Website: generation.global

What does it help with?

Generation Global provides practical support to help foster effective dialogue, empathy, and understanding. Not only do these skills prepare students for work and life beyond school, but they allow them to successfully navigate the difficult conversations and differences they will encounter in a multicultural world. 

With Generation Global’s platform and curriculum, students connect with their peers from around the world and are able to teach and learn from different cultures. Generation Global provides educators the tools they need to make these connections, including virtual classrooms and safe, monitored online environments. This process allows students to learn skills and gain the experience they need to navigate diversity in a peaceful way.

What grade and age range?  Students ages 12-17 (middle and high school)

Is this core/supplemental/special needs/extracurricular/professional development or what?

Generation Global’s curriculum and resources are used as a supplement in classroom lessons and units, specifically in history, social studies, geography, and ELA.

What subject, topic, what standards is it mapped to?

Generation Global classroom resources can be easily integrated in to history, social studies, geography, and ELA lessons to help educate students on the difficult issues facing our nation and the world today and to meet local, Common Core, and Framework for Social Studies state standards.

Generation Global from Tony Blair Faith Foundation on Vimeo.

What lesson time does it use?

Educators can use as much or as little of the Generation Global content as they desire. While some educators prefer to use the curriculum as a whole, others take bits and pieces to incorporate into their lessons. Depending on grade level and subjects taught, educators can use an entire class period, or spread time over an entire unit or even full semesters.

What is the pricing model?

Generation Global is a free solution with no subscription or set-up fees.

Are there services around it?

Generation Global offers additional support for teachers such as training with curriculum experts, access to 24-hour help desks, and an intuitive toolset used to prepare and evaluate students on their performance.

What makes Generation Global unique?

Generation Global encourages the next generation of young people to be at ease with difference. It fosters dialogue, empathy, and understanding when learning about global citizenship alongside their peers from around the world. Often educators find the solution helpful in bridging cultural gaps within their own classrooms or schools.

A description of the characteristics--how is it designed for user interface, user experience? What instructional design principles are at work here?

Since 2008, more than 200,000 students in 20 countries around the world have engaged in meaningful dialogue, connected with peers around the world through videoconferences, and had online conversations using the safe, secure, and monitored web-based platform. Generation Global gives young people the skills of global citizenship, and encourages the next generation to be accepting and at ease with cultural differences. Lessons foster critical thinking, effective dialogue skills, and intercultural knowledge to help students better understand and respect one another.

Using the online learning community, teachers can easily group their students into structured conversations with other young people around the world, creating a safe and monitored environment that encourages open dialogue.

Teachers can take their class across the world in an afternoon through online videoconferences facilitated and arranged by the Generation Global team. Students interact directly with their peers from around the world, and ask questions about culture, identity, beliefs, and values.

Generation Global classroom resources prepare students before and after videoconferences by focusing on critical thinking skills and how to engage in meaningful discussion. With careful preparation, students to learn the skills they need to express themselves in a respectful and open-minded way.

Student review:

Rathna Muralidharan, Chantilly High School, Fairfax County, VA

“What I most enjoyed was getting to see the world through another person's eyes and experience their culture and heritage through them. Out of all the videoconferences I participated in, I enjoyed our session with the school in Lebanon the most because the topics we covered were so varied and the students had taken off time from their schedules to talk to us after their school was over, despite the dangerous situation that put them in. I believe it to be an excellent tool in connecting us to peers on a global scale, as well as teaching us how to communicate with people in a respectful manner while keeping our minds open to views that are different from our own. Participating in the program has inspired me to learn more about different cultures and played a very large role in my decision to pursue International Affairs as a major in college and eventually get a job promoting respect and understanding for different heritages and cultures.”