Staff Board of Trustees
By joining an online, collaborative project, your students can benefit by becoming a part of a world-wide community of learners. They will be collecting data, providing information, creating and designing, and cooperating in projects with students from all over the world. This is a wonderful way to use real life/real time learning that is motivating and crosses all areas of the curriculum. One teacher, somewhere in the world coordinates the project and your responsibility, as a participating teacher is to follow all of the guidelines and meet the deadlines. After the project is finished, continued learning from the completed project takes place.
Since there is sometimes a small fee charged to participate in the project, or there are monies involved in mailing things by “snail mail”, Reaching Heights has set up an Online Project Fund for grants. It is hoped that no teacher will have to eliminate the prospect of participating in an Online Collaborative Project because of the fees involved.
· Locations can be found on maps.
· Distances between locations can be calculated.
· Climate and time zones are compared.
· Cultural differences are compared and respected.
· Literature pertaining to the project or the project partners is read enthusiastically.
· Writing is much more purposeful when it reaches an audience.
· Students share interests with students in classes located in many places.
· New conceptual understandings are developed as students explore the results of their project.
· Information gathered is put into spreadsheets and graphs are made and analyzed.
· Art projects and music can easily be related to the topics of online projects.
The experiences are all relevant, explore real life, and are done in real time. This makes learning so much more meaningful to students.
Examples Of Projects Successfully Completed In Cleveland Heights-University Heights Schools That Are Still Posted On The Internet
Between 1997-2000, several teachers in the CHUH School District participated in online collaborative projects. They are not still available to be seen on the Internet. However, two very successful projects can still be seen and by looking at them other teachers can get an idea of the powerful learning experiences that were had by the students who participated in these projects:
Estella Nickens' Fifth Grade Class at Gearity Elementary School participated in a Language Arts Project about Clocks In Our Community. We chose the Clock Tower on the Cleveland Heights High School and after much investigation about the clock and the years that Heights high has been the high school in this community, a poem was written by the class.
While Mrs. Nickens' class was submitting their contribution to this project, classes in many cities and countries were also completing a project about a famous clock in their community. As the entries were posted by the coordinating teacher, Mrs. Silverman from New York, Mrs. Nickens' Class was able to read about clocks throughout the world, find the location of the city, and enjoy other students' projects.
Take a look at the Community Of Clocks website at:
http://comsewogue.k12.ny.us/~ssilverman/clocks/
June Strom, another teacher at Gearity Elementary School participated in a very simple project that was actually completed in a week. However, the children in the class watched the project progress throughout the year.
The project involved the delivery by mail of a small, stuffed ladybug, named Tunia. The directions were that the class was to host Tunia for the week, and have Tunia report back on what was growing around the school. She was to visit the garden areas of the school. A journal was to be kept for the week. The teacher was to email the journal each day (the class did a group journal at the end of each day) and also the teacher had to mail Tunia to her next destination. Tunia went from University Heights to Alabama and on to California, New Zealand, and other states and countries along the way. Each week, the students could go to the website and see where Tunia had been and what Tunia had seen. The students traveled vicariously with Tunia.
The Tunia project is in its fifth year. Find Gearity's entry in the First Year Journal Link.
The Tunia Website can be found at
http://members.cox.net/tunias_travels/Tunia.htm
These are only two examples of the exciting Online Collaborative Projects in which students from CHUH have engaged. Use the websites suggested below to find a project for your class. The Project will go far beyond its original purpose as you track time zones, climates, distances from city to city, language differences, geographical information, and other cultural themes. Students become very motivated by these projects and very often results unexpected from students occur due to a very high interest and motivational level.
Finding An Online Project For Your Students
The Global School House: http://www.gsn.org
On this website, you can search for Projects that would be appealing to your class and would fulfill the criteria of your curriculum. Using the Search #5 gives you projects that are probably available for your participation. The description will tell you how to enroll in the project and what your responsibilities will be.
Connected Classroom Telecollaborative Projects: http://www.qesnrecit.qc.ca/cc/index.html
Find homegrown projects designed by teachers for teachers. Or locate projects and partners from around the world.
NickNacks: http://telecollaborate.net
NickNacks offers an extensive set of links to telecollaborations on the WWW, mailing lists, useful tools, lesson resources, and online publications. New resources are added monthly and links checked quarterly, which is essential in the ever-changing scope of the Internet.
CIESE Online Projects (Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education): http://k12science.ati.stevens-tech.edu/currichome.html
CIESE believes that technology can be a powerful catalyst in improving K-12 education by providing students with enriched opportunities to experience and understand scientific and mathematical concepts, increase problem-solving and critical thinking abilities, and participate in authentic, interdisciplinary projects.
Personal Note: When I was the Program Specialist For Technology in the CHUH Schools, I personally found the Online Collaborative Project to be one of the best uses for Technology In The Classroom. I am passionate about its appeal to students and the resulting learning. I would be glad to dialogue with any teacher from CHUH who is considering an Online Collaborative Project for their class and would be willing to help you find an appropriate project. Please feel free to email me at techteach@adelphia.net if I can be of help to you.
Judi Wolf
