Simple collaboration?
We are looking for students from across the world to collaborate on Projects and enquiries centred around social studies and citizenship. Our students are aged 11-16 and in the next few months we move into a building which makes web2.0 collaborative work a real possibility. We are keen to work with schools who have an interest in exploring the diversity of cultures between collaborative schools and then embark on exploring key scoial issues from our own cultural perspectives.
I'm rather new to all of this but am passionate about providing our students with a voice to be heard outside the bubble of our local community and anticipate some powerful learning experiences if involvement from a far off school becomes a reality.
Please get in touch if you think that this might interest you or your school.
I'm rather new to all of this but am passionate about providing our students with a voice to be heard outside the bubble of our local community and anticipate some powerful learning experiences if involvement from a far off school becomes a reality.
Please get in touch if you think that this might interest you or your school.
Tags: collaboration, community, enquiry, web2.0
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by DamianC on
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Hi Brian -
Thanks for your reply...
we are interested in quite a large range of issues- euthanasia and abortion, immigration and asylum seekers, climate change and sustainability, cultural identities and diversity, multiculturalism/hyperdiversity.
Obviously these are broad strokes but if these sound the kind of issues your students may be interested in then I can give you more detail. Alternatively we are interested in knowing what your students are passionate about and what actions they may have taken to do something about it. What are your ideas?
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Permalink Reply by Britt Gow on
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Hi Damian,
I am a maths/science teacher of years 7, 9 and 11/12 from a small rural community in Victoria, Australia. My special interest is education for sustainability - ecological footprints, life-cycle analysis, renewable energy, biodiversity, water use and climate change. This term I hope to have students produce short science videos for a competition here. Perhaps we could have students collaborate on a sustainability project - compare their weekly grocery shop/menu? Origins of wardrobe items? I have the Year 9 class (14 -15 year olds) three periods per week, Year 7's seven periods per week and the year 11/12's five periods per week.
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Hi Britt - that sounds fab! and just the kind of thing we are looking for! We are currently writing projects and schemes of learning so are really flexible. I am teaching right now so will respond in more detail later - the kids are arriving!
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Hi Britt - just had a conversation with my boss and the Headteacher - who visited Victoria last year to see 20 schools and the work they do... they are really interested in pursuing this and wondered what school you were at. I am at Cramlington High School, Northumberland. www.cchsonline.co.uk
Some of the ideas you mentioned sounded really good - we are coming from the humanities perspective but love the idea of a bit interdisciplinary challenge.
Damian
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Hi Damian,
Sorry I took a little while to respond - we are on two week's first term break here in Victoria. Hawkesdale P12 College is half way between Warrnambool and Hamilton in the western district - about 300km south-west of Melbourne. The school has about 120 students in the primary and 140 in the secondary area.
I have also been enthusiastic about integrating subjects - however, it is difficult in small schools with relatively few teachers and students to work with. Integration of subjects has been encouraged by the new "Victorian Essential Learning Standards".
I would like other schools to be involved in this if possible. Perhaps each student could submit their work to a blog or wiki?
I visited UK in 1989/90, before I became a teacher, working in London bars and restaurants. A primary school teacher-friend who taught there found the curriculum very prescriptive - are you constrained by state/department requirements?
Best regards, Britt
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Hi Damian,
I've been thinking more about a project with an essential question something like:
"How do my decisions affect the global community and environment?", concentrating on consumer choices. A starting point could be the World Vision video about ethical shopping.
Student activites could include "The secret life of an everyday product".
How would you like to arrange the collaboration between students? Could we pair up students to work on an item of clothing for example?
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Hi Britt,
my sincere apologies for seemingly dropping off the face of the planet for so long. We too have had holidays though I have had a busy time at school preparing our new curriculum for the additional Year 7 and 8 students who join the school in September 2008 for the first time. The school has always been a high school (ages 13-18) but is becoming 11-18 years from September - this has necessitated a heavy workload in preparation but I am regretting not keeping in touch so we could launch the project as it seemed to be shaping up.
If you are still interested in working on a project we have a possibility coming up in July - year 9 students (age 14) will be working on sustainable lifestyles. The stimulus is a documentary which is being filmed by our design crew showing the head of Geography who has sold her car and is taking alternative transport to work to reduce her carbon footprint. She is also running and cycling into work and it has trebled the time it takes to get to work!! Anyway - the project is being drawn up now and will probably ask students to consider transport, food products, shopping habits etc. The other possible outcome we are working on is asking students to make a pledge (www.pledgebank.com) and track their progress at meeting this pledge over the summer holidays (end of July to Sept 1st).
This would fit with your orginal ideas about pairing students up working on clothing etc - and I think that a wiki would be the best framework for uploading and sharing work.
Anyway - let me know if you are interested in pursuing the idea - I would love to hear what you have been upto regarding your projects.
Best regards
Damian.
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Hi Damian,
I know how easy it is to drop out of the cyber-world when you have real-life responsibilities! We have just finished a week-long camp in Tasmania and report writing, with one week until the end of term.
My Year 9 students have just done a little bit of work on the carbon cycle and ecological footprints, but it is too late to start something else before the two-week break.
I have been doing a partnership project with my Year 7 classes, where we did voice-mail on "Tokbox" and "Voicethread" presentations. We could perhaps record a brief "What I can do to reduce my ecological footprint" for you? I'm thinking on the fly a bit. Have you used the footprint calculators?
Your video documentary about the geography teacher sounds interesting - will it be available on-line do you think?
I will endevour to keep in touch and a project may fall into place when the time suits!
Best regards, Britt.
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Hi Britt,
Good to hear from you and that you are as busy as me! I will endeavour to send you an overview of the big questions we are tackling with our year groups next year, now that we are coming to the end of the process of writing the schemes of work and perhaps we can put our heads together and plan for something in the future - I am still really interested in pursuing a project together. I just discovered voicethread a few weeks ago so I will have a trawl and see if if can see some of your students' products and leave them some feedback. It looks to be a great tool and I am really interested in the citizenship angle it provides in terms of students making a difference by reaching out to others and receiving feedback from a diverse audience. Are your students enjoying it? Do they receive feedback from people outside school?
The video of a year without a car is still being edited down and being shown in lessons in July to spur on our next mini project - I am hoping to divide some of the video into smaller clips that we can upload onto our wiki but I still have a great deal to learn about how best to construct the site. Do you have much experience of using wiki's?
It would be fantastic if you did produce some thoughts on voicethread - I would love to hear them and show our students too. Can you send links to the voicethreads?
Best regards
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