Bearing Fruit

It has been less than a month since the Doha trip and the connections I made are already bearing fruit. Sts. Philip and James School may have three global collaborative technology projects lined up for the months of March and April.

We have an environmental project involving students from Oman. We are planning to order reusable grocery bags, add our own designs with the help of our art teacher, work with other schools in international groups, using social technology, to learn about different aspects of environmental education and have a cultural exchange. The project may involve up to 5 countries. We will be giving the reusable bags away at local grocery stores to interested shoppers and the project will culminate with a tree planting on the school grounds. ArborDay.org is a great resource because for a small membership fee will ship you a geographically appropriate tree to plant. They also have detailed instructions on how to plant and care for the tree.
In addition to what we are calling the "Green Bridge Project," we may also have two other projects for April. One project is a multi-media collaboration about internet safety and etiquette with students from Pakistan and the other project involves a cultural exchange/geography lesson using Google Maps with international students from a school in India. We still have some details to work out with all three projects, but when you have a group of enthusiastic teachers involved, most logistical problems seem easy to conquer.

The Flat Classroom Conference was so amazing, I kept saying, "I wish I could bottle this feeling and bring it back with me." We all know that feelings can't fit inside of bottles, but the good news is that thanks to the flattening of the obstacles separating our classrooms, we can recreate that feeling right in our own schools.

I am looking forward to engaging with these fantastic teachers once again and I can't wait to introduce our wonderful students to each other.
Stay tuned . . .