Project Description

Outside My Window is a collaborative project designed to help students connect with other people around the world.  Students exchange photos taken through the windows of their houses and classrooms, create new "windows" collages  in their classrooms composed of those pictures, and use a web forum to meet and talk to other people.

Standards

To keep this broad and international, the following standards are from the National Council on Social Studies in the United States.  This project fits easily into many local standards:

NCSS Thematic Standard I:  Culture

The study of culture prepares students to answer questions such as: What are the common characteristics of different cultures? How do belief systems, such as religion or political ideals, influence other parts of the culture? How does the culture change to accommodate different ideas and beliefs? What does language tell us about the culture? In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with geography, history, sociology, and anthropology, as well as multicultural topics across the curriculum.

NCSS Thematic Standard IX: Global Connections

The realities of global interdependence require understanding the increasingly important and diverse global connections among world societies and the frequent tension between national interests and global priorities. Students will need to be able to address such international issues as health care, the environment, human rights, economic competition and interdependence, age-old ethnic enmities, and political and military alliances. This theme typically appears in units or courses dealing with geography, culture, and economics, but may also draw upon the natural and physical sciences and the humanities.

Objectives

• Students will be able to develop collaborative relationships with people from other cultures
• Students will be able to describe life in their country and compare/contrast their lives and culture with people from other places
• Students will be able to participate in international efforts to address major social concerns.

Process

Stage 1: Photos.

1.  Take photos (preferably digital) and burn them to a CD (if there are a large number), post them to the web, email them to Mark Gross or send CD to

Mark Gross

Evergreen Valley High School

3300 Quimby Road

San Jose, CA 95148

2.  Be sure to send email address of the person who submitted the photo (if available)

Stage 2: Post message to forum.

1.  Student's write a paragraph or two describing the view from their window and the issues faced by the people around them.  Teachers should seed this problem by providing a template of topics that will help pull social issues and problems out into the open.

2.  Students post those as email to the Outside My Window forum:  outsidemywindow@yahoogroups.com.

Stage 3: Find someone to talk to.

1.  If you want, have your students join the forum. Its free: www.groups.yahoo.com/group/outsidemywindow.

2.  Students can find other members and write to them to discuss what life is like where they live and to find issues and interests they share.

Stage 4: Build a Window

1.  Students email friends and family promoting Outside My Window and requesting photos.

2.  Build a window frame (we built one by having each student draw a picture of themselves on a pre-sized sheet of paper and then taping them all together.  You can see the frame on this site on the Classroom page.

3.  Collect photos, assemble into a collage, and put inside frame.

4.  Email us a picture of your window:  grossm@esuhd.org.

Related Projects/Assessments

• Students write about their experience participating in the project
• Students "adopt" other countries that you get involved in the project, research them and develop a compare and contrast poster and essay.
• Students make a documentary film about life in another country involved in the project, or about life in your country that you share with people elsewhere.
• Students hold a culture day where they recreate some aspect of life elsewhere
• Students select on significant social problem worldwide and develop a project to try to affect it.