1 of 34

Mrs. Goumas' 4th Grade Class

Presents

Experience with a Global Collaboration Project

2 of 34

3 of 34

A Week in the Life

  • A Week in the Life is a Flat Classroom project for students in 4th and 5th grade.
  • The focus is on how we live, how we communicate, cultural understanding and awareness.
  • The aim of the project is to join classrooms globally so they can learn about each other and compare what life is like in each country.

4 of 34

#1 Getting to Know Everyone

First:

Create a school "handshake" to post on Edmodo for all the other classes in the project to learn about our school.

Second:

Create individual "handshakes" to introduce ourselves as students.

Third:

Watch other handshakes to learn about other classes in the project.

​

5 of 34

6 of 34

Our Handshakes

​

  • We used Animoto to introduce our school
  • We used Blabberize to introduce ourselves individually:

​

​

​

Click the links to watch

​

Global Goumas Video

Blabberize1

Blabberize2

​

7 of 34

Topics

Each student was assigned a topic to answer three essential questions.

The topics were..

Environment

Clothing

Transportation

Schooling

Leisure

Language

Housing

Food

Celebrations

8 of 34

9 of 34

How we used it:

  • Our topic leader posted questions for us to answer about our topic.
  • We could also comment to other students in our group.
  • Group leaders also put the links and our passwords for the Voicethread and Popplet on Edmodo

​

10 of 34

11 of 34

12 of 34

Using Popplet

  • Popplet is an online graphic organizer

​

  • We used it for brainstorming and sharing ideas with each other about our topic

​

  • Each group made their own popplet.

​

  • Our group leader would put questions up for us to answer by adding thought bubbles

​

  • It helped us brainstorm ideas for the

voicethread

13 of 34

14 of 34

15 of 34

16 of 34

Voicethread

  • Each topic group made their own Voicethread

as their group's final project

  • We uploaded photos, or clipart, and typed our thoughts to the Voicethread
  • We also commented on other group's Voicethreads

17 of 34

VoiceThread of the Environment Group

18 of 34

19 of 34

20 of 34

What is a Summit?

  • A Summit is like Skype except that it included a presentation that you share
  • To prepare for the Summit, we created slides in Keynote that showed some of the similarities and differences we had learned about in the Voicethreads.
  • During the Summit each class showed and talked about their slides

The Finale: Skype & Summit

21 of 34

Skyping and Summits

​

We skyped with a class in Canada and then agreed to continue to Skype with them after the project.

​

We also had a Summit with classes from Jacksonville, Florida, Oregon, and Slovakia.

​

​

22 of 34

23 of 34

24 of 34

25 of 34

26 of 34

27 of 34

What We Learned

The Essential Questions

28 of 34

​

3.How does Geography Impact your Topic?

  • Geography impacts clothing because of the weather. If we live where there is a cold season we have to wear more clothes and layers. If there is only warm weather, we need less types of clothing.
  • Geography impacts our housing because if we live in a warm area without a lot of rain, we would have a more open house with less insulation.
  • Geography impacts student activities because in some areas kids would not skate or ski but kids would surf or bike

29 of 34

30 of 34

1.What are the Similarities and Differences Among Children Around

the World?

Similarities

​

  • Surprisingly many children liked the same sports, games, food.

​

For example:

  • In many countries kids played soccer.
  • In many countries kids liked American hamburgers
  • In many countries, kids celebrated Christmas
  • Fireworks were used for many kinds of celebrations

Differences

  • We saw differences in how holidays like Christmas was celebrated
  • In some countries school clothing was more formal than in the U.S.
  • School was a longer day in some countries
  • Many students ate lunch in their classrooms
  • Different animals in the different environments
  • Some schools learn about many different holidays

31 of 34

32 of 34

2. How Can We Connect Through our Commonalities?

It is easier to connect if we share interests with each other.

For example:

  • We liked a lot of the same sports like: football, soccer, and basketball.
  • We like a lot of the same food: like some other people liked American food like hamburgers, hot dogs, waffles, and other foods.
  • So we have things to talk about and share
  • Then we can talk about our differences as friends

33 of 34

34 of 34

Benefits of this Project

We learned and used many types of technology to connect, communicate and brainstorm

We met new friends across the World with whom we hope to continue to communicate with and share ideas.

We discovered that finding out each other's similarities makes us feel closer to people who may be far away geographically