New educational standards address the needs that US students develop a cultural understanding and global awareness. The world has become increasingly flat: global collaboration and communication is easy, efficient, and common. According to Alan November, key to becoming successful in the global marketplace, and often found to be lacking in US business people, is empathy, (the ability to understand and share the feelings of another), for peoples of differing cultures.

Mrs. Kenerson and I agree that global collaboration for students at Vernon is important and valuable. Web tools such as blogs and wikis have made this kind of collaboration easy. We’d like to discuss books, media and basically whatever our students think is valuable to share! We’ve yet to connect with another class, but we’re working on it!

Do you think connecting with a class from another part of the world is a important? Would you like to participate?