Global Classroom Collaboration Online

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Comment by Matthew Kuntz on January 31, 2009 at 11:00am

I teach 5th grade and have used it for technology projects across the curriculum. My students have learned how to use Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Garageband, and many others. This classroom projects fits nicely into any curriculum as it is student-driven, the kids come up with the topics and themes of the web site they are going to build. More than anything I have used in my 20+ years of teaching, this engages kids and helps them collaborate with other kids from around the world. This year I have 92 fifth graders involved in the project- a wide spectrum of kids. My colleague- Janet Barnstable- who is a technology communications teacher at the middle school level (grades 7 and 8) is also involved and does some amazing things with her students. You can email her at jbarnstable@op97.org for more info.
Matt

Comment by Barbara on January 30, 2009 at 12:51pm

I will check it out, thanks for the link. Thanks! Just curious...how have you used it?

Comment by Matthew Kuntz on January 30, 2009 at 11:23am

I have used the Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) with my kids for about ten years- it is awesome! I have worked with schools from Australia, Japan, Russia, Israel, Canada, United States, Taiwan, Mexico, and Italy. You can check it out at
http://www.virtualclassroom.org/
The contest is closed for this year but make sure to get on their email list and they will notify you when it starts again next year.
Matt

Comment by Barbara on January 29, 2009 at 8:19pm

Vincent, I don't think we can make the deadline. My students are writing short stories right now and I don't think I'm motivate any 14 year olds to do an extra project outside of class, but I will see ... Please keep me in mind for any future poetry projects, though. Congratulations on your award, that's fantastic! Is it for your own poetry or your students? Is the work at the site you mentioned?

The travel study trip is for 8th grade English and I don't get to go:-( I teach mainly computer along with my creative writing class. A colleague of mine, who teaches all of the Honors English classes is taking a group of kids and their parents, and she said that they will not be in Provence, but mainly Paris.

I would still like to figure out a way to collaborate online with our students.

Thanks!

Comment by Barbara on January 29, 2009 at 8:07pm

Thanks, Lucy. I shoulda known there was a Global Ed Ning!

Comment by Lucy Gray on January 29, 2009 at 5:21am

Take a look at this online community: http://globaleducation.ning.com

Comment by Vincent Mespoulet on January 29, 2009 at 12:23am

oh great !!! So if you like our project, you can register on our ning to share and send us podcasts... we have a big challenge in France with Music and Poetry: if someone compose a music for this poem until Feb 10th, the song of the winner will be broadcast on many radios in France... Just send us a mp3. file (less than 3 minutes) to join this contest... This is the reason why we have translated the original french poem into around ten different languages (see english version below)... You can see all what we did last year on this group... if you join the project, you can also join the european network e.twinning: it's now opened for extra-european schools... I have won the First Prize in France last november (nice gifts: a big Smartboard, a laptop, a printer and so on... )
Give me please also some details about this travel-study trip in France, because we can invite you for a real meeting in Provence during our four days for our Spring of the Poets Festival in Manosque, Provence, from March 25th to March 28th...
And i'm sure that my students would enjoy to work with your students... If you have with you in your school a french language teacher, it would be also very interesting... We give elluminate sessions to learn french:

our last session (a video abstract of an elluminate session):


Trouvez plus de vidéos comme celle-ci sur L'Ecole Hors les Murs - School Beyond The Walls
We were two
We were cousins
And we loved each other
More than life

With one another
We shared our words
We were two
And we loved each other

We rejoiced in what we shared
We had fun
Like clowns have fun
We wrestled
Like clowns wrestle
For all or nothing
We embraced for the slightest thing

At the edge of time
We will tremble to remain
One without the other

We were two
And we loved each other

Comment by Barbara on January 28, 2009 at 2:57pm

Thanks for the site, it looks great. I teach creative writing and I do a poetry unit with 14 year olds. They create podcasts of their poems using GarageBand with photos, music, sounds, and images. Some of them often end up writing songs and making video podcasts or graphic poems using ComicLife. I will encourage some of my writers to enter the contest! Coincidentally, many of my students will be traveling to France in March for a travel-study trip with our English department. We may have a few questions for you...

Comment by Vincent Mespoulet on January 28, 2009 at 12:17pm

Hi Barbara,

Try our projects inside our School Beyond the Walls specially our Spring of the poets 2009 where I work with teachers and students from Latvia, Romania, Italia, Lituania, Greece and... France where i teach... Students involved into this projects are 10-18 years old... We share poetry of our countries, we create poetry and songs and we use Vokis, VoiceThreads, Video-Poems and Elluminate... We have also a project about "Our Towns in History, History of our towns", and many others...

Vincent from France, Provence, Manosque