“Education should put an emphasis on generating settings in which students can get to know different countries and cultures, or even better, get in touch with their people and understand their perspectives.” – we spoke with Maximilian Hutter on his school’s development of a global magazine – GIB GLOBAL NEWS (GIB stands for Gemischtsprachiges International Baccalaureate or German IB).
How did the idea for GIB Global News start?
GIB GLOBAL NEWS was initiated in 2021 by Mr. Volker Schliesske, former vice principal of the IELEV Gymnasium in Istanbul, and we have now led the second edition.With a proposal from the students on the development of the magazine under the overlying topic of “Digitalization and Pandemic”. Together, the students sent their proposal out to all the GIB-Schools worldwide, including a digital form so schools could sign up digitally for the project. They created the form in a way that they would receive a notification on their cellphones whenever a school signed up.
Tell us about your first steps?
The students started to realize that their proposal was being read and responded to from all corners of the world. A total of 19 schools and school teams showed interest in taking part in the project. The next step was to invite all registered teachers and students to a first virtual meeting of the “Global Editorial Team”.The first meeting took place on a Friday at 08:00 in Mexico which corresponded to 22:00 in Taiwan, with all the other countries like Turkey and Russia somewhere in between – it was the only timeframe in which every participant would possibly be awake. Around 50 people attended.
How did you and the students organise this global project?
Several meetings were held with the global editorial team. They shared documents to help the planning process and created a joint editable magazine on the platform Canva. With so many schools and students on board, it needed a structured and clear approach. In a spreadsheet every editorial team wrote down the title of their article to generate an overview about the topics that would be treated. A student taskforce took care of defining a general layout for each of the magazine’s pages. Another working group defined the sections and general order in the magazine.
Just as in a real editorial team, the last days before the official launch were certainly the most stressful. We had to proof-read, make small adjustments on the design-level, rearrange articles, and more. Every school team had the responsibility to ensure the quality of their own pages and to follow the given design standards. On the official day of the launch every school team was ready.
In total, 12 school teams from 11 countries took part in the second edition of the magazine:
- The Private School of the German Embassy in Ankara
- German School of Barranquilla
- Instituto Ballester Deutsche Schule (Buenos Aires)
- Deutsche Schule Cali
- Deutsche Schule Cuenca
- Deutsche Schule Guadalajara
- Deutsche Schule Ho Chi Minh City
- Deutsche Europäische Schule Manila
- Deutsche Schule Sankt Petersburg
- Deutsche Schule Sankt Thomas Morus (Santiago de Chile)
- Deutsche Schule Santa Cruz
You can find the final magazine here.
Maximilian Hutter is currently working at the German School of Barranquilla, Colombia, as the schools Media Educator and Principals Assistant. There he started his career at the beginning of 2020 after he successfully finished his master’s degree in Media Education at the Otto-Von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany. He was born and raised in Bad Honnef, Germany, but has spent study and work-related time living in the United States, Peru and Colombia.
Sebastián Díaz, born in Barranquilla Colombia, is a student at the German School of Barranquilla, where he is currently enrolled in grade 12. He is actively involved in student projects internally and externally, being a fundamental part in the management of the student editorial “El Pulpo”, leading and participating in various media-related projects.