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The world is demanding citizens and workers have the knowledge, skills and dispositions to act creatively and effectively on issues of global significance. And American schools are trying to respond to this urgent demand.

What is Global Competence? Help us better define global competence. Send in your students' work. Be a part of a ground-breaking effort to assess student global competence. We are collecting samples of work that demonstrate student global knowledge and skills at various developmental levels. Once the work is published, it will help teachers strengthen instruction and better evaluate student work and provide examples for students to help them strive for greater achievement. With each submission, you will be entered into a regular drawing for $500 Staples gift certificates. Learn more and get involved (PDF download). A globally competent student can Investigate the World Recognize Perspectives Communicate Ideas Take Action Students investigate the world beyond their immediate environment. Students recognize their own and others’ perspective. Students communicate their ideas effectively with diverse audiences. Students translate their ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve conditions. Students can: Generate and explain the significance of locally, regionally or globally focused researchable questions. Identify, collect and analyze the knowledge and evidence required to answer questions using a variety of international sources, media and languages. Weigh, integrate and synthesize evidence collected to construct coherent responses that is appropriate to the context of issues or problems. Develop an argument based on compelling evidence that considers multiple perspectives and draws defensible conclusions. Students can: Recognize and articulate one’s own perspective on situations, events, issues or phenomena and identify the influences on that perspective. Articulate and explain perspectives of other people, groups or schools of thought and identify the influences on those perspectives. Explain how the interaction of ideas across cultures influences the development of knowledge and situations, events, issues or phenomena. Articulate how the consequences of differential access to knowledge, technology and resources affect the quality of life and influences perspectives. Students can: Recognize that diverse audiences may perceive different meanings from the same information. Use appropriate language, behavior and strategies to effectively communicate, both verbally and non-verbally, with diverse audiences. Explain how effective communication impacts understanding and collaboration in an interdependent world. Select and effectively use appropriate technology and media to communicate with diverse audiences. Students can: Recognize one’s capacity to advocate for and contribute to improvement locally, regionally, or globally. Identify opportunities for personal and collaborative action to address situations, events, issues or phenomena in ways which can make a difference. Assess options for action based on evidence and the potential for impact, taking into account varied perspectives and potential consequences for others. Act creatively and innovatively to contribute to improvement locally, regionally or globally both personally and collaboratively.

Passwords are the first line of defense against cyber criminals. It’s important to pick strong passwords that are different for each of your important accounts and to change them regularly. Here are some ideas to help create strong passwords. Use a unique password for all your important accounts. Use unique passwords for your accounts, especially important accounts like email and online banking. You are likely to have dozens of accounts across the web, and you cannot guarantee the security of all of them. Criminals target sites that lack strong security, in order to harvest usernames and passwords that they test against other popular sites. When you use the same password across the web, a cyber criminal can learn the password from a less secure site and then use that password to compromise your important accounts. Use a long password The longer your password is, the harder it is to guess. There are almost one quintillion possible 10-character passwords (that’s 4,000 times as many possibilities as if your password only has eight characters) … and that’s if you only use numbers and letters. Use a password with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols Using numbers, symbols and mixed-case letters in your password increases the difficulty of guessing or cracking your password. For example, there are more than 6 quadrillion possible variations for an eight-character password with numbers, symbols, and mixed-case letters – 30,000 times more variations than an eight-character password with only lowercase letters. Try using a line from a song, film or play Some passwords are easy to guess or crack: Simple words or phrases like “password” or “letmein,” keyboard patterns such as “qwerty” or “qazwsx,” patterns such as “abcd1234” or personal information like your birthday or street name.So choose a combination of letters, numbers, or symbols to create a unique password that’s unrelated to your personal information.One idea you can try is to choose a line from your favorite song, film or play, like “To be or not to be: That is the question.” Then use numbers, symbols and mixed-case letters to recreate it: “2bon2bT1tq” is a password with quadrillions of variations. The more unusual the phrase you choose the better!Or you could pick a random word or phrase, and insert letters and numbers into the beginning, middle, and end, such as “sPo0kyh@ll0w3En.” Make sure your password recovery options are up-to-date and secure Make sure your recovery email address is up to date so that you can receive emails in case you need to reset your password. Sometimes you can also add a phone number to receive password reset codes via text message. Additionally, many websites (including Google Accounts) will ask you to choose a question to verify your identity if you ever forget your password. If you’re able to create your own question, try to come up with a question that has an answer only you would know. Try to find a way to make your answer unique – you can do this by using some of the tips above – so that even if someone guesses the answer, they won’t know how to enter it properly. Keep your password reminders in a secret place that isn’t easily visible Don’t leave notes with your passwords in plain site, on your computer or desk. If you do decide to save your passwords in a file on your computer, create a unique name for the file so people don’t know what’s inside. Avoid giving the file an obvious name, such as “my passwords.” If you have a difficult time remembering multiple passwords, a trusted password manager may be a good solution. Spend a few minutes checking out the reviews and reputations of these services.

The etiquette guidelines that govern behavior when communicating on the Internet have become known as netiquette. Netiquette covers not only rules of behavior during discussions but also guidelines that reflect the unique electronic nature of the medium. Netiquette usually is enforced by fellow users who are quick to point out infractions of netiquette rules.

Internet, as most of us know, is a large network of networks, which communicate with each other by means of data packets. Internet is regarded as the largest information base. Today, Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives. We depend on the Internet to update ourselves about current news and rely on the communication platform it offers to get in touch with our near ones. The information from all around the world is just a click away, thanks to the Internet. Internet has surely affected the society positively. With the onset of the Internet, access to information has become easy. Internet has served being an efficient and organized storage of information. Internet search engines are the best information retrieval systems that are functional over the Internet. Typing in a simple search query to a search engine fetches you thousands of search results. Moreover, the ranking strategies adopted by the search engines ensure that the most relevant results are delivered to you on priority. The search engines crawl over all the information that seems relevant to your search query. They retrieve the most relevant results in top order, thus helping you fetch the required information with great ease. Information is truly a click away! The Internet provides some of the most effective means of communication. Emails and instant messages have made online communication possible. Social networking and blogging websites and online discussion forums have proved being popular platforms of expression. People in different parts of the world can collaborate over the Internet. They can exchange views, share information and work together over the Internet. It was the development of the Internet that made online education and distance learning possible. Professionals working in physically distant locations can collaborate their efforts, thanks to the Internet.

This new reality helps us more clearly define the role that education must play in preparing all students for success in an interconnected world. The United States have invested unprecedented resources in education, betting that our outmoded, factory-age system can be fundamentally transformed to prepare students for the rigors of a global economy. 

 Globally competent students understand that audiences differ on the basis of culture, geography, faith, ideology, wealth, and other factors and that they may perceive different meanings from the same information.  They can effectively communicate, verbally and non-verbally, with diverse audiences.  Because it is increasingly the world's common language for commerce and communication, globally competent students in the US and elsewhere are proficient in English as well as in at least one other world language. Communicating ideas occurs in a variety of culturally diverse settings, and especially within collaborative teams.  Globally competent students are able to situate themselves in a variety of cultural contexts, organize and participate in diverse groups, and work effectively toward a common goal.