Global Lives, Global Empathy
This innovation also has a Project Page where you can read more about its latest progress.
Go to Project: Global Lives Project.
Global Lives is a global network of 1000+ volunteers building a video library of human life experience using multimedia to engage, educate and inspire.
About You
About You
First Name
Lauren
Last Name
Valdez
Twitter URL
https://twitter.com/#!/globallives
Facebook URL
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Global Lives Project
Organization Website
Organization Country
United States, CA, Mountain View, Santa Clara County
Country where this project is creating social impact
United States, CA, San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco County
Is your organization a
Non‐profit / NGO / Citizen sector organization
Your role in Education
Other.
The type of school(s) your solution is affiliated with
Public (tuition-free)
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
Innovation
Select the stage that best applies to your solution
Start-Up (a pilot that has just begun operating)
How long has your solution been in operation?
The Need: What problem are you trying to solve?
Global literacy and cross-cultural empathy are vital to students participating positively in an increasingly interconnected world. While young people have access to an overwhelming amount of global information at the touch of a button, 88% of young Americans can’t find Afghanistan on a map (2006 Geographic Literacy Study). Many schools have few teacher and technological resources to go beyond standards-based education to explore further questions of globalization and intercultural awareness. New media is central to developing global relations, thus programs are needed that enable students to understand, participate and shape this process. We believe that the Global Lives Global Empathy curriculum will fill a current gap in education and foster an increased sense of empathy among youth.
The Solution: What is your solution? Be specific!
GLP created a powerful multimedia platform using real-time video footage to document lives of individuals worldwide to cultivate the ethic of global citizenship and cross-cultural empathy. The process of viewing GLP video promotes global understanding and empathy, encourages awareness and critical thinking, offers respect for different cultures and religions, and provokes important dialogue about global citizenship. The Global Lives Global Empathy education pilot cultivates empathy in the classroom by connecting personal day-to-day global stories with educational lesson plans by harnessing the power of video and online portals to educate, communicate, inspire and empower students and teachers. We are working with Stanford’s School of Education, San Francisco Bay Area teachers throughout 20 schools, and international educators in 4 countries to pilot various student engagement models that encourage students to communicate effectively, work collaboratively, and think critically.
The Model: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference; include your primary activities
This pilot program consists of four elements:
1. Student learning and engagement:
Model A: Teachers use Global Lives footage as a tool to more deeply engage students with standards-based subject matter.
Model B: Teachers uses Global Lives footage as a standalone unit exploring 5-10 core issues (ex. environment, gender, etc.) in an interdisciplinary manner.
Model C: Teacher engages students directly as new media producers, coaching students to collaboratively produce videos exploring daily life in their communities.
2. Teacher capacity building and professional development:
Teachers will attend 3 full-day workshops led by expert teachers in the field of global education and technology. These workshops will focus on developing lesson plans to incorporate Global Lives Project video into classroom curricula.
3. Online Education Portal:
With input from teachers and educators, the Global Lives website is being transformed into an online platform that will serve as an open educational resource available for free, where teachers and students can access Global Lives footage and resources, connect with one another to have active discussion in real time, and will also serve to document the work being done.
4. Development of a global education model to be expanded over the next three years:
International educators and collaborators from our global network will be invited to initiate various outreach models to develop their own Global Lives education pilots to explore using global lives footage in the context of their communities.
The Marketplace: Who are your peers and competitors? Identify others also working to address the needs you are and what differentiates you from them. What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
GLP has integrated into a broad network of organizations that advance the recording, sharing, and archiving of high-quality video content using open technologies. We are committed to collaboration with other producers and distributors of educational content in the public domain. The Internet Archive (IA) is a pioneer in the field of video archiving, GLP has formed a partnership with IA to house a special collection of GLP video content. The EVIA Digital Archive is an an academic archive of ethnographic video with annotation from academic fieldwork. However, the content is not shared under free or open licenses. GLP has made contact with EVIA to collaborate with them, leveraging their experiences to make the GLP video library equally valuable to ethnographers and academic researchers.
Now that you have thought out your entry, help us pitch it.
Define your company, program, service, or product in 1-2 short sentences [136 characters]
Create. Observe. Experience. Connect. Learn. Grow. Participate. Step out of your world with the Global Lives Project.
Identify what is innovative about your solution in 1-2 short sentences [136 characters]
GLP collaboratively produces/distributes open-sourced multimedia and education materials to cultivate global citizenship and empathy.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What has been the impact of your solution to date?
Since the pilot kicked off in 2012, GLP has presented to 100+ teachers in the SF Bay Area who have given us feedback on how they would like to use Global Lives footage in the classroom. In collaboration with Stanford University’s School of Education, GLP developed middle-school curriculum to be distributed. We developed strategic partnerships with Facing History and Ourselves and the San Francisco Film Society to enable us to distribute our materials to over 5,000 teachers this year. GLP led a professional development training for all Palo Alto Unified School District social science teachers.
Nicole, a teacher at Almaden Elementary School describes her experience, “Using the footage from GLP allowed the students to continue their exploration of the daily routines and choices of people, not unlike themselves, who happen to live in different geographic and cultural environments.” Nicole noticed her students become more empathetic towards cultures seemingly disparate from their own.
What is your projected impact over the next 1-3 years?
During our first pilot year, we will distribute our materials to 5,000 educators and reach 20,000 students in the SF Bay Area. After evaluating the impact of various student engagement models during our pilot phase, we will revise our materials and develop downloadable and hard-copy “education kits”. We will continue outreach to educators and increase our channels of distribution beyond the Bay Area in our second year. Our website will be used to measure student interaction with the material and reach hundreds of thousands of students and educators. In our 3rd year, our international collaborators will begin implementing pilot models based on using Global Lives footage in the context of their education systems.
Winning entries present a strong plan for how they will achieve and track growth. Identify your six-month milestone for growing your impact
To distribute and evaluate the first iteration of the Global Lives Global Empathy education materials.
Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your six-month milestone
Task 1
Distribute middle school curriculum developed by Stanford University’s School of Education to 5,000 educators in the Bay Area.
Task 2
Through pro bono support with Deloitte Consulting, develop and implement assessment and impact measurement tools.
Task 3
Open House Workshop and collaboration day to be attended by our partners and 100+ educators at Gunn High School in Palo Alto.
Now think bigger! Identify your 12-month impact milestone
We will evaluate the impact of GLP materials, refine our online resources, and continue outreach to educators.
Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your 12-month milestone
Task 1
Receive assessment tool results from teachers that have used GLP curriculum; conduct interviews and class observation.
Task 2
Revise materials based on results; adapt middle school curriculum to elementary and high school levels.
Task 3
Release new website that expands web resources to enhance collaboration.
Founding Story: We want to hear about your "Aha!" moment. Share the story of where and when the founder(s) saw this solution's potential to change the world [125 words]
David Evan Harris, Executive-Director and Founder
“After eight months traveling the globe on a study abroad program, what once would have been a trivial statistic now had a human face. During that time, I had wandered, listened, and stumbled my way through places that I hardly knew existed: a squatter settlement in Mexico City, a Maasai village in Tanzania, a former state cricket champion's home on a Himalayan hillside.
Those experiences had shown me first hand how everything I did was part of a global community. And the personal connections I brought back instilled me with a greater sense of responsibility for how I lived my life.
I wanted to share this understanding with everyone I met. But to have an impact, I knew I needed to bring these people to life. From this, Global Lives was born.”
Sustainability
Tell us about your partnerships
In relation to our education pilot:
-Facing History and Ourselves: connecting us with educators in the Bay Area
-SFFS: distributing our materials to their network of 5000 teachers
-UC Berkeley’s Moral Psychology Group: Developed Empathy Survey
-Stanford University’s School of Education: Developed middle school curriculum
-California College of the Arts: Designed mobile exhibit to be travel to schools
-Deloitte Consulting: Developing strategies and tools for each of our programs
-United World Colleges: Working on new shoots in 10 different countries
What type of team (staff, volunteers, etc.) will ensure that you achieve the growth milestones identified in the Social Impact section? [75 words]
Our staff of two, four interns, active Board of Directors, and volunteer Education Committee will be at the center of a network of dozens of partner organizations, hundreds of volunteer contributors and teachers around the world that have come together in support of making our education pilot a success.
With the pro bono support of a data analytics team at Deloitte LLP, we are currently developing a series of assessment tools to measure the degree to which each Global Lives program contributes to our aim of cultivating the ethic of global citizenship and cross-cultural empathy.
Please elaborate on any needs or offers you have mentioned above and/or suggest categories of support that aren't specified within the list
