resurrected as a peace
dove that brings hope to
other children in the world who
are affected by war.
Students learn about how war affects children their own age in the past
as well as in the present day. They
also read other books with a similar
theme, such as Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and Peace Crane,
and learn to make both text-to-text
and text-to-world connections.
The culminating task for the
project is the creation of a picture
book with the theme of peace and
friendship. Every participant makes
his or her own book to publish on
the Machinto website. The program
also sends the collection of books to
children in war-affected areas of the
world as a gift of friendship from the
project participants.
This year, our students created picture books about how they imagined
peace and sent them to a school in
Kandahar, Afghanistan. The amount
of work, care, and thought the students put into their writing and artwork showed the depth of connection
they had to the project and to their
peers in Afghanistan.
Third and fourth grade
students from Yasu-
tomi North Elementary
School in Hyogo-
ken, Japan, collabo-
rated with Canadian
students on a mural
depicting what each
learned about an
environmental issue
in its partner’s country.
Because real children and real-world issues are part of the project,
the tasks they perform become incredibly engaging and inspiring.
Machinto participants located at
schools throughout the world had the
chance to meet each other during a
live Web conference. They participated in a literature circle during a virtual
class-to-class meeting and shared
their stories, poems, and artwork in
a “classroom without borders” with
peers from Canada, Taiwan, Japan,
Mali, and the United States. It was a
life-changing experience for both the
teachers and the students involved,
as having that personal connection
to others reinforced the relationships
they developed through the project.
The Machinto Project’s collaborations open up dialogue about issues
that are normally not discussed in
elementary school classrooms, and in
the process, students get to experience
discussions and friendships that reach
well beyond the walls of traditional
learning. Because real children and
real-world issues are part of the project, the tasks they perform become
incredibly engaging and inspiring.
Our students were able to ask others who lived in war-affected countries
what it was like to live in such challenging situations. Last year’s partners included participants from Palestine and
Israel, where students were able to communicate with others in the Gaza strip
while a conflict was occurring there.
The students get to view each other
through a different lens than if they
had been left to learn about each other
through contemporary media alone.
One student articulated her feelings
about the project in a profound way:
“Before the Machinto project, I never
gave the war much thought. Now
that I know someone living in those
situations, I feel compassionate toward
them.” This kind of character development, though immeasurable, is an invaluable learning experience.
Collaboration across the Curriculum
You can integrate global collaborative projects into all curriculum areas,
so they aren’t just time-consuming
add-ons, and they meet curriculum
standards in all subject areas. For example, one project that fits many K– 12
curriculum strands is the My Hero
Project.
At the My Hero website, students
can publish essays about their heroes
for a global audience. Entire classes
can also participate in the project
within a formal global “Learning
Circle” of six to eight classes from
countries all over the world.
A project facilitator coordinates
activities for all of the classes in the
circle. Each class is responsible for
completing and posting class interest
surveys on group forums, sending welcome packages to the other classes in
their circle, and participating in online
circle discussions about their heroes.
Students research and write about a
hero in their lives using a structured
writing-process tool and create a webpage about the hero with publishing
tools (found on the eCreate page of
the My Hero site). These tools enable
November 2009 | Learning & Leading with Technology 21
