Global Kids’ digital summer program is highlighted in Pittsburgh’s Kidsburgh, an online news source related to children and educational issues. In their article, “Big ideas for fixing the ‘summer slide’ hit Pittsburgh’s national conference”, high quality summer programs that were part of the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA) Conference in October are mentioned.
 
Global Kids, a recipient of the National Summer Learning Award, received funds from the NSLA to partner with teacher fellows for their Summer Pathways for Innovation project. Two different teachers collaborated with GK’s Online Leadership Program staff to develop programs using new media tools such as virtual worlds to explore environmental justice and geocaching to learn about electoral politics. The teachers were able to help connect the curricula to Common Core Standards and you can see how they did that here.

In particular, the article highlights GK’s collaboration with a filmmaker and virtual world expert from Scotland who our youth Skype’d with every day. Russell became a virtual instructor and helped us create our final machinima film about the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Check out the final film here.
 
The article highlights several “game-changing summer learning programs” and goes on to discuss what made the programs successful and what the potential of student impact is. You can read the full Kidsburgh article here.