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Look around the habitable world: how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.   -Juvenal, Satires

During the summer following my first experience with Kiva in my classroom, I was searching for a way to extend and deepen what I had begun through Kiva, namely a continued connection between my classroom and the world.  Kiva was wonderful for providing the stories and faces of real people whom my students could help through microlending (for a complete discussion of this project, see Math Made Compelling: The Kiva Renaissance).  I felt that it was time to explore the possibility of contacting and perhaps even collaborating with students in other parts of the world.  I wanted them to feel intensely connected to the world and excited to be in that place.  I wanted (and continue to want) my students to feel that reaching out to others is not only doable, but completely logical and a source of great joy.

iEARN and My Hero

To be honest, when I first set out looking for a way to collaborate with other classrooms around the world, I had no idea what to look for.  I dipped into the vast waters of Google and just began searching around.  It was pretty fruitless at the start.  At the time, I also happened to be preparing for a Language Arts focus on Heroes, so I also was looking for information to allow my students to study a wide range of heroes and their characteristics.  Very quickly, I was drawn to a Californian based site called My Hero that allows students to post stories of their heroes online.  I was intrigued by the possibility of my students creating their own projects and was also very impressed by the vast bank of hero projects and videos created by others.

In a rather circuitous way, I ended up watching a video about a young, recovering child soldier named Mohamed Sidibay from Sierra Leone.  A class from Ontario had created the video and had contacted Mohamed through an organization called iEARN (International Education and Resource Network).

Eureka!

It was exactly what I was looking for.  The iEARN website contained a mind-boggling list of teachers, projects and professional development from around the world, all centered around creating opportunities for collaboration between teachers and classrooms.  Amazingly, the organization celebrated its twentieth anniversary this past year!  I couldn’t believe that it had existed so long and that I had never heard of it.  I felt so behind the times!  In another crazy coincidence, iEARN was advertising a project in collaboration with My Hero.  They were looking for teachers willing to join a team of other teachers and classes from around the globe in an exchange of information about heroes and a final sharing of student work posted on the My Hero website.  I couldn’t believe my luck!

Signing Up

I was so excited to be a part of the project, that I felt like I had received a major award when I received confirmation of acceptance onto one of the teams.  On my team were teachers from Romania, Russia, Iraq, Slovenia and the United States.  We were given a group email address and quickly began to exchange information ourselves and our schools.  Next came class surveys, which we eagerly filled out and shared.  We also created “Welcome Packages” which were basically collections of small artifacts that demonstrate what it is to be a kid from your home country.  My students rounded up stamps, dried leaves, stickers, pebbles, drawings, coins and anything else we could fit into the envelopes.  We popped them into the mail (after spending over $30 in postage) and waited.

Looking Within

“Global education…is a voyage along two complimentary pathways.  While the journey outwards leads to students to discover the world in which they live, the journey inwards heightens their understanding of themselves and their potential.  Both journeys constitute a necessary preparation for personal fulfillment and social responsibility in an interdependent and rapidly changing world.” (In the Global Classroom, Graham Pike and David Selby, 1999)

Meanwhile, the kids were fully immersed in the language of heroism.  We started our study by looking at the characteristics of heroism such as courage, empathy, perseverance and inspiration.  We took the time to analyze our responses to social issues at school in the light of each of these characteristics.  We wrote poetry and prose about these issues.  Learning the vocabulary of heroism not only gave my students a more developed means to analyze those whom we identify as heroes, but also a means to understand that acting heroically is at the heart of our own humanity.  Giving students the language to express this allows them to consciously access this.  This behaviour–to persevere, to put others first, to inspire, to have empathy and courage–should never be accidental.  It should be fostered and celebrated.

Analysis and Evaluation:

I had found novels and short stories on various real heroes such as Iqbal Masih, Sadako, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King and Ruby Bridges.  I also organized links to short videos and readings online.  The students chose books and reinforced concepts by completing further readings in web format or by watching videos online.  When they felt that they understood a hero well enough, they engaged in some thoughtful analysis of their hero.  They answered questions such as, “If you are an innocent victim, are you instantly a hero?”, “Is death an important part of being a hero?” and “Is this person definitely a hero?  How do you know?”.  The depth many of my students could achieve was astounding at times.  Allowing students to read, view and research until they were ready to write about their heroes was very successful.  I wished, at times, that I had more than a 1:3 ratio of laptops to students, but how could I complain?  The organization was a little tricky at the start of a session, but ten minutes in, the class was utterly focused and engaged.

Team Connections:

My students needed me to update them on the latest email updates from our team members.  I printed off any photos or writings sent by other classes and posted them on a bulletin board, but I was not terribly satisfied with this.  There had to be a way for the kids to engage in discussion with one another.

I suggested to our team on a regular basis that I was eager to attempt to set up a protected discussion board where students could respond directly to one another.  I also said that I would be willing to try out Skype to contact another class, if they could manage it.  I had never done it before, but it couldn’t hurt to try!  A class from New Jersey had the technology to manage a Skype discussion.  It took us about a week to coordinate times and find one another on Skype and then we gave it a go.  It was incredibly cool and worked very well.  I set my MacBook up so that the built-in webcam was pointed at my students and I had a projector set perpendicular to it so the kids could see the other class easily.  The best part was hearing the “phone” ring while my kids waited in anticipation.  The first “hello” was probably the most exciting word spoken all term!  It was the day before the election in the States, so many of my students questions were about Obama vs McCain.  The kids in New Jersey were exploding with debate and excitement.  It was a pretty neat time.

Full of Potential…However…

I kept pressing the communication agenda, but most were not able or really that interested in pursuing a more meaningful connection between the classes.  I really felt like my kids were out of the loop, unable to receive or provide meaningful feedback from others.  All writing exchanged was on a one way path, which was such a shame.  My students, however, were not entirely aware of what they were missing.  They asked regularly about whether we had received any Welcome Packages from the other team members or whether we were going to have a Skype conversation with any other classes.  In the end, we never did have any other Skype conversations.  The teacher from New Jersey continued to be interested, but was too busy to follow through.  We ended up receiving two Welcome Packages out of ten, which was a bit of a disappointment as well.  The “Reaching Out” part of the project seemed to be a failure when it started out with so much potential!

Fortunately, this is not the way the project ended.  My students still had their main research projects to come, and they were definitely not a failure.  In Part Two, I will discuss the approach I took to the projects and some very surprising connections we made when my students reached out to their heroes!  Part two was, by far, the most exciting part of this project.

Jen