K-12 Conference Presentation – Classroom 2.0 “Travel through Space and Time”

The second k-12 Conference Presentation I saw was Silvia Tolisano’s presentation entitled “Travel through Space and Time.” In this presentation she talked about traveling to China on November 30, 2006 with another teacher in order to accomplish a connection between Chinese culture and their American students. The title of this journey was Broadening Horizons and Raising Global Awareness.

Tolisano taught at San Jose Episcopal Day School in Florida, and used this experience to broaden students’ worldviews with the use of technology, a travelling bear, and activities. She used technology as a way to communicate with students. She brought a laptop, webcam, mp3 player, ipod, digital camera, and various chargers with her on her journey to communicate with the students. She used many different internet programs as well, to share with students the cultural differences she was experiencing. For example she used wordpress.com to keep track of blogs, windows movie maker to upload videos, audacity to upload mp3 files, del.icio.us to keep track of resource sites and cultural information, Flickr to easily upload photos, and Skype to have video conferences with students back home. These programs made it possible for her to share her experiences with students back in America.

The students enjoyed learning about China. The reason for this program was to create global awareness. San Jose Episcopal Day School believes that children must be global at a young age. Tolisano talks about her adventures in her video presentation, explaining the sites she saw and the activities she participated in while in China. In order to keep students interested and active with this journey, Tolisano created a traveling bear and took pictures with the bear in China to keep the younger students engaged. In order to keep the older students curious about Chinese culture, teachers created an Amazing Race concept. Students had to answer clues and participate in Chinese activities to continue onto the next leg of the race. Tolisano used her experiences and shared them with her school back home. Through these activities San Jose school was able to become more connected to the Chinese culture.  After Tolisano returned back to America San Jose School continued to incorporate Chinese culture into their classrooms. They participated in creating a Chinese dragon, painted pigs (for the year of the pig), and completed other Chinese crafts.

This whole concept was designed to show students how they can connect to others in the world. Through this experience San Jose School was able to broaden the horizons of their students. This idea was so popular within their school that they decided to do it again this year. The country they picked was Egypt. This is a great opportunity to use technology in the class, and help students feel connected to others within the world. Some of the blogs from the Chinese trip can be seen at www. sjeds.com/blog/china. Overall, this journey has been a great experience for San Jose students to travel through space and time.

~ by heatherbreitkreuz on February 6, 2008.