st
Melda N. YILDIZ
Kean University, United States myildiz@kean.edu
Altagracia Petela
Kean University, United States petelaa@kean.edu
Brianne Mahoney
Kean University, United States mahonbri@kean.edu
Introduction
This paper is for educators who would like to integrate health education, 21st Century teaching skills ( http://www.p21.org/ ) and new media technologies into their curriculum. It outlines innovative and interdisciplinary projects using social interaction media; offers creative strategies for producing media with elementary students and developing Web 2.0 projects integrating 21st century skills. The goal of this interdisciplinary unit is to develop a research based global nutrition curriculum that promotes healthy eating habits among elementary school children in elementary schools especially 3 rd
through 5 th
grade.
By collaborating with health educators, in-service and pre-service teachers in this project, we developed and implemented a Global Kitchen Project to infuse 21st Century skills and knowledge in the excitement of new discovery through research, improve the children’s eating habits and contribute innovative interdisciplinary projects for classroom use.
Situated within the context of teaching and learning, this research project aims to advance scientific knowledge of how an interdisciplinary based curriculum revolving around nutrition as a means to promote healthy eating behaviors in young children can provide an experiential global education for both the teachers and students and engage them in curricular activities to enhance their critical thinking skills and global competencies needed to succeed in the 21 st century.
Background
In this study, we address a public health issue among young children in the nation by offering the
“global tools” (e.g., media literacy, multiple perspective) for teachers to better educate these children about the importance of practicing healthy eating behaviors.
Childhood obesity has become an epidemic in the United States. Obesity is defined, according to the 2000 Center for Disease Control growth reference for the United States, as the body mass index
(BMI), or a person's weight divided by height (Ogden et al., 2002). An obese person falls at or above the
95th percentile of BMI-for-age (Kuczmarski & Flegal, 2000). The national statistics of children who are obese are alarming. According to Stop Childhood Obesity (http://www.stop-childhoodobesity.com/childhood-obesity-statistics.html), over the past three decades, the childhood obesity rate has

skyrocketed: “more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years and adolescents aged 12-19 years, and it has more than tripled for children aged 6-11 years.”
Of all the age groups, the most prevalent are children ages 6-11, with the percentage of them being obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 20% in 2008 (Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, n.d.). The consequences of obesity are serious, including persistent overweight into adulthood with adult health complications, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke (Guo &
Chumelea, 1999; Freedman et al., 2005; Freedman, Khan, Dietz, Sirnivasan, & Berenson, 2001;
Freedman, Wang, Thornton, et al., 2009). Furthermore, obesity has been reported to account for over
300, 000 deaths annually in the United States. While obesity is a health issue for individuals, it is also a problem to society. Stop Childhood Obesity noted that obesity costs society annually an estimated nearly
$100 billion.
As a child’s health is related to his or her school performance, healthy eating may contribute to his or her academic success (CDC, 2010, Hoyland, Dye, Lawton, 2009; Rampersaud, Pereira, Girard,
Adams, Metzl, 2005; Taras, 2005). For school-age children, schools become an important place where children acquire knowledge about healthy eating behaviors so that they can practice them in their lives.
Schools can create environments that promote and support children’s efforts to eat healthy by implementing pertinent policies and practices (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.).
With the world becoming increasingly accessible to people (Freidman, 2005), and greater diversity in U.S. public schools due to immigration, many of our teacher candidates are likely to work abroad or in school districts that serve children from diverse backgrounds including English language learners that requires them to understand how to apply an interdisciplinary global curriculum for children to acquire knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the 21 st
century.
Project
This project was staffed by 1) two undergraduate research assistants, 2) Faculty in Global
Education, 3) District Health Educator, and 4) 2 nd
and 3rd grade classroom teachers. Our team and the undergraduate students had an opportunity to develop interdisciplinary curriculum in nutrition and investigated the curriculum among 8-10 years old students 2 nd
and 3 rd
grade in collaboration with district and school personnel. Our curriculum work enabled us to integrate new technologies to deliver the curriculum and to work collaboratively with students and educators across the nation and globally as well. This work was consistent with the vision and mission of our University and the elementary school with respect to creative teaching, use of innovative technology, and service in regional, nation and international arenas.
Our teacher candidates need to be equipped with up to date, culturally responsive teaching tools and education skills by providing opportunities to teach, research and serve the community that promote children’s learning and development. This project has shown that interdisciplinary approaches to teaching global nutrition education contribute to significant outcomes in improving children’s response to health, global education and technology, the results may provide policy implications for educational initiatives and teacher professional development focused on global education.
This community based collaborative interdisciplinary project addressed health, technology, 21st century life and careers standards as well as Common Core ( http://www.corestandards.org/ ) and
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE/ NETS- http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx) standards.

This project was funded by the mini-grant that focused on promoting undergraduate study. Our teacher candidates who tool technology courses collaborated in designing the unit. For the project: We used various mobile technologies such as Ipod touch, Ipads, laptops. 1) Laptops for instruction and creating interactive surveys and online quizzes using quizlet.com, 2) flip cameras for creating digital stories, 3) data projectors for displaying lessons, 4) Ipod touch and Ipads for Podcasting of the students’ projects and culminating event. Teacher candidates interviewed K12 students who attended the activities, asked them questions, and recorded their answers and help creating the podcast.
The focus of this project included identifying the kinds of interactive innovative interdisciplinary practices and curriculum that promote global education, 21 st
century skills and nutrition education among elementary school children; and conducting instruction to children ages 8-10 in grades 2 nd
and 3rd in elementary school while providing research skills for our undergraduate students. First, we contacted the health department in the school district establishing a professional partnership with the elementary school. We especially picked an elementary school children on health education because of the diet quality of children decreases at they get into adolescences years (Child Stats, 2011): “Poor eating patterns in childhood are major contributors to childhood obesity and contribute to chronic diseases starting in childhood, such as type 2 diabetes.” Thus, teaching nutrition literacy is important because it focuses on children in their early ages by documenting their experiences and interactions during the interdisciplinary
Global Nutrition activities, and intends to capture the role of 21 st
century skills in education, but also examines the health aspects of children in global education context by collaborating with children around the world using social networking tools (e.g. Skype, voicethread, toondoo) and how the quality of such interdisciplinary interactions promote elementary children’s education. We selected children in the 5th grades because statistics indicate that more children in this age group are obese (Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, n.d.).
This interdisciplinary Global Kitchen Project transformed the way we integrate global competencies in the 21 st
century while conducting research on project based learning activities focusing on nutrition. The Universal Design for Learning – UDL ( http://www.cast.org/udl/ ) modules we designed and implemented in our study will be a replicable model for other schools. The project will not only provide a creative platform and educational resources for our teacher candidates, but also innovative ways of teaching and learning in the schools using new technologies. The UDL modules were designed using re-constructivist theory (Freire, 2002) focusing on global competencies and critical autonomy
(Masterman, 1985/2001) and activism among elementary students who researched and co-constructed meaningful nutrition projects that were in the form of podcasts and digital stories among other products.
Global Kitchen Project framework will inform the way we implement professional development for global education and health education fields that encourage high-quality interdisciplinary global projects to promote children’s global competencies and critical autonomy especially those who have limited access and resources to health education, so that they can be healthier and better positioned to succeed in formal schooling and later in life.
During our needs assessment, we come across minimal nutrition education let alone global education in the classroom. There were teachers in K-5 still using the old food pyramid chart while the new literature focuses on choose my plate model ( http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ ). We also identified
2 nd
and 3rd grades we worked with had limited knowledge of global food choices. Some of them never tasted most of the fruits and vegetables or could not even differentiate protein versus vitamin.
Our research is significant because it brings different disciplines together to look at the nutrition education from a larger context: cross-cultural; historical; curricular; and 21 st
century skills. Our topic on

Global Nutrition enables us to address many program areas including global education, health education, and special education while improving teacher quality, integrating proficiencies in math, science and world languages, and integrating 21 st century tools and technologies.
To the goal of this project was to develop a research based curriculum that promotes healthy eating habits among elementary students. Here are the guiding questions in the project:
1.
How does project based interdisciplinary workshops improve elementary teachers’ knowledge and skills to engage children in global learning activities that promote healthy eating behaviors?
2.
What are the classroom teachers’ personal experiences, discoveries, and challenges in integrating global competencies and 21 st
century skills into the project based global nutrition curriculum?
3.
How have the eating behaviors improved in the children receiving the nutrition curriculum in the participating classrooms?
Project Based Global Nutrition Project
Our modules titled: Global Kitchen Project. We went to 2 nd
and 3 rd
grade classrooms for five 45 minutes classes and the last one was a showcase/celebration day as a culminating activity. Some of the project based learning activities we outlined for the workshops include:
• Media Literacy activities: We deconstructed TV ads, magazine ads and food commercials,
Nutrition Facts on food boxes and containers using my plate- http://www.choosemyplate.gov/
Students used an App called to check the bar codes of food items to check their nutritional value.
• What is in my lunch box? We used several nutrition apps for calculation of the nutritional value of foods in our lunch boxes and compared ours with children around the world about what they eat for lunch. We used voicethread.com to share pictures of our lunch boxes and talked about different foods chooses around the US and the world. We used the book Hungry Planet. Students found out that American diet is based on more processed and fast food as opposed to developing countries where people eat more grains and vegetables. It was sad to report that more than 80% of the lunches contained low nutritional value. E.g. chips and soda was a common lunch box item for many children.
• Myth and Misconception in Nutrition- Digital Storytelling Multilingual Multimedia Project:
Students researched and created public service announcements (podcast) to educate their friends and family about global health issues using Ipads and flip camera.
Our lessons activities and projects were designed by the team using Universal Design of Learning
(UDL) model to fit the needs of all children (e.g. special education, ELL). Ultimately, we sought to improve students’ eating habits as well as encourage a global view on alternative food choices and prepare them to be global citizens. As they participate in future international activities and travel abroad projects, they continue to be aware of global food choices while exploring locavores (PBS, 2007).
The participants completed pre- and past assessment instruments that indicate significant increase in their health education, global competencies and 21 st
century skills. Finally, they demonstrated the outcome of their myplate projects. Their projects were laminated to be used as a matt. Our projects, resources, curriculum materials will shared on our weebly page- http://myildiz.weebly.com/globalkitchen.html

With the support of the school administrators, teachers provided opportunities for children to learn about, understand, and practice these healthy eating behaviors in the classroom so that prevention and intervention efforts could be successful. By working closely with teachers in elementary grades, we explored the current state standards and the integration of the Common Core Standards focusing on
Global Education and Nutrition in the elementary education curriculum. We discussed strategies for integrating new media and technologies into the global education curriculum, offer creative suggestions for integrating 21st century tools to the classroom, outlined teacher candidates’ interdisciplinary curriculum design and research experience; and explored activities, exercises, and assessment strategies and tools that align with the local and national curriculum standards addressing Health Education, Global
Competency, Media Literacy and Technology Standards.
The research team collected data on contextual and instructional factors by observing classroom practices. The data collected guided the development of lesson plans for the elementary school students.
Based on the needs assessment and collected data, we designed a pre- and post survey for the 2 nd and 3 rd
graders to collect data on background information of the participants, technology skills, and eating habits. The survey was based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
( http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes.htm
). This survey ascertained the level of knowledge gained from the global nutrition education. In order to be able to effectively educate all the elementary school children, the research team (along with our research assistants) co-created an interdisciplinary global education curriculum using the Universal Design for Learning (http://www.cast.org/udl/) model for meeting the learning needs of all students including children with special needs and English language learners. We conducted four lessons for the students to provide them with the skills and knowledge to help improve their healthy eating habits. We conducted observations of their implementation of these knowledge and skills in the classroom.
Documentation of classroom observations before and during the workshop and elementary students pre and post questionnaires were examined, categorized, and analyzed for factors that promote global education, health education, and educational technology. Content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004) was conducted to identify the best combination of curriculum and the use of 21 st
Century tools that promote the awareness of nutrition in children’s development and learning. .
This project confirms that interdisciplinary project-based learning in global context contribute to successful outcomes, the results provide significant policy implications for educational initiatives that support the global education and 21 st
century skills among young children and innovative framework for teacher professional development. We build on the findings of this work to apply for external funding to support a large-scale project of the interactions and conversations among a larger and more diverse sample of children in elementary classrooms around the country while collaborating with other elementary students in other states and countries.
Global Kitchen Project may serve as a framework to inform professional development for global education and health education fields that encourage high-quality interdisciplinary global projects to promote children’s global competencies and critical autonomy especially those who have limited access and resources to health education, so that they can be healthier and better positioned to succeed in formal schooling and later in life.
Our project is significant because it brings different disciplines together to look at the nutrition education from a larger context: cross-cultural; historical; curricular; and 21st century skills. Our undergraduate students in different subject fields (Health Education and World Languages) participated

in co-designing project-learning based activities with district teachers and personnel as well as collecting and analyzing data and co-presenting the final results in national and international conferences.
This project promotes health education and global literacy through new technologies in K12 education, describes teacher candidates’ reactions, discoveries, and experiences with new media, and showcases their multimedia projects.
To date, few scholarly studies have investigated the role of new technologies in global education context. This project attempts to fill the gap by outlining the natural links between global education and new media technologies. Global Kitchen Project focuses on accomplishing three main goals: (1) promoting cultural and linguistically responsive curriculum through developing global competencies and media literacy skills for teacher candidates; (2) describing their reactions, discoveries, and experiences integrating new media and telecommunication tools; and (3) showcasing multilingual multicultural multimedia projects that teacher candidates created using 21st century tools.
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Resources used for the study:
Global Kitchen Project – http://ukean.wikispaces.com/Global+Kitchen+Project
Book:
Menzel, P., & D'Aluisio, F. (2005). Hungry planet: What the world eats. Napa, Calif: Material World
Press.
PhotoEssay- http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html
NPR- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5005952 http://www.menzelphoto.com/galleries/ http://www.menzelphoto.com/books/hp.php