with computational thinking and their approach and opinions of digital teaching and learning. The curriculum is inevitably going to be different but how does their culture and society influence what children are learning at school and how are they tackling the issues of a rapidly expanding technological age? I’m really looking forward to getting a better idea of the global picture of digital and computational teaching to understanding how those from a different background tackle the same worldwide concerns.

Hopefully next month I’ll have some answers!