Students entering high school today enter a world that is increasingly shrinking in terms of size and human relationships. As these students continue on and enter the world outside of school they will find that they will need skills that will allow them to communicate with all types of people using many different technologies. Some of these technologies have been in existence for centuries and others have only been existence for a few years. In order to become an effective member of society, all students will need to use advanced communication skills in any field or endeavor they wish to enter in their post high school life.

Regardless of the technology used, students must find ways in their personal and professional lives to increase their circle of influence in the world they are citizens of. Students are already consumers of many of these communications tools, from cell phones to the Internet and beyond. Students use these communication tools to enhance their social lives and create richer relationships with those people around them. The goal of this course is to teach students how to be better consumers of the media they have access to and use it to communicate with individuals and groups in their school, community and around the world. By using some of the communications tools students are already using and additional tools in new and different ways, students will find that they already possess some of the basic skills that will be necessary to function in the world of the future. Students will leverage their own personal experience to become educated consumers and contributors of the information they access from a variety of different sources.

As the last few years has shown, people within our society and around the world have found new and different ways to communicate with each other. Because of this change, many of the skills we have taught in schools are no longer enough to give students the skills to enter the workforce and attain higher educational goals. Students must develop teamwork skills where collaboration occurs digitally instead of face to face. In the Mayo Demonstration School of Science and Technology their theory is:

“Education in the United States has to prepare students to be more responsible for managing their own learning and to work collaboratively. It is critical that we support these children with a learning environment that will lead to self managed, self-directed learning and a heightened responsibility for others. We have no choice. The changes in our culture are demanding these skills.”


The Global Communications course is interdisciplinary in nature, since communication takes on many different forms based upon the medium used. The course content will reflect this interdisciplinary nature and will relate back to the student’s core curriculum course work. The first semester will require the student to improve their personal use of technology tools and relate their personal experience through the work they are completing in their English and Health course. During the second semester, students will work towards making connections outside of themselves and the local community in collaboration with their English and Contemporary World Studies course. Students will complete survey of historical events and communication techniques leading into the technologies used today to make the world we live in a truly ‘Global Community.’ As students become more proficient in the use of communication tools, their audience they will engage will grow to match their skill level. Students will discover that communication and collaboration is not confined to space and time, but is structured in such a way as to allow everyone to participate. At the end of the course, students will complete a course project which will allow them to demonstrate their ability to influence the world outside of their community and identify future areas of interest in the acquisition of Global Communications skills.

In the fall semester, students in the English I course will undertake several assignments which ask them to perform self-analysis and awareness tasks, including: an autobiographical essay, a historical reference to an event in their life and a personality poem. The culminating activity of the semester is a author research project, in which students need to identify an author from a group provided by the teacher and perform an in depth analysis of several works, relating the content to their personal lives. The Health course has many assignments and projects which ask the student to perform tasks related to individual awareness, emotional management, social awareness, sexual education, tobacco, alcohol and drugs, art of living and disease, and nutrition and physical fitness.

In the spring semester, students will be asked to move outside of themselves and the local community and make themselves ‘Global Citizens.’ English classes will be looking at culture as a means to understand society as a whole. Literature used will include several pieces which ask students to analyze and interpret other cultures. Writing assignments will ask students to identify and analyze bridges to themselves within the global community. In the Contemporary World Studies course, students will engage in a short geography unit, in which the ‘seven aspects of culture’ will be identified and used as a framework for the remainder of the course. The course will then work through a survey of ‘area studies’ of different regions, including: Central America, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.