Case Study 3: Tracey Winey

Case Study 3
Global Educator Tracey Winey

Tracey Winey

Tracey Winey is a media specialist and STEM Integration Specialist at Preston Middle School in Colorado. She is also a co-founder of Engineering Brightness. She has a website (Media Wine: Unexpected Possibilities) and actively collaborates with colleagues through her Twitter account.

Tracey Winey exhibits many attributes of a global education leader, but the attributes that stand out the most are “encourage and model global citizenship” and “design futuristic learning environments to connect with the world”. In Tracey’s One Million Lights project, her middle school students collaborated with a high school in Canada, a primary school in the United Kingdom, and schools in Uganda and the Dominican Republic. She made sure to emphasize that nothing about this project was an act of charity- every person involved in the project had a specific role and used their talents to accomplish a goal. This work shows that she is comfortable and confident in working with other cultures and encouraging empathy, which are specific examples of encouraging and modeling global citizenship. It also shows that she uses online technologies and designs futuristic learning environments to connect with the world. She encourages student interaction and collaboration to lead to action and understands the importance of collaboration as a global learning objective. In Tracey’s project, her students learned about the need for handheld lights for students at the CHAT House in Uganda to identify predatory animals and other threats when they leave their house to use the outhouse at night. The students at the CHAT House explained their specific needs to Tracey’s middle school students through frequent Skype sessions, and the students began designing their lights. The CHAT House students contributed to the project by collecting data and providing feedback on the functionality of the lights for the students at Preston Middle School to make changes. This Tracey Winey and her One Million Lights project is a perfect example of global citizenship and futuristic learning environments to connect with the world.

This case study of Tracey Winey is, in my opinion, the most informative and interesting yet. Her One Million Lights project seems like the most perfect example of a global collaboration project. What I found the most impressive is that every student had a role in her project. I’ve noticed that many times groups on the receiving end of projects like these are treated as a “charity case”. The students at the CHAT House had incredibly important roles in field testing the lights and providing data and feedback so Tracy’s students could improve upon their prototypes. While the students in Uganda were on the receiving end of the project, they collaborated and made crucial contributions throughout the entire process, which leads to a sense of empathy and a strong mutual respect between students.