Collaboration for Growth

We will study and learn in parallel with a fifth grade class in another part of the country, sharing our work as we learn via video chats on a periodic basis. Our content will be similar -- both involving space and space exploration -- but not the same. Our collaboration will allow each class to augment their learning experience while sharing back and forth with each other.

Each class will carry on it's learning process individually, but keeping in mind the need to share what they're learning with each other. Periodically, the classes will come together for live discussions and sharing sessions using video and/or audio chatting software. These sessions will be recorded and later edited and produced as podcasts to be shared with the school audiences as well as the worldwide audience via the Internet.

We hope to highlight and share not only the science content studied by both classes, but the collaboration possibilities we discover through the process of regularly checking in with one other, class to class. The students' parents collaborate routinely in their vocations and work, and we want to illustrate for our students in a hands-on way how important and useful it is to cooperate (work together) on a project of mutual importance and benefit. Doing such collaborative work has its pitfalls, and we will document the obstacles we encounter along the way. In addition, we will chronicle our problem-solving successes and failures as part of our overall learning adventure together. In short, we will demonstrate through this project that the process of learning is as important as the content learned.

We plan to collaborate on additional projects in future months, and our trial and error discoveries along the way will enable us to fine-tune our collaborative efforts as we go. By including both the successes and the obstacles in our podcasting episodes, we will enable other classrooms to learn from our experiences. We believe that is one of the main advantages of podcasting, which allows "regular people" to share their stories with an authentic, global audience.