Global Voices appears to be a mere website on the surface but once you spend more than a moment or two peeling back the first layer, it’s clear that the voices shared here are not mainstream voices.  This is a portal for marginalized voices around the world.  This is a microphone extended around our beautifully diverse world to reveal the pain, horror, hope, love, community rarely cultivated through media coverage of world events.  Global Voices shares stories through web 2.0 technologies — in the form of tweets, blog posts, podcasts.  In the end, a user can engage this rich, global, live-time resource to customize precisely what s/he wants to learn about.  For example, under “Regions and Countries” I selected “Chile” and under “Topics,” I selected “Disaster” and was presented with a feed of posts, tweets, images, etc. on the topic.  Consider that as a learning activity for a class.  Now, expand your focus.  Select from the nine regions, then narrow your search to more than 200 countries and to focus on the extremely interdisciplinary list of topics that include:  arts & culture, children, cyber-activism, ethnicity, food, gender, human rights, international relations, LGBT, racism, sports, software/tools, technology, war & conflict, youth.

There’s something here for everyone! Global Voices is a global resource for 21st century educators, most definitely.  Every single one of us should find an activity that leverages this resource and weave it into our students’ learning.  Wow.