Global Awareness & Global Collaboration VoiceThreads

As of today my VoiceThread "What could it mean?" has had almost 1000 views and has drawn 357 voices. These voices are commenting on images from different countries, depicting a unique traditions, typical customs, distinctive perspectives, routines, habits and practices. Together they are painting a story how people from different countries and cultures can interpret one and the same image in many different ways. Reminding us, that we need to take our different upbringing and cultural backgrounds into consideration before jumping to conclusions. We need to be aware of and recognizing possible misunderstandings due to cultural perceptions.

Through the Global Collaboration Ning , I found two new VoiceThreads created by Bill Ferriter, a Middle School teacher from North Carolina, USA.

The Cultural Photograph

One of the best ways to study the different cultures and customs of the world is to look at photograph from different places.

The other VoiceThread is "Welcome to our World" ,

Students from classes across the globe can explore the interesting differences between their communities by studying images.

Bill has also included great handouts for the students to prepare their comments. I am able to look and zoom in on the handouts in VoiceThread , but would love to be able to download them to use in my classroom. Next step, twitter Bill and see if he would be willing to share. These two VoiceThreads are great examples of how to expose our students to other countries and cultures, but as Bill points out in his post on the Global Collaboration Ning:

The only thing missing is conversation between students of different countries!

We need to make connections to teachers and their students in other countries, especially the ones that seem so under represented such as South America, some parts of Europe (Yes, surprisingly I do not have any teacher from Germany in my network!) and Africa. We also need to remember that the culture that surrounds us and seems so "normal", is "foreign" to someone else. It is a great opportunity to break down stereotypes that the media or movie industry has build up over many years. Believe me, I was very surprised what America was really like when I first arrived here and only had seen the country through movies of the 80s, like Flashdance and Porky’s.