Learning and Leading - November 2009

Fourth grade students at W. H. Day

Elementary School in Bradford, Ontario, Canada, wrote, filmed, produced, and edited a short film about their role models to share with peers around the world through the My Hero Project.

depict the Japanese culture and environment. Each class also prepared a short video that gave a tour of their school and community.

The students communicated through a wiki, where they posted photos, told stories, and planned their final collaborative task, painting a 12-by-5-foot mural. For their part of this task, the Japanese students painted half of the mural about what they learned about the Canadian environmental issue. They then shipped the mural to us, and we completed it based on what we learned about the Japanese environmental issue. The end result was a truly inspiring depiction of an important part of each country’s environment, a symbol of the classes’ collaborative relationship, and a demonstration of how technology can seamlessly integrate science, art, and literacy while celebrating cultural diversity through the universal language of art.

We will display the mural around our community before it goes back to Japan to be part of the Japanese students’ graduation ceremony. From there, it will become part of a traveling art exhibit that will be displayed at major art galleries throughout the world before ending up in an exhibit

with 5,000 other Art Miles murals at the Great Pyramids in Giza, Egypt, to celebrate the end of the UNESCO Decade of Peace in 2010.

We encourage teachers who have been participating in global collaborative learning projects to mentor and support other teachers who are beginning the journey of integrating such projects into their programs. It may take more energy to plan for these learning experiences than traditional, hierarchical, top-down learning, but that model was better suited for the Industrial Age. Once we saw how these projects engage students and effectively teach 21st-century skills, we knew we had a responsibility to continue teaching with them. We also knew that we had to showcase our students’ work— work that is powerful and moving and speaks to our common humanity—so that administrators and parents can see how ICT changes the way we teach and learn as well as how we engage our students to be responsible and literate citizens in a global information society.

Resources

Art Miles project: www.art-miles-project.com

International Education and Resource Network (iEARN): http://iearn.org

Machinto project: www.machinto.org

My Hero project: www.myhero.com TakingITGlobal: www.tigweb.org

Mali Bickley has been a class- room teacher for 27 years. She integrates technology into her classroom program to connect her students to global partners as they work together on proj- ects that make a difference.

Jim Carleton is an ICT con- sultant for the Simcoe County District School Board in Ontar- io, Canada. He is a strong advo- cate for using new and emerging technologies in ways that inspire students and teachers.

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