Project-Based Learning and its connection to Global Education

A Framework for Project-Based Global Learning

I have tried to select resources that are helpful to start with. Each resource is linked to a reputable site.

I have organized each of the resources by explaining how you might justify the inclusion of the resource into your practice, as “Why it matters to students.” After that, I have provided a small and a large way to utilize the resource. As teachers we often have curricula and commitments that do not allow us to embark in entirely new directions, or we know what we have created is right for our students. In such cases, the small ways are helpful. If however, you end up liking these approaches, I’ve supplied one option for a larger investment, and a PBL project idea that is just one way of looking at the resource. Much of this is brainstorming on my part or dredging my memory for examples I know colleagues have tried.

The best resources for this type of learning should:

Seem real, with real-world issues and applications embedded into the project.
Broaden a student’s understanding of the world by providing multiple perspectives.
Encourage action.

My Favorite Resources

1. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Why it matters to students; The SDG’s are sort of a backbone of global project-based learning. Through these, students learn about the challenges that people face in the world, see the relevance in their own communities, and approach these issues from a problem-solving perspective
Small Integration: A teacher can choose on SDG, like Zero Hunger, and use it to engender a class discussion
Large Integration: A class could choose an SDG and construct an entire action-unit around it, investigating, for example, how communities can have disparate access to clean water, designing filtration systems, and reporting on how water-borne diseases would be profoundly impacted by improving access.

2. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Why it matters to students: The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting should be in the toolkit of every global education teacher. Their journalism focuses on underreported global issues, connecting students to real people and poignant stories
Small integration: Debates can be started from considering a short article or photo essay.
Large Integration: If students have a larger project, The Pulitzer Center can serve as a research bank. Migration and Environmental Justice, for example, could be researched and explored and then presented as an informative podcast.

3. Gapminder

Why it matters to students: Data visualizations are especially interesting to students because they depict information in eye-catching, holistic ways. Students can watch animations of data changing over time, like wealth, health, and education, challenging assumptions and providing a sense of how global events can lead to changes, both positive and negative.
Small integration: Teachers can show Dollar Street videos to compare the socioeconomics and values of a handful of different families, just to spark conversation.
Larger integration: Students can use the data in Gapminder to develop and justify the value of a hypothesis, like a connection between income and life expectancy.

4. UNICEF Voices of Youth

How it can help students: Voices of Youth is what the title suggests, a compilation of stories and videos written by young people from diverse global origins. More than most resources, it taps directly into youth and provides a framework for students to feel a real connection with peers around the world. This may sound obvious, but students don’t always have the habit of thinking about peers far away.
Small integration: Students could read one or two blog posts to gather youth perspectives in countries they are investigating.
Large integration: Students can use the blog framework as inspiration for their own tackling of a community issue. They can examine their own municipality, trend, social problem, and produce a similar set of stories, videos, and photographs, perhaps even to be published.

5. Google Earth Voyager

How it matters to students: Voyager is an immersive platform for students to discover global geography digitally. It provides interactive tours created by geographers.
Small integration: A unit on anything global can start with Voyager to place the topic in a geographical context.
Large integration: Students could create their own guided tours, using Google Earth to explore their community or another, adding text, photos, videos and more.

6. The 100 People Project

How it can help students: This site helps students understand the vast demographic issues of the world’s 8 billion people by simplifying the population into a 100 people. It makes large-scale global data far more digestible for kids.
Small integration: Students can consider percentages in a real-world way.
Large integration: What if students could zero in on one of the people in the group of 100 and go in-depth into their situation, providing a dossier on their socioeconomics, opportunities, and human rights?

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