Blogs on Global Education

Separated by thousands of miles, middle-school students in suburban Massachusetts are teaming up with peers in Brazil, Africa, and India on a project with lifesaving potential. By designing and building efficient cook stoves, students are learning about energy and humanitarian engineering.

Last week, the annual Silfen Forum was held at the University of Pennsylvania. The theme, Open Learning and the Future of Higher Education, brought together educators from around the country, including the panelists Amy Gutmann, Martha Kanter, Thomas Friedman, Daphne Koller and William Kirwan. A common thread during the one-hour conversation was on how the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected over the last seven years. The rise of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Classrooms) has forced us to re-evaluate what traditional college and university teaching and learning look like. A full sharing of tweets from and about the forum can be found on Storify.

The PennFinn13 team has been in Helsinki, Finland this week learning about education in Finland. They have been asking critical questions about core values in place, curriculum, professional development, student voice and culture, governance, finances and leadership. Learning from the likes of Finnish leaders Pasi Sahlberg, Jari Lavonen, Arto Kallioniemi, Heidi Krzywacki and Atso Taipale, the team is providing an opportunity for the rest of the world to explore teaching, learning and leading in a top-ranked educational landscape.

This is the second in a special Edutopia blog series about developing 21st century skills through project-based learning. In the first post, "Yes, You Can Teach and Assess Creativity!", blogger Andrew Miller offered classroom strategies to encourage creative thinking. This post takes a look at a real-world project that has inspired students to think more creatively about their role as global citizens.