Sample+Projects

Sample Projects
Promoting global awareness in elementary students goes beyond just reading about life in other countries. While there are many excellent books out there, they shouldn't be the only way our kids learn about other cultures. Our students need to explore all facets of different cultures. Finding ways for kids to actually communicate with their peers in other countries is ideal, but they can learn in other ways as well.


 * Ideas for Projects**

[|BlogPals] - In this project, third grade classes in Pennsylvania, Thailand, and Singapore are communicating via class blogs. The students will write posts and then read and comment on each other's posts. We're just getting started on this project, so stay tuned! This project was created by Kim Cofino, 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School Bangkok. She has lots of information about how to setting up a class blog and promoting safe Internet practices at her blog, [|Always Learning].

__Bilingual Storycasts__ - Promote partnerships across the globe or just across the grade levels with this project. Primary students write stories and then have them translated into another language by students in another class. This is a great exercise for high school world language students, older English language learners, or a partner class in another country who is studying English. The stories can be turned into audio and/or video podcasts to be shared with others as a tool for practicing language skills or just becoming familiar with another language. You can find a few samples [|here] that were written by second graders and translated by high school students here in the US who are studying Spanish, French, or German. We sent a few of the stories to a school in Japan, then met with those students in a [|videoconference to share the stories].

__[|Rock Our World] __ - This project involves classes around the world making music, communicating through live videochats, and studying curricular topics.