Diversity, Cultural Understanding and Global Awareness

With a variety of tools at our finger tips, is it enough to show the students the world of cultural and global awareness.  With all the textbooks, books in the school library and a variety of lessons to assist with diversity of culture, its still not enough to have the students understand cultural differences without the background knowledge.  Of course the books we can be read to the students can help with knowledge, but the books can be quickly out-dated with all the current events happening around the world.  Things change and we need to stay on top of global awareness.  As an American,  I feel that I don't know what's happening around the world all the time or the past 30 something years.  So much is changing and it is a challenge to keep up with it.  There is so much going on here in the U.S. that seems to overpower any event in the world that's not needing our help. 

Now that we have a new tool in the classroom to show the students how to retrieve more supplements for them to work on, we can show the students more events or images that is happening around the world.  The books can only take the students so far but opening up to the internet is like opening a book to another world of understanding, and up-to-date events.  We have sites like CNN, AJC, as well as newspapers all over the world that is on the internet (http://www.world-newspapers.com/).  We have the power to keep up with current events.  There is National Geographic, Social Studies for kids, and more.  We can now find the understanding of cultures by reading and exlore everything that is current.   Since the earthquake happened in Japan, I found a website that was constintly updating everytime an earthquake happens around the world (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/).  I showed it to a few student and teachers.  It helped the students to become more interested on how earthquake happens. 

Books can help with learning and getting to know a little about the world by the stories they read.  Books are only one tool and can quickly become outdated.  With using the internet, we can open the students' eyes to so many possibilities to make a connection with books.  It can be used to make the world seem smaller by discovering an events or learning about the culture of other worlds.  We can close the gaps and have the students become world explorers.