Office of Instructional Technology

Multi-disciplinary Inquiry-based Projects for the 21st Century Collaborative Classroom

iSite: Fourth Grade Global Communication & Collaboration Project: About Your School's Local Community

Pacing

I. Preparing to Start

Have parents sign the DOE consent form

Distribute and collect the WWW consent form

Familiarize yourself with available resources on this site and on our wiki
Set up a free teacher wiki on Wikispaces and request student accounts

Research Internet sites for your students to use and post them on your wiki
Enlist school support:

• Art teacher- may be able to assist with illustrations
• Computer teacher- can support students with research, saving and importing graphics, creating a Google tour
• Librarian-  can compile books about the community being studied
• Parents- may be able to provide primary source information about the community being studied

II. Starting the Project

Introduce the project to your students

Discuss the focussing question

Show sample wikis to the class

Discuss the IAUP with students

Teach the students about copyright law

Go over vocabulary with students

Divide students up into research groups of 2-5 with specific topics of study related to their community

Students can take a waking tour of their community to note important sites and locate community members to interview

III. Using Wikispaces

Demonstrate to students how to log on to wikispaces and access the class wiki
Give each student their username and password
Have students research their topic using links from the wiki research page
Demonstrate how to use the wikispaces tools and how to post information - text, images, files

IV. Project Research

Establish cooperative groups and group rules
Assign research topics to each group
Students conduct research
Students post research results on their appropriate wiki page

Students will find and place appropriate copyright friendly pictures from the Internet, original digital photos (or hand drawn and scanned) into their text.
Students will review work on the other wiki pages

The teacher will work with the students to create a Google Earth interactive tour of the community

Wikis will be shared with other students, parents, teachers, and relatives from around the world