Understanding Web Connections

The 7th Grade Humanities students and teachers at ISB have been making their collective ways through the new "Connected World" project for several weeks now. For "my" students (about 25% of the 166 total, and I put my in quotation marks because one of the teaching joys of this unit has been the several opportunities for students to move to other humanities teachers on a regular basis, which means all four of us Hum 7 (as we refer to ourselves) teachers are teaching all the 7th graders and each of the 7th graders has most likely visited each of the Hum 7 teachers at least once, and more likely several times) we had a big "aha" moment during the week directly before Songkran Holidays.

Specific details of the project can be found here, here, and here. Anyhow, during the week of 6 April students met in what is their fourth different grouping involved with this project (the other three are 1. Region Group, 2. Issue Group, and 3. (loosely related) Book Club Group) This 4th grouping was to learn one of four specific "tech skills" 1. Google Earth Tour, 2. Flickr or Photobucket type applications, 3. World Music Search and gathering, and 4. The Wiki (many already are familiar with using a wiki, but that group learned specifically how the wiki would be using with the Connected World Project.

Anyhow, as I was explaining all that to my class before we ventured off into the groups, I heard more than one "aha!" when they realized that all of what they'd been doing was going somewhere (on the wiki, and that once the wiki was completed, it would give an overview of the entire world and the specific issues facing the regions and countries.) I had of course explained this at the outset of the unit, but at the time it was a bit too far-flung, and I think many students simply didn't grasp the depth and breadth of this project.

So, what does that have to do with "web connections"? Well, within the very controlled (or mostly controlled) environment of a group of 166 7th graders spanning a total of eight humanities class sections, students were able to very clearly see how all of the work they'd been doing both as an individual and in small groups would all connect together to create one massive project!

I've also been very pleased to see my students reading and responding to each others blogs and going out there into cyberspace, mostly through globalvoicesonline.org and reading and responding to people's blogs from all over.

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I also checked out this website and really 100% agree with this:

Learning is often a messy business. "Messy" learning is part trial and error, part waiting and waiting for something to happen, part excitement in discovery, part trying things in a very controlled, very step by step fashion, part trying anything you can think of no matter how preposterous it might seem, part excruciating frustration and part the most fun you'll ever have. Time can seem to stand still - or seem to go by in a flash. It is not unusual at all for messy learning to be ...um ...messy! But the best part of messy learning is that besides staining your clothes, or the carpet, or the classroom sink in ways that are very difficult to get out ... it is also difficult to get out of your memory!

It reminds me of a quote I posted elsewhere: "Education is a journal, not a dissertation."