The Computerworld Honors Program
Honoring those who use Information Technology to benefit society
LOCATION:
New York, NY, US

YEAR:
2007

STATUS:
Laureate

CATEGORY:
Education and Academia

NOMINATING COMPANY:
Polycom

ORGANIZATION:
Global Nomads Group

PROJECT NAME:
Currents

Short Summary
Global Nomads Group is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization, founded in 1998. Our mission is to foster cross-cultural dialogue and understanding among the world's youth, and to literally bring home the world to the classroom. Using existing video conferencing technology in thousands of schools nationwide, we connect youths in grades K-12 and facilitate (virtual) town hall discussions on important social and world issues. Our programs allow students to gain exposure to the cultures, religions, and points of view of their peers across the nation and the globe. They enable young people here in the U.S. to learn directly from their peers, whether they are in Rwanda, Baghdad, Sudan, or rural Kansas. In 2006, our programs connected more than 5,000 Middle and High School students worldwide.

Global Nomads Group programs aim to:
Increase young people's knowledge of the world and its people; increase collaboration and dialogue between students of different cultures and nationalities; highlight critical world issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to global warming, to war; provide an educational framework in which students can become active leaders in their own education.

GNG’s novel, cross-cultural work has been featured in media outlets that include CNN (Inside Africa), Good Morning America, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the Today Show, the New York Times, and Education Week. In 2005, GNG received award recognition from two reputable education advocacy groups: The United States Distance Learning Association and the Goldman Sachs Foundation. Most recently, our special feature documentary, Rwanda Alive (based on our educational program of the same name), was declared Best Documentary at the 2006 International Beverly Hills Film Festival.

Introductory Overview
When American college students Jonathan Giesen, Mark von Sponek, Chris Plutte and David Macquart met for the first time at the American University of Paris in the mid-nineties, they had no way of knowing the impact their new friendships would have on their future professional lives.

This group of young, ambitious and idealistic students gravitated toward one another because of the shared experience of traveling the globe at relatively young ages. During their time in Paris, they were all becoming cognizant of the changing state of the world, culturally, politically and from a business perspective. Global markets were expanding in unprecedented ways and would require a truly international skill set for competing in the global work force. And with technology shrinking the world seemingly every day, tolerance and respect for all cultures was growing increasingly important.

But the group of friends knew that the opportunity to travel wasn’t available to many young American students, so they set out to find a way to impart the benefits of travel without racking up the frequent flyer miles.

“We truly believe that traveling the world provides the kind of perspective no student can ever learn from a book, and we think this perspective is especially critical for students in the United States,” says Giesen.

Global Nomads Group (GNG) is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering cross-cultural dialogue and understanding among youth. Using Polycom video conferencing solutions, it moderates conferences between K-12 classes in different countries, organizes virtual lectures, and conducts remote broadcasts from the world's historical and cultural sites.

The first educational program GNG put together marked the first ever video conference from the Mayan ruins. And since that time, GNG has directly connected thousands of youths in more than 25 countries and hundreds of thousands more through the web casts it offers with every cultural exchange.

One of GNG’s major recent projects focused on raising U.S. students’ awareness of the humanitarian crisis occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan. Plutte, Giesen and von Sponek traveled to the Breijing refuge camp on the Sudanese border where they lived for two weeks and broadcast programs to the U.S. The youth living in Breijing shared their stories with American students at 25 different high schools and with more than 1,000 additional students who were able to access the content through a live web cast.

“The response to our broadcasts from Sudan was amazing,” says Macquart, who coordinated the program from GNG’s office in New York. “We find time and time again that if you expose young people to important issues like this one, let them meet and speak face to face with their peers experiencing adversary conditions, they can gain a tremendous sense of civic duty. As was the case when we connected U.S. teens with the orphans of genocide and AIDS in Rwanda, the students organized to raise money to help the young people in Sudan.”

GNG’s programming falls into two categories, the ‘Pulse’ and ‘Currents’ programs. The Pulse is aimed at getting students in the U.S. to discuss and debate issues of world importance such as genocide and global warming. In an initial video conference, students from two high schools in the United States are connected for a discussion of the topic, and for the second conference those two schools connect with a subject matter expert over video. The Currents program is run in partnership with Semester at Sea and actually takes a GNG representative on the Semester at Sea voyage to countries around the world. Live video conferences are held from these locations, and this year’s topic is “Religions of the World.”

Benefits
Has your project helped those it was designed to help?   Yes

What new advantage or opportunity does your project provide to people?
GNG’s primary goal is to increase awareness for the world and its people and through its programming it has achieved that. For high school students throughout the country, GNG has helped to greatly increase awareness of world affairs as well as civic engagement. Many students develop their own projects as an extension of the GNG programs in which they participate. For example, letter-writing campaigns, raising money for orphanages in Rwanda and to support local de-mining programs in Mozambique.

GNG has also noted increased self confidence among the individual program participants as well as sharpened public speaking skills.


Has your project fundamentally changed how tasks are performed?   Yes

How do you see your project's innovation benefiting other applications, organizations, or global communities?
The two-way video interactions facilitated by GNG benefit not only the student participants in the United States, but also those in the other countries connecting. These conferences present a chance for students in other regions of the world to consider their own culture in a global context and their roles in the world.

The Importance of Technology
How did the technology you used contribute to this project and why was it important?
The importance of the Polycom video conferencing technology we use to connect students around the globe cannot be overstated. Video conferencing is more than just important to our work, it is essential. It is our main tool to link kids in different parts of world and broaden their horizons.

Originality
What are the exceptional aspects of your project?
n/a

How is it original?
GNG is unique among educational content providers in that linking kids through video conferencing technology is its core competency, that’s all it does. This focus allows the organization to offer ongoing programs, where others in the market tend to offer single, one-time interactions, and they do so only in the United States. GNG’s other main differentiator is that fact that it extends video conferencing opportunities to some of the most remote regions in the world, for example broadcasts from the natural habitat of the Mountain Gorilla in Rwanda and the Dead Sea in Jordan. GNG goes beyond the walls of classroom unlike any other organization in its space.

Is it the first, the only, the best or the most effective application of its kind?   Most effective

Success
Has your project achieved or exceeded its goals?   Achieved

Is it fully operational?   Yes

How many people benefit from it?   5000

If possible, include an example of how the project has benefited a specific individual, enterprise or organization. Please include personal quotes from individuals who have directly benefited from your work.
A recent article in Edutopia Magazine highlighted the impact GNG programs had on at-risk youth based in rural Texas (at Alpha Academy). Here are some excerpts of that article:

The ALPHA students have responded to the GNG message enthusiastically. Distance-learning coordinator Charlie Brown said these kids -- not "your usual motivated crowd" -- "soared" when they began preparing for the videoconferences. At a school where 84 percent of the population is designated at-risk, the upturn in academic achievement has been notable and, it turns out, long lasting. Along with lessons in social studies, geography, culture, politics, religion, the military, the government, and resources, the students learned a little diplomacy, which, Herrin says, is a "huge lesson for our kids."

[…] In an ordinary class, he says, he usually feels he has reached or changed one, maybe two kids by the end of the year. He believes that, after the GNG conferences, every student was affected.
GNG got them out of the classroom and into another part of the world without taking them away from their home. "It has had an impact on their lives," he says. One student decided to graduate early and become an intern with GNG in New York. When her parents balked, she compromised by attending a Texas university, majoring in communications and media. "This is a kid who had trouble just being in school," Brown recalls, and, all of a sudden, she was on fire, graduated early, and is now working toward a college degree -- thanks to GNG's window on the world.

How quickly has your targeted audience of users embraced your innovation? Or, how rapidly do you predict they will?
As is often the case when introducing a new technology solution, GNG encounters fear initially, but finds that the fear quickly dissipates once teachers and students participate in a program. GNG also goes to great lengths to take participants through the process of setting up equipment, facilitating practice calls, or to putting them in touch with a representative from Polycom or a network partner if they require further assistance.

Difficulty
What were the most important obstacles that had to be overcome in order for your work to be successful? Technical problems? Resources? Expertise? Organizational problems?
One of the greatest challenges the group faced was getting teachers interested in participating. As Macquart explains, there was not a widespread desire for international education programs prior to the terror attacks of Sept. 11. “Everything changed for our group after 9/11,” he says, “connecting with and understanding different cultures and our place in the world became a much greater priority almost immediately.”

Finding the best technology solution to enable its global exchanges was also difficult. The group thought it would base its model on Internet technology, but the quality just wasn’t there, so it started looking into video conferencing. Once it determined that video conferencing was the ideal solution in terms of quality and an unobtrusive solution, it needed funding, always a challenge for a non-profit.


Often the most innovative projects encounter the greatest resistance when they are originally proposed. If you had to fight for approval or funding, please provide a summary of the objections you faced and how you overcame them.
GNG faced blanket rejections for sponsorship and funding in its first few years of existence, except from Polycom which was one its first supporters with equipment donations. But the GNG founders were undeterred, they vowed to keep producing programming until the value became apparent to potential sponsors. The program that was the turning point for the organization was a video connection between students in the U.S. and students in Iraq, pre Iraq war. Macquart explains the impact. “All of the people who’d been following our progress from the sidelines saw what we were really capable of. We successfully pulled together a project that seemed impossible logistically and politically – we had to work with the Iraqi government to make it happen, and we did. Funders began to believe in us and the power of the work we were doing and fund in much larger ways.”
Digital/Visual Materials
The Program welcomes nominees to submit digital and visual images with their Case Study. We are currently only accepting .gif, .jpg and .xls files that are 1MB or smaller. The submission of these materials is not required; however, please note that a maximum of three files will be accepted per nominee. These files will be added to the end of your Case Study and will be labeled as "Appendix 1", "Appendix 2" or "Appendix 3." Finally, feel free to reference these images in the text of your Case Study by specifically referring to them as "Appendix 1", "Appendix 2" or "Appendix 3."

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