On Board Once Again

As our 'teacher at sea' begins the Vendee Globe, my students are once again preparing to follow his voyage. We followed him in 2001, when he sailed from NY to Melbourne, AU; in 2003 when he sailed from Hong Kong to NY and in 2004 in the Transat 2004 from Plymouth to Boston. Though the students from those years are well into college now, their younger siblings and friends share the same excitement as they did several pre-skype years ago! As we think about the upcoming voyage, we have written letters of encouragement to Skipper Rich on the Vendee Globe Junior site. We looked at all of the competitors boats on the Vendee Globe site and some have begun to design their own boats in Scratch. http://www.scratch.mit.edu
We've create voicethreads to introduce ourselves to students who will follow the race through Vincent Mespoulet's Vendee Globe group on his site http://horslesmurs.ning.com/group/vendeglobe2008 where a wonderful group of innovative teachers will share this experience together. And Sharon Betts Classroom Braids project focusing on the Vendee Globe will help my students and me to learn more about how the voyage can be shared in a collaborative wiki project; something that is still very new to me.
Even my kindergarten students have been sharing their favorite boating experiences and using their drawing skills in Kid Pix to retell their own boating memories. Their voicethread to come soon! By the end of the Transat 2004, all 270+ kids in the classes had been a part of the team that cheered our teacher at sea to the finishline with drawings, audiofiles, questions, and even lego sailboats. As the excitement of the upcoming race draws near, we look forward to meeting new friends and sharing the educational field trip of the decade with our teacher at sea.

http://www.vendeeglobe.org
http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/media/photos/112/Rich-Wilson-Great-Am...
http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/media/videos/play/3608/Rich-Wilson/
http://www.sitesalive.com