Parana River Butterfly

ChacoSunset

Based on group member's Paraguayan experiences, each of the participating teams will prepare an area studies "webguide" relating to Responsible Environmental Custodianship or International Relations. Webguides will include an integrated sequence of teaching objectives, learner activities, evaluation techniques, and such mediated instructional support materials as pictures and graphics, journal articles, video recordings, artifacts, maps, and recommended reading lists. While these web guides will be based on the participants' experiences in South America , they will have a format that can be generalized and applied to the study of other areas and peoples.

Webguide content will vary, of course, but teams will follow a basic format including:

• Overview  (General statement of conditions/situations which need attention. grade level and subject areas,  and why this is important in context of existing local, national, and global conditions).
• Introduction and Entry-Level Requirements for Learners
• Instructional Objectives and Desired Outcomes (What specific learner performance and results are desired)
• Implementing Strategies and Activities (What will kids do to reach objectives)
• Resources/Materials Needed, including Internet links
• Tying It All Together (Culminating activity[ies] relating outcomes to purposes)
• Evaluation Processes
• Suggested Supplemental Resources, including Internet links

Please keep in mind that:

       1.  Paraguay and its immediate neighbors will not be your exclusive focus, per se.  ECHO webguides will emphasize environmental, intercultural, and socioeconomic themes and topics that are global in nature--- the areas we will visit in South America should be considered a laboratory in which we will explore some aspects of these themes and topics.  Thus, you will be constructing instructional materials that look at South American examples of phenomena that are global in nature.

     2.  ECHO materials are intended for teachers, not students.

     3.  Global almost always means multicultural or multiethnic.  A precondition of all ECHO activities is that you look first at cultural similarities, then at cultural differences, and then at cultural interrelationships. The traditional "Compare and Contrast" model falls short of today's global education mark.  People must begin to see that most of the things they think about and do are thought about and done by people around the world!  That's the similarities part.  Some things are disparate, of course, and that's the differences part (although much of what on the surface seems to be diverse is just people doing the same thing differently).  Finally interrelationships--- the most important thing.  What makes education for a global perspective different from traditional history and geography classes is the demand that students interpret the similarities and differences they discover in terms of human interrelatedness.