Global Awareness activity

Sometime last week, as I was reading everyone's responses on the Twitter discussion board, I remember someone posting an article having to do with bringing historical figures to life, and I think it involved Facebook in some way.

A. - B. Inspired by this, I designed my global assignment in such a way that my class would connect to others via ePals. Simply put, my class would create a Facebook profile for a famous classical musician, say, Mozart, complete with pictures, group memberships, status updates, etc, and other classes would do the same with other famous classical musicians. Our musicians could become friends, and comment on each other's posts and updates. Our classes would maintain the page for the duration of the school year.

C. The reason this lesson involves global awareness has little to do with the famous musicians that would be the focus of the Facebook pages. For example, if my class chose to use Mozart as its avatar, we'd be posting and updating in English, even though Mozart lived in Austria. We'd make sure our posts were historically and culturally accurate -- but we'd also need to be careful to practice proper 21st century digital etiquette and follow our school's acceptable use policies. (Mozart, though a genius, was also known to be a pervert and enjoyed scatological humor. Anyone choosing to go with Wagner would have to leave out his anti-Semitic leanings.) What makes this activity conform to global awareness is the fact that students from all over the world, albiet through their Facebook avatars, would be communicating with one another. Rather than flippantly responding to a video Beethoven may post with "lol", my class would be expected to come up with a thoughtful, educated and measured response, bearing in mind the nationality of the students to which they are responding.

D. I'd incorporate this activity into my classroom by giving my students weekly research tasks. I would aim to have our historical figure post one "status", one picture, and one video per week (along with a description of the video and picture), and to respond to or post on at least three other historical figures posts per week. I would assign a small group of students to research one of these aspects each week, and in subsequent weeks, the responsibilities would rotate. We would aim to make our posts on Wednesdays, during class. (Only I, as teacher, would have direct access to the Facebook profiles, and only I would be allowed to actually input the responses.)

This lesson would be fun, informative, and teach students about proper, polite, and legal online interactions.