I’ll be sitting down with our Social Studies supervisor and a teacher in the department next week to discuss an expansive collaboration between our Holocaust and Human Behavior classes and student groups in Cracow and Prague. The project will run from September through May and will feature teleconferencing and other technologies, and has ties to Rutgers University as well. But the focus point for the project will be a Web log that we set up and serve here at my school. Right now, I’m thinking it could model some of the really great project Web logs that Middlebury has run, most notably the 9/11 Web log that Eric Davis put together last year. It’s such an extensive compilation and study of the event, which is probably close to what these students will be aiming toward.
I know I’ve said this before, but this is where I see a real power of Web logs in schools. They provide such and easy and, in most cases, cost effective way of breaking down the geographic barriers that we have and allowing many more people into the conversation. Anne was thinking out loud some similar thoughts yesterday in working with ESL kids. (BTW, Anne, I have the ESL teacher in my Web log workshop next week…) She says “I do know that I want to make sure that they have an audience who will respond to what they are writing – another class or a group of volunteers that I can gather together.” Because of the Web log, she may have one here if she wants it.
At any rate, I can’t wait to see how this U.S.-European collaboration will turn out.
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