MOD 8 - Global Collaboration

Global cooperation has expanded the reach teachers have across the world allowing them a larger group of learner’s to inspire and teach. The internet has allowed us to develop collaborative efforts in the study of various subject providing new views from different areas of the world. I explored 2 sites KIDLINK and The Center for Innovation in Science and Engineering Education.

Kidlink is a collaborative effort to connect youth from around the planet to develop ways they can become more motivated. It is a non-commercial, user owned group that helps children understand their possibilities and develop goal setting and life skills. Kidlink also provides curriculum help to teachers in developing lesson plans that relate to local curriculum guidelines as well as the students personal interests and goals. Kidlink is used by students in 176 countries mostly by students between the ages of 10-15 years. The Kidlink Network is run by 500 volunteers in over 50 countries with a variety discussion boards that can be used for collaboration. Information on the site is available in over 30 languages. Kidlink provides a great way for kids to share ideas and thoughts on working through and succeeding in attaining their goals. Kidlink provides students an outlet to the world. They can communicate with children there own age and develop a greater understanding of the world we live through the sharing of goals and life skills.

The Center for Innovation in Science and Engineering Education was a great site to explore. CIESE received one of the first grants to explore internet use in 1993. The CIESE curriculum provides various projects using ‘real-time’ data from government and commercial databases. Many of the projects can be shared with anyone across the world with objectives and opinions shared with all participants. The concise instruction activities will create a better understanding of various science and mathematical topics. The sharing of opinions by the activity participants provides feedback and dialogue that will evolve and expand into new projects. Of the 6 projects I reviewed, I enjoyed the Water Usage project where data was collected about daily water usage. Data was collected from all parts of the world and compared with the average daily use of 1 American citizen. This type of objective will create great discussions with classes across the globe as well as find new ways to converse our water resources, and learn how much water people outside of the US use, and still survive.

I enjoyed my exploration into both sites and have become envious of the resources students have in there pursuits in education.

PART 2

When looking at CIESE and applying it to Voice Thread from the previous MOD (7), a teacher can create a great outlet to develop and construct an experiment using the ideas of any participant. VoiceThread allows for people to use audio, video, and interactive tools to provide feedback. I can take an Engineering Project where we studying the importance of angles in the construction of Bridges. The project can be posted and demonstrated with audio and video examples. Each student can ask questions, share thoughts with each the other. The ultimate goal is for each student to develop a plan to build a bridge that will be tested for its durability under stress using weights. Students can share construction ideas as a collaborative effort. They can also share construction flaws in why some bridges failed where others succeeded. As a whole collaborative group the teacher can build a bridge based upon the plans developed by each student. The plans can be placed on Voice Thread and changed by any of the students. Voice Thread will also save old plans to refer to if maybe a construction flaw was discovered. Once the plans are finalized the Bridge can be constructed and tested by each student. An great interactive teaching tool using ideas from across the planet and provides a great way to inspire and maintain interests of participants.