The story of Lot and meaningful learning.
Herman van Veen, a famous Dutch artist, has been a UNICEF ambassador for a long time. He says, "What a better place this world would be, if we would just respect the 54 Children's Rights, anchored in the UNICEF Child's Right Charter signed by over 200 countries." He created a 13-year old girl named Lotte Roos, we call her Lot (meaning Fate/destiny). Lot stands for all the children in the world, travels all over the world, reports back to the children and answers their question in return. Lot's foundation supports the methodology of the Learning Circles in which children can learn with each other and with the world they live in, far beyond learning about that world.
On February 9th 2015, 86 classes from 16 countries will start a educational learning journey on Children's Rights; for 15 weeks they will explore, do research and learn about the right for food, health care, education and the right to be safe and loved. In total these 4000+ students will learn in 11 wiki-based Learning Circles, four for primary education in Dutch, two for secondary education in Dutch and five international circles in English.
Learning Circles and peer assessment.
Now, after 15 weeks of international Global Learning, it would be rather odd to end this learning journey with 'a test'. That's why we are really happy with the support of Professor Steve Joordens from the University of Toronto (UTSC) to guide us in using his peer learning and assessment system, named peerScholar. In the last phase of the Learning Circles, all students will join in one global classroom and collaborate in giving and receiving feedback to one another's work. Each student will write an essay about the one Children's Right that they are missing. Is it the right to play? Or the right to be accepted as you are? Let's see how our journey inspires students from Suriname, the Netherlands, Curaçao, Canada, Russia, Morocco, the Czech Republic, Brazil, United States, Ukraine, Slovenia, Lebanon, Romania, Bangladesh, Hungary and India and helps them to grow into real global citizens who not only learn to read and write, yet also learn to care and live together.
We are thrilled to have Michael Fullan, professor emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, UTSC, on board to support and explore with us how real and authentic learning based upon Collaboration and Communities contributes to quality education in the 21st century.
Lot's Foundation – The Netherlands:
- Project leader: Mrs. Saskia Klomps
Global Teenager Project
- Project Coordinator Learning Circles: Bob Hofman
- Learning Circle Facilitators: Mrs. Manon van Herwijnen and Mrs. Natasha Cherednicenko
- GTP Country Coordinators: Anita Townsend (Canada), Eliane Metni (Lebanon);
Funding
- Lot's Foundation
- Global Teenager Foundation
Learning Circles
- Methodology - iEARN International – Dr. Margaret Riel – Founder and director of AT&T Learning Circles, 1987 - 1996; director of AT&T's gift of the Learning Circles to the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), 1996 - Present.
- Global Teenager Project – "Todays learners are tomorrow's leaders" - Bob Hofman and Eliane Metni
peerScholar – a peer learning and peer assessment tool
- Steve Joordens, Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough
- Dwayne Paré, Assistant Professor , University of Toronto Scarborough
- Michael Fullan is Professor Emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Comments (1)
Hendrik Karsodikromo said
at 4:24 pm on Feb 28, 2015
Good work partners: Collaboration is working with others to do a task and to achieve shared goals all over the world
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