Conference calling

A video I saw today about conference calling "in real life" which made me laugh, thinking of the course connect pro meetings...

Global Education

Today we had the first session of the Global Education course with Blair. The groups wasn't very big, but that was good as it meant we could all stay in the same place and discuss with each other.

Many interesting issues came up. At the start Blair asked us what our experience and expectations were and I admitted that I didn't have much of either. Now, after this session, at least I'm a little wiser about some of the issues that can be folded into discussions around Global Education.

One thing comes to mind, that there's plenty of scope for all sorts of things to fall under that umbrella term, but if I had to single some things out, they would be: equality, morality, openness and inquisitiveness as key terms so far.

We had a pre-task of looking at a quote from Freire (try to look past the Canadian English):

“What kind of politics am I doing in the classroom? That is, in favor of whom am I being a teacher?…The teacher works in favor of something and against something.”*

... and thinking about what we are for or against as teachers. I said:

FOR: Appreciation of others, good spirits and positivity

AGAINST: Apathy, negativity and ambiguity

Together with Anna, we are creating a short documentary for the course, looking at the situation of education in Nepal. It's a heck of a lot of work putting it together, but I feel that it will really be worth it. Watch this space...

*Paulo Freire in Shor (1987) A Pedagogy for Liberation, p. 46.