INTERSCHOOL WEB-BASED CURRICULUM PROJECTS--URLs

The following projects range from the very simple and short term to the complex and long term. They vary in the number of instructional tasks, educational level, and degree of technological literacy. They have been chosen because they can be examined with these issues in mind.

But they have also been chosen because they illustrate the different levels and kinds of collaboration that are possible, the different ways of fostering social and cultural awareness, and the way in which the whole (the results of individual work) can be greater than the sum of its parts. It is in these characteristics, we think, that the true power of web-based curriculum projects lies.

This multidisciplinary project uses the journey metaphor to draw student into a multidisciplinary (cultural, historical, and scientific) exploration of water and land via the internet. It is an example of a project that includes several different kinds of tasks and interactions, from data collection to the exploration of different cultures.

http://www.tidalpassages.com

This is an example of an increasingly popular web project, the electronic fieldtrip. Such projects try to promote inquiry by drawing in students with questions that are aimed at peaking their interest. In addition, the project's use of experts (via either the internet or satellite connections), is also becoming common in internet projects.

http://www.jasonproject.org

Through the Living Schoolbook Project, now in its third year, teachers in selected schools in NYS have been developing curriculum project in an advanced technology test-bed. The projects are small-scale and local but all involve many of the characteristics discussed.

http://lsb.syr.edu

This project involves research and problem-solving activities as students search for, record, and interpret local art. One piece of the project, the WPA mural project, is discussed below.

Consciously developed as a multidisciplinary project by a group of classroom teachers who wanted to interact with the local community in a number of different ways, the Cyberzoo involved 110 Whitesboro Middle School students. The communities involved included the school, the parents, the Burnet Park and Utica Zoos, graduate students from Syracuse University, experts from SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry, and Siri the elephant. The project teachers are planning to add schools in different environmental zones.

This project demonstrated the value of videoconferencing as a tool for communication between students with very different perspectives and goals and from different cultures in one locality--an inner-city and a suburban school.

The Onondaga County Library has over three hundred postcards that have been digitized and placed on the Living Schoolbook website. The sharing of a collection of digitized collection of documents allows students to study them in detail and discern patterns and themes.

The Globe's El Nino Project and the Acid Rain Project are two examples of projects in which the participants gather data and send it to a central databank, where it is then posted for all participants to see. In some of these projects, schools are encouraged to work together, but the main point is to gather enough data so that the shared results reveal patterns or larger (non-local) processes.

GLOBE'S EL NINO PROJECT

http://globe.fsl.noaa.gov/ElNino/nino3.html

ACID RAIN PROJECT

http://earth.simmons.edu/acidrain/acidrain.html

Most of the projects that do this have focussed on scientific data, but there more and more that cumulate other kinds of information in order to give a picture of a larger process. The New Deal Network's projects taken together will build a picture of the New Deal as it operated across the nation.

NEW DEAL NETWORK'S CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Smaller projects, such as the WPA Murals Project, which began as a Living Schoolbook project but will be taken nationwide by the New Deal Network, focus on only one aspect of the larger whole but have the same aim. This particular project has great cross-disciplinary potential because it is looking at public art.

WPA MURALS PROJECT

http://lsb.syr.edu/projects/journeys/nysart/WPA.html

The Global Grocery List and the Monster Project are examples of seemingly very simple projects that provide powerful ways to raise awareness of economic, social, and cultural difference.

THE GLOBAL GROCERY LIST

http://www.voicenet.com/~sagg/ggl.html

THE MONSTER PROJECT

http://www.intac.com/~brunner/projects/monster.htm

In the UN CyberSchoolBus's Demining Schools Project, students not only learn about the devastating effects of the land mines left behind after a war, but join an international campaign to ban land mines and help raise funds to clear the mines from a schoolyard in Mozambique. They interact with a range of people outside the classroom, including land mine experts, land mine survivors, and their local communities.

SCHOOLS DEMINING SCHOOLS

http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/banmines/index.html

In the Young Reporters for the Environment, students from schools across Europe work together (in carefully constructed groups) to investigate locally and then report to the entire community on environmental issues of mutual concern.

YOUNG REPORTERS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/yre/

There are many places to go to find on-line projects. One excellent annotated list is at: http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/online/join.htm

We would be happy to hear your thoughts on this discussion.
Barbara Shelly (bashelly@syr.edu)
Susan Lowes (susanl@mailhub.ilt.columbia.edu)