Globally…Connect…Communicate…21st Century Skills

Science and history fairs have been held across the United States (and maybe other countries?) for years. Having grown up in Germany and Argentina, the first time I encountered these events was with my oldest daughter at her elementary school in the 1990s.  According to Wikipedia, Science fairs have been held across the USA since the 1920s.

The school I work for alternates every year between a Science Fair and a Jewish History Fair exhibition. Students are to research and create a project for the respective subjects. This year the school prepared for the Jewish History Fair.

The sixth graders wanted to explore the theme “Jewish Communities Around the World. After watching Alan November’s video clip, I wrote about my idea of Information Literacy…Authentic Conversation..Globalize Curriculum…. The idea was born to allow students to “get personal” with and connected to their research, to compliment traditional research media, such as  books and the Internet, with 21st century communication tools, such as skype, twitter, facebook, and texting.

Through personal real life connections, my PLN on Twitter and this blog, I was able to get in contact with volunteers representing every continent. They volunteered to be interviewed by our sixth graders about growing up or living in their country of residence as a Jew. Our students wanted to research similarities and differences of being Jewish around the World.

Coordinating Interviews and Media used

I would like to express a special Thank You to Daniel Needlestone (London, England), one of the first people to respond via Twitter and in return use his network to connect me with more volunteers!

Skyping with Daniel Needlestone from London, England

Daniel blogged about our interview from his perspective in this post: Mentoring, Online Lessons, Virutal Tours and Computing-All in a Days Work.

No sooner had the online lesson finished when I got a skype call from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano also known as @langwitches . Her 6th grade class interviewed me as part of their project on Jewish communities around the world. I’ve tried to help set them up with different friends of mine on different countries. Apparently Silvia has managed to cover every continent even Antartica! The girl who interviewed me asked great questions and I really enjoyed our 10 minute chat and meeting some of Silvia’s students. I’m very jealous of their project and look forward to seeing the results!

Although we intended to use as many different media as possible for the interviews, reality worked out a little different. Timing issues, as are very common in a tightly packed school day, played a major role. A face to face interview, as well as one of the Skype calls were turned into e-mail interviews in the end due to scheduling issues. Our texting with one of the contacts, who actually was stationed in the Antarctica at the time, had weather problems and no satellite connection available.

In the end we used the following media to conduct research and interviews:

We would like to express gratitude to all of our interviewees whether via e-mail, skype, telephone, face to face or Twitter. Your time and effort was very appreciated:

• Daniel Needlestone (England)
• David Truss (China)
• Mark Lazar (Israel)
• M. Finkel (Russia)
• Ariellah Rosenberg (South Africa)
• Kabren Levinson (USA)
• Ralph Glasgal (Previously stationed in the Antarctica)
• Andrea Uzan (Denmark)
• Gary Sakol (Scotland)
• David Cohen (Australia)
• Elizabeth Davis (USA)
• Noemi & Marvin Szoychen (Mexico & Venezuela)
• Steve Katz (Costa Rica)
• Elena Herz (Argentina)

Students were very excited for the planned interviews. First, we “distributed” the countries among the students. They each received a short bio from the participants and then gathered background research and to generate questions. I sent the questions off to the interviewees who were participating via e-mail and scheduled the skype & twitter conferences with the others. Once the time zone issues were resolved and the day and time was set, students who were not directly interviewing in front of the webcam were taking on the job of note taker or photographer of the sessions.

Taking Notes

Documenting

Costa Rica

USA

South Africa

Canada

Australia

Talking about being Jewish in the Antarctica

Although maybe a bit shy at first, students quickly became more relaxed at interviewing via Skype. All of the students had their questions typed up ahead of time. Their personalities started to shine through though as some added more in depth or follow up questions depending on what turn the conversation took.

David Truss from China

Ariellah Rosenberg from South Africa

One of our participants, Gary Sakol  (originally from Scotland), agreed to conduct the interview via Twitter. We agreed on a Hashtag (#JHFI) and on a day and time to meet on twitter. It was the first time for all the students to see twitter live in action.

Twitter Interview with David Sakol (Scotland)

Screenshot of DVD with Skype Interviews

When we were doing our research, we learned the following things that Jews have in common on every continent.

Jews seem to all celebrate Jewish Holidays similar

Most Jewish boys and girls celebrate Bar & Bat Mitzvah by leading services and having some kind of party

Many Jews attend services

There are different degrees of observance

They have rarely experienced direct anti-semitism

They all take pride in being Jewish

Many have gone to Israel or al least feel connected to it

Most don’t wear kipot in their daily lives

All eat some types of traditional food

They take part in the daily life traditions of their chosen country of residence and usually don’t feel like ‘outsiders”.

This type of learning required many more skills than just the use of technology…

we collaborated in our overall planning

created questions, took notes from oral interviews

asked in oral or written form

good initial and follow up questions, which required us to “think on our feet”

shared orally and in writing what we learned from each interview

synthesized, organized and compiled all our final impressions in writing

We also did some “book research” to locate data, flags, and histories for our countries

The final display of the collaborative 6th grade research project was a combination of a typed up country reports, a three dimensional map with flags of locations of interviewees, a DVD running on television of the recorded interviews on Skype and a display of photographs that students took during the the interviews.

Exhibition Display

Map Display

Flags displaying location and media used for connection

Interviewee locations

We heard rave reviews from parents and community about the project who visited the Jewish History Fair. The project is an example how to extend learning by using technology tools to reach further and dig deeper with resources. I believe we attained our goal to

allow our students to “get personal” with and connected to their research, to compliment traditional research media, such as  books and the Internet, with 21st century communication tools, such as skype, twitter, facebook, and texting.

Not only did students write their traditional reports, but they practiced 21st century skills of:

• creating (a map)
• collaborating (with their peers to create a snapshot of Jewish communities around the world)
• connecting (with 15 Jews around the world)
• communicating (via different media)

In addition to basic literacy of reading and writing, students were exploring and exposed to

• information literacy
• media literacy
• global & intercultural literacy
• networking literacy

It’s Not About the Tools. It’s About the Skills

Many times, I see eyes glazing over, when I excitedly speak with parents or administrators about blogging, skyping or podcasting with students. Many of them, unfamiliar with the tools, will immediately feel uncomfortable. Some will automatically and immediately steer the conversation back to what they know:

What about learning the basics, like reading, writing, math and science?

I usually try to explain and emphasize, that these skills are precisely what are being taught. We are not podcasting in order to teach Audacity nor Garageband. We are not recording students for the fun of using microphone, we are not blogging, so we can practice typing, we are not skyping for the purpose of using a webcam.

Parents and administrators, unfamiliar with the tools, also seem worried that “important” academic time is being lost and wasted!

In an attempt to explain that there is so much more involved when using technology tools, I blogged a few months ago, We Podcasted Today So, did you learn anything?

It is important that we explain to parents and administrators that we are using the tools to practice the above mentioned basic literacy skills, engage and motivate students, but also address, integrate and embed so many more skills and literacies.

Take a look at the visuals below:

• Podcasting Skill
• Video Conferencing Skills
• Blogging Skills
• Wiki Skills
• Digital Storytelling

What are some other technology tools you are using in the classroom? What are the skills and literacies that you are addressing? How can we educate parents and administrators that blogging, podcasting and skyping, etc. are simply a vehicle to preparing students for many skills and literacies, including the 3Rs they are accustomed to and familiar with.

Disclaimer:

All images were created by me with photographs obtained at Stockxchnge. The resulting visuals are available for you to use, remix and build upon under the Creative Commons license. This means, that you are free to copy, embed, print, or distribute the images as long as it is not for commercial purposes and you give credit to me, as the original creator.

This work by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

You might want to grab the images with higher resolution from their Flickr Page:

• Podcasting Skills
• Blogging Skills
• Video Conferencing Skills
• Wiki Skills
• Digital Storytelling Skills

Podcasting Skills

Video Conferencing Skills

Blogging Skills

Wiki Skills

Digital Storytelling Skills

Skyping Teacher of the Week

I am honored to have been chosen the “Skyping Teacher of the Week” by one of our local TV stations, First Coast News

Silvia Tolisano, the school’s 21st Century Learning Specialist started the program ‘Around the World in 80 Schools’ to bring more awareness to students. “We are promoting global awareness and global connections. Yes, today we talked to Peru and it was wonderful and this shows the students there is a world out there.”