4.

3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness - model and facilitate the use of
digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding,
and increase global awareness.
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The ITEC 7430 Global Learning Blog Post and role as coach of our school Lego Robotics club
demonstrate mastery of standard 4.3. The blog post documents my research and knowledge of
strategies and web 2.0 tools that can be implemented to support diverse learning needs,
enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. The goal of the Lego Robotics
club was to engage culturally and linguistically diverse populations in engineering and
technology learning opportunities. This experience allowed me to support the needs of diverse
learners and enhance my culturally understanding as well as the understanding of students
impacted.
Coaching our culturally and linguistically diverse robotics team demonstrates my ability to
model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs.
Our team was established to provide exposure and exploration opportunities to
underrepresented learners, more specifically a group of ELLs and cohort of female gifted
learners expressed interest in building and coding robots after participating in our district
STEAM carnival. We met once a week afterschool to explore fundamentals of coding using
Code.org and Lego Robotics 2.0 all-inclusive kits. This extracurricular gaming program provided
students with the opportunity to learn through play, with a focus on building global
competencies and computational thinking. This experience also demonstrates my ability to
model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to enhance cultural understanding.
When creating and coding robots, I would engage learners in tasks that were culturally relevant
and relatable to their home life. Students also were paired with different team mates weekly to
enhance their understanding and respect for the diversity shared in our space.
The Global Learning blog post demonstrates my ability to model and facilitate the use
of digital tools and resources to increase global awareness. First, I researched Global
Collaboration Projects, or GCPs, and learned that they provide opportunities to work with peers
across state and national boundaries. I detail how teachers can embed GCPs into their current
curriculum to boost the authenticity of their lessons while integrating the Four Cs. I showcased
Skype Collaboration as a tool that could be used to support GCPs implementation with ease.
Skype Collaboration provides opportunities such as virtual field trips, live global guest speakers,
and mystery classroom partnerships with other learners worldwide. I decided to enroll of K-5
school in a mystery reader initiative that allowed students to communicate with authors and
other students nationwide a monthly basis. As a district we are still implementing this program
in the virtual learning space.
These experiences refreshed my enthusiasm for the vast capabilities of instructional
technology. The sheer quantity of online tools and resources increases the likelihood that I can
find a teaching and learning object that perfectly meets the diverse learning needs of each
student. Because the Internet is flattening the world, we also have within our reach multiple
opportunities to enhance cultural understanding and increase global awareness. To improve
these experiences for students, I can implement opportunities for students to collaborate with
students beyond our current experience.
 Each of these experiences impacted student learning. The impact can be assessed by
observing increased number of ELL students and females participating in district technology fair
in robotics and programming categories. The impact can be further assessed by the number of
students enrolling in mystery reader events even in the remote learning phase.