Looking for activities to do with your students?
Here’s a couple of projects that I’m watching that might interest you. Meanwhile if you know of any other projects that would interest educators – please leave a comment to share so we can all check them out.
Connecting Student Bloggers
Last year Miss Wyatt coordinated an International student blogging competition over 10 weeks from September to December. It involved 500 students and classes from 9 countries of the world who participated by writing posts on class blogs, student blogs or as commenters.
By the end many expressed a desire to continue so the blog Bringing us together has been created to:
- build on the friendships begun in 2008
- encourage more students and classrooms from throughout the World to connect with each other
As a student or teacher, you can get involved with Bringing us together blog in various ways including:
- Writing your own posts and/or comments in response to their posts
- Using ideas from the blog for your own blogging and collaboration projects
- Volunteering for your class to be in charge of this blog for 2 weeks (contact Miss Wyatt)
Currently Ms Smith’s class is responsible for Bringing us together and her students have written some great posts. Haley and Sophie has asked …what kind of pet makes you go YEOW!?, Sam and Michael G. have discussed things you look for in a friend while Brianne and Brittany made me very hungry with their cooking tips for after school snacks.
Students would love to hear your feedback! Can you tell us how is Bringing us together going by leaving a comment? (Yes – if you leave a comment I will visit and leave comment on your blog 8) )
Skyping Around The World
Silvia Tolisano (Langwitches) is coordinating a project called Around the World with 80 schools. She has written an excellent series of posts on this including tips for using Skype to connect classrooms:
- Reasons for Skyping in the Classroom
- Around The World with 80 Schools
- Update- Around The World With 80 Schools
- Map of Participants Around The World with 80 Schools
- Skype Connection Rituals
- We are Off! First Connection in Around the World with 80 Schools
You can also check out information on the Around the World with 80 schools wiki!
Strongly recommend that you consider joining this project or consider the concepts of these types of projects and how you might use them in your schools.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Would love to hear about other projects that would interest educators – please leave a comment to share.
Don’t forget if you’re interesting in skyping with other classrooms check out this page of The Edublogger and you can add your class to the list by leaving your contact details on this post. I’m updating the list again soon!
Image by Lady Pain licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike.
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Thanks students from Ms Smith’s and Mr Bogush’s class for visiting The Edublogger. I’ve dropped past each of your blogs and left a comment – although your photos of food did make me hungry.
Hi I’m Brittany.
Me and a friend of mine wrote the post What’s for Snack!
Bringing Us Together is doing great right now many people around the world has been visiting and leaving lots of comments.
Hi Mrs. Waters!
I agree with Sam too. Bringing us together is an excellent blog because many people will like to read the psots on it and leave comments. It is pretty cool to share a blog with other people because you never know what they will write about until they have!
Bye!
Hi Mrs. Waters,
I agree with Sam that Bringing Us Together is a really good blog. I also got to write a post with my classmate Sophie, and it was awesome because there were lots of comments, and I also got to visit new blogs because there are some classes that are involved in the new blog, and I got to visit some of them. I hope that Bringing Us Together can stay up for a long time!
Haley (from Huzzah)
Hey Mrs.Waters! I am Michael G from huzzah. Bring us together is a great blog! I like the idea where different class get to take charge of the blog.
Michael G
I agree with brayden it is kinda hard but I still like knowing that people around yhe world is reading my wriying. Bye!
I think bloging is kinda hard because you haft to right alot and ones I got a cramp in my hand well bye
Hi Ms. Waters the blog is doing wasome. If you haven’t visited the blog in a while but Mr. Boggush is now writing in Bringing us Together.
Miss. Waters, the blog Bringing Us together is going great. Miss. Smith and my class are no longer in charge of the blog, I think Miss. Smith said that Mr. Bogush’s Class has now taken over. He has already written some posts.
Hi Mrs.Waters I think thst Bringing us together is going really well. The posts done by Sam, Michael G, Brianne, Brittany, Sophie and Haley did really awesome posts and I hope the next time we have Bringing us together for our class I can wright a post for it.
Wow, great projects being shared here!
Here’s mine:
If you and/or your students are interested in what schools in other countries are like, take a look at the School Snapshot Project!
We’re looking for teachers/students around the world to describe their school for other teachers/students. Here’s a link to information about the project: http://culturallyteaching.com/school-snapshot-project/
-Cate
And here’s a link to our first School Snapshot about 4 schools in Argentina: http://culturallyteaching.com/2009/01/19/school-snapshot-teaching-efl-in-argentina/
Hey Mrs. Waters,
I think bringing us together is a really great blog. It really is bringing more and more students and teachers together. Getting the chance to write a post was lots of fun because I got to comment on everyone else’s comments and see lots of people reply to the post. By having lots of differant people post and comment on there you get to see lots of people views on thing.
Heya Sam – enjoyed your post on Christmas. Not sure what it would be like to shovel snow. Sounds a bit like hard work? But we still put up Christmas lights on houses – probably doesn’t look the same though. Glad to see new blog going well.
Hi Mrs.Waters,
It is Nicholas from Huzzah. I think bringing us together is a great blog. I like the way lots of different classes get a chance to be in charge of the blog. It gives a wide variety of different writers and different points of view.
Bye
Thanks Nicholas for dropping past and telling me about the new blog. I visited your blog and enjoyed reading about Mexico — felt a bit jealous.
Thanks everyone who has so far shared information on projects – I know people do check out the comments and follow the links. As I said to Silvia I’m also happy to add RSS widget to the site which picks up posts written about global projects if people are interested.
G’day Sue,
Just thought I would put a plug in here about the new 2009 Student blogging challenge to start in March this year. If teachers and students want to register before the end of February, then here is the link, http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/2009/01/18/a-new-year-means-a-new-challenge/
ePals offers free global projects on different topics, as well as a global community in 200 countries with more than 13 million K12 student and teacher users. http://www.epals.com
You can select from one of the existing projects, search through the global community and teacher forums to find a teacher-created project, or create your own project and invite others to join you.
The “top attention” right now is on “Inauguration Central.” As part of that, students were asked to contribute a one-minute video clip of their advice to president-elect Obama. Comments came from both American and international students.
Top winners: http://www.epals.com/groups/elections/pages/presidential-minute-entries.aspx
Some of the global projects include:
* Global Warming
* Habitats
* Natural Disasters
* Water
* Weather
* The Way We Are (cultural exchange)
* Human Rights (student contributions led to a book published by National Geographic, Every Human Has Rights. )
Here’s a story about a teacher in New Port Richey, FL (1-16-09) who is doing global projects with her math/science elementary students:
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jan/16/pa-e-mail-delivers-cultures/
To communicate with someone else in the ePals community and participate in their global project, you must join the community (no cost) and submit a profile, which must be approved by a human monitor before posting.
Some of your readers may be interested in http://teachersconnecting.com. The site is designed to connect teachers of similar interests, abilities, interests with one another for collaborative projects.
It’s a free service designed and maintained by Ben Hazzard, a teacher from Ontario, Canada. He describes it as “e-Harmony” for teachers.
Anyway, I thought I’d something that’s “new to the scene” to your list.
Hi Sue,
Thanks so much for highlighting the conversations going on at Bringing Us Together. Having a “hub” from which to meet student bloggers has been exciting and fun for my students and has allowed them to build their network of connections world-wide. Among the most powerful aspects of blogging is that is creates community through meaningful dialogue. My students don’t write with just me and my approval in mind–I am one of many in their audience. And they get that the read/write web is the read AND write web. It is woven and interwoven with potential.
I read this post on Friday, so it may be Monday before any of my students are able to respond. I find it both satisfying and sweet that my students connect with teachers as well as students and express gratitude for the time they take to read and respond to their posts.
Again, thanks for the energy you add to global education.
Sue,
Thank you again for being such a great source of pulling everything together.
I believe that tagging projects would be a good idea. We might also have to think about a uniform way of tagging. A way that people can right away “guess” the norm on how to tag future projects.
I know that I am always confused on which tag to use. What is 365photos? Was it 365photos09? Or was it 365_photos_09.
Maybe create a reference site (wiki?) as a repository of these tags?
We might have to encourage project organizers to go pack and tag their globalprojects09.
Silvia aka Langwitches
Hi Silvia – not sure of how we could organise people to use common tags. I’m happy to include RSS widget on this site if people write posts using the common tag globalprojects09. Just don’t want to maintain another list as they are time consuming to create.
Been pondering Jenny and Chrissy about an efficient method of telling people about all these different types of projects.
Not an easy task however one option would be to use a unique tag like globalprojects09 and ask people to write posts that include that tag. Then we could use Technorati to pull together the posts.
If you’re looking for a really great maths global collaboration project, check out Linda Nitsche’s Math Connections.
You can take part in as many challenges as you like, either as individuals, as a class or collaboratively with another classroom.
Here’s the link:
http://mathconnections.wikispace.com
Hi Sue,
http://workingtogether2makeadifference.ning.com/
This is a ning that I have set up with Angela and Laura Stockman from the United States. The aim of the site is as follows;
The aim of this space is to detail the efforts of educators and their students who are doing their bit to think outside of themselves and raise funds for worthy causes. We encourage you to join this space, create a new page for your school and start detailing what you and your students are aiming to do to help others less fortunate than yourselves. Chart your progress on your page and we’ll see what we can achieve by working together to make a difference.
It would be great to see educators who are returning to their schools think about joining and doing something proactive in their local communities to support others. We currently have 38 members but would love to see more people join with us.
Jenny Luca 🙂