Global Studies - Global Virtual Classroom 1314 Home Page

Globalisation or Παγκοσμιοποίηση or Globalization is an economic term that is fast making its way into everyday language as its meaning expands to encompass a diversity of worldwide activities.

Globalisation can be defined as the increasing economic and financial integration of economies around the world. Although nations have been trading for centuries, the current worldwide changes that are taking place to remove national boundaries from the financing, production, sales and distribution of goods and services are attracting a lot of attention.
Globalization's benefits can be debated, but most people agree that the increased availability of products, services, and technology enrich our lives. Through sharing knowledge and exchanging more goods and services, national economies expand and benefit from technological and medical developments.
Education is a major winner of globalization as renown institutions such as Harvard and MIT are opening their doors to people seeking further education from around the globe. Thanks to advances in technology choice lessons or whole courses can be attended, sometimes without even tuition fees charged. MOOCs ( Massive Open Online Courses) are online courses aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web offer unlimited learning possibilities to people anywhere and from any background.
Some of the advantages of globalization are:

More technologies are available everywhere
Information is easily accessible
Learn more about other’s cultures and add some of other’s culture to our own
Communicate quicker
More tolerance and understanding of other’s culture
More places to sell products
More options for consumers
Better quality of life

Pics with global brands and products

Globalization has many pros, but it has its cons as well. While globalization has made the world more connected, smaller cultures and languages can be overwhelmed. As more prominent cultural aspects emerge, the less prominent ones start to fade. Certain languages are becoming dominant across the world while minor ones such as Arem, Yabuti, and Algic, are not being transmitted and fade away.
Millions of jobs have been lost due to outsourcing jobs to other countries. Not only does this promote lower wages for workers, but it’s also highlighted the number of unfair working conditions. Large companies such as Hershey’s, Nike and Victoria Secret have been exposed for using child labor in third world countries.
Globalisation has also helped spread undesirable diseases. Well known examples include the 2009 swine flu outbreak that is believed to have started at a Texan a pig farm, spread to pigs in Mexico, subsequently infecting the pigs' handlers. leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the new strain of swine-origin H1N1 as a pandemic. While globalization is sweeping over the world, it’s created not only winners but also millions of losers. Generally speaking some of the disadvantages of globalization can include:

An increasing disparity between so called first world and developing nations i.e. “making the rich richer and the poor poorer”.
Multinational corporations are often accused of not caring for the environment, i.e. exploiting the environment for natural resources to expand activities that are the basis of globalization Things such as mining, manufacturing, shipping and air travel
It is often thought that globalization allows large companies to act with less accountability.
Americanization is thought to be overpowering individual countries’ cultures.
Globalization has enabled the spread of deadly diseases to the most remote areas of the globe.
Globalization can cause the exploitation of labor, putting foreign workers in inhumane of work conditions, that would not be legal in the corporations country of origin.

As teenagers, we wish to help create a world where the positive points of globalization are harnessed in ways that improve the world for everyone, whilst the problems and disadvantages are eliminated.

Monarch and Warrandyte High School Principals greet on Skype. Students get to know eahc other. Students collaborate via Skype and Google Hangouts. Share gifts across the globe!