High School World History Perspectives Project

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on December 30, 2009 at 1:02pm

Ryan,

The Enabling Support Foundation is in the midst of an existing international collaboration among students in Morocco, Australia, and Pakistan. There is also an emerging group in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Ukraine. The problem you will face here (and I assume elsewhere) is that these students are involved because they are working to improve their English proficiency. You have the oldest HS students and there may be a language mismatch.

I have a suggestion for the project. Not only can the students share their historical perspective, but so can the teachers. This will bring the history back farther in time.

Permalink Reply by Ryan Folmer on December 30, 2009 at 1:13pm

Hey Bob,
You do bring up some good issues. Obviously, students with some English knowledge would be great (some of my students speak Spanish and French), but if we are using text communication (email, wiki, Ning) we can use Google translate to help us out there. It is certainly something to challenge us, but I think can be worked around. Teacher perspectives would also be appreciated, hence my call for 'experts.' They could be teachers, historians, or anyone who lived through events of the last half century.

Permalink Reply by Katherine Bolman on December 30, 2009 at 2:01pm

Ryan, great post. I am far behind you.
I am creating an online course for the teaching of art and architecture in a unique way. This is a stand alone course and a course that will add to history courses on a global basis. If you go to ahaafoundation.org you can check out one or two of the micro-lessons and get back to me. It is not the usual art history course as it works its way around the world.

I am only up to Ancient Egypt. If I were up to the dates you have would you be interested in collaboration with an art historian? I am very interested in finding a history teacher to collaborate with.

I would love to have an interested group.

I look forward to hearing from you.
Warmly,
Katherine Bolman, PhD
The Applied History of Art and Architecture Educational Foundation
kbolmanahaa@gmail.com
ahaafoundation.org

Permalink Reply by Ryan Folmer on December 30, 2009 at 7:26pm

Katherine,
Thanks for the post. The art history element probably wouldn't work for this class, but I would work well for my other classes. I also teach three sections of World Civilization II (Renaissance to the 20th Century) and AP European History (also Renaissance to the Present). I put a major art history element in both of those classes (basically showing how art is a reflection of the times and events that people are living through). So, there many be another area for collaboration there if you get up to post Medieval art.

Permalink Reply by Katherine Bolman on January 30, 2010 at 11:34pm

Ryan, we should talk!!
If we plan now we might have a glorious time next year in one of your classes.
Home phone 808 941-4242

Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on December 30, 2009 at 3:40pm

If your students would like to interact with students in these areas, I suggest that you sign up for ePals. It's free to be part of the Global Community, and you can then search on other teacher profiles and their classrooms and communicate with them. www.epals.com
You could make one assignment for your students to search the profiles in specific countries and suggest five classrooms that most interest them! That invests them in the process and tests their decisionmaking skills. It also helps you winnow through the 600,000 classrooms from 200 countries in the overall database.
Some of the ePals classrooms will have access to Skype or other technology, some will use ePals SchoolMail (also free) and some may use only postal mail.
In an ePals project on digital storytelling, some of the classrooms have made digital stories about their school, community and lives, and those are powerful and interesting. (You can see some of them posted on ePals.) Seeing a classroom in Senegal with a dirt floor and no electricity -- using flip video cameras and battery-powered laptops to tell about their lives -- is pretty amazing. Students show how they carry water from the well or milk the goat before school. Others are from Norway, New Zealand, etc.
Both the Global Community and the SchoolMail have instant language translation into 35 languages. You'll find many of those in the ePals Global Community are teaching English as a second language, so their students are eager to write to native speakers and learn about life in America.
Once you have "made the match" you can work together as you wish, using Ning, wiki, email, or whatever works best.

Realize that schools in Australia are on summer vacation until the first week of February, and schools in South America are probably not back in school until late March, so it's harder to get students in the southern hemisphere in January/February.

Also, see whether any returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCV) are in your community. They are terrific speakers to give perspective and share experiences. The Peace Corps site also has some engaging videos showing way of life in remote areas. http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.returned.digita...

Good luck! If you need help getting started with ePals, let me know, and I'll be happy to help.

Permalink Reply by Ryan Folmer on December 30, 2009 at 7:28pm

Thanks Rita,
I am aware of ePals and I do have an account there. I haven't posted anything there yet, but I plan to asap. I put the same post on several Ning educational networks to see if I got any nibbles, I'll be moving onto ePals next. Thanks for the suggestions, especially having students pick the classrooms. I think they will like that.