Putting yourself in someone else's shoes... or regions

    I love the idea of using technology to become better connected with the world. Using country or state codes to search something on google and using Flipgrid's GridPals option are two great examples of this in technology.

    To use country codes, there is a simple equation to memorize:

Phrase you want to look up + "Site:" + Two-letter country code + URL

    For example, if I wanted to look for what the Australian government has to say about Australian shepherds, you would type in "Australian shepherds site:gov.au". The link to a page that lists all the different country codes can be found here: https://countrycode.org/

    To use GridPals, log in to your Flipgrid educator account and click on the profile button in the top right corner. In the dropdown list, select "GridPals". When you get to the GridPals page, you want to click on "Active: Educators can connect with me" and fill out your personal information. Once you're active, you can click on a green + symbol anywhere on the map and, after reading about that educator, send them an invite to connect with you.

    For my Spanish capstone project last fall, I made a photo book that looked at how the media in Venezuela, Cuba, Spain, and the UK portray various political events and figures differently. Most of the time spent working on this project was consumed by trying to find sources straight from these countries, rather than sources from the US, which Google assumed I wanted. Knowing how to use country codes would have spared me so much time and stress, and I'm sure I could have taken a more in-depth look at this topic.

Los medios - Heuer.pptx

(Here is a link to view my photo book, if anyone can read Spanish 😉)

    In terms of my future math classroom, I would love to use GridPals as a fun activity for my class to talk with other students and solve the same math problem together. There are so many different ways to solve a math problem that vary between states, regions, and countries, and I would want my students to learn more about this. For example, when I moved to Washington, everyone in my high school classes did multiplication completely differently than how I had learned to do it in my third grade classroom in Hawaii. Given that there was such a big difference in how to do the same multiplication problem just between two states, I can't imagine the amount of new ideas and solutions that could be shared between two different countries. These new strategies will certainly help my class make more connections between mathematical concepts, and they will show the students that there is not just one right way to do a problem.

    Needless to say, I love learning about other places and their ways of thinking, so country codes and GridPals will be something I implement from now on in my class.