Tag Archives: mdgs

AU Spring Semester Ends with Pecha-Kucha

Even with a whopping 58 students in the class, the spring semester has flown by.  Since we like to elicit a lot of participation from the student, facilitate a lot of group activities, get the students moving around, and playing around with different learn space set ups, an increased class size, in a room with auditorium style fixed seating, made for some teaching and facilitation challenges.  But my dad and I made the necessary adjustments and, as far as I can say, had a good time working, yet again, with another group of AU students.

As we’ve done in the past, we ended the semester with students working in teams to design a education/training program that seeks to address one of many development challenges facing the finctional country of Afrinia.  The teams then present their program to the rest of the class, specifically addressing questions related to the major themes and concepts covered during the semester.  We did a little something different this year, however, with the presentations – we asked each team to put together a pecha-kucha presentation.

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Presentation for the One World Youth Project

This past weekend I gave a presentation on skills and approaches to teaching and facilitation for the One World Youth Project (OWYP).  OWYP is a great non-profit educational organization that links schools globally in service-learning to prepare the next generation for the globalized 21st century. In service of this mission they train college and university students  to go into local high school and middle schools to teach and implement elements of the OWYP curriculum which focuses on exploring the Millennium Development Goals and other global issues.  My presentation was filmed and will be put online to be used as a resources for college students who are “educators in training” interested in learning more about specific education approaches and teaching techniques that can help them be creative, culturally aware, and effective facilitators for OWYP.  Continue reading to check out my remarks.

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Global Day of Action on Military Spending

Today I participated in the Global Day of Action on Military Spending –  a global effort to draw attention to the amount of money countries spend on defense, war, and their military vs. other issues and human needs like clean water, basic sanitation, primary schooling for all, eradication of HIV/AIDS and other major diseases, etc – all of which can be accomplished by spending just a small fraction of what the world spends on war-making.  My good friend, mentor, and fellow peace educator, Barbara Wien, invited me to facilitate a session on peace education and nonviolence during a teach-in event that was held during the day of action on American University’s campus.  The goal for our session was for attendees to not just be aware about how much money is spent on war-making and the nefarious interests that profit from it, but to actually start thinking about alternative approaches, specific actions, and examples of how people, communities, and government’s can create security, fight for human rights, and advance social justice, without violence and war.  Continue reading to learn more about the day and the issue.

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