Making Connections
On Monday and Tuesday I completed setting up pages for each of the sustainable development goals as a form of stimulus for our student participants on our website. You need to click on the down arrow of SDG 1 to see the 16 subpages. Each page now has videos, buttons to topic related Google Earth Voyager projects, and buttons to the United Nations fact pages. I have begun to curate our student's work too and am adding their words and cartoons and videos and I am certain that they will inspire others to engage with the issues they are passionate about. Google Earth Projects are fabulous and they may well be a fantastic tool to use as you each teach your own subjects remotely. Once you launch Earth you will find that it gives you options. If you click on the ship's wheel you will find a wonderful range of voyages into realms that excite the minds of any child or curious creature.
Another fantastic feature of Google Earth is that you can also create your own project which is what I did yesterday. I am currently building a website and Google Earth project to teach students who Sir Thomas Brisbane was...hint...he gave my city its name. I am including a link so that you can see what I mean. It is another work in progress. Holidays always take a week to kick in and so I am following my curiosity down a million rabbit holes. As an educator you may like to create resources this way but you might also like to get your remote students to create their own on any topic. It builds their capacity to appreciate geographical distances and differences in a way that a text book simply can't. I am building a project to also show our students where they are in the world, much like I did last year.
We may feel physically distanced but we are anything but socially distanced. You are only as far away as a keypad and screen as we discovered via Zoom.
As part of my coping mechanism, for the little bit of extrovert in me, I have taken up the challenge of completing a thirty minute drawing each day. It has been decades since I've drawn and it has been wonderful to rediscover what had once been a passion. I would advocate it as a particularly therapeutic mindfulness pursuit and again something that you might suggest for your own children or students.
I don't know what the next months will look like but I do know that I am striving to build something precious with some incredible educators both within the project and beyond. Please join with Maria and I in whatever way you are most comfortable with. Use the project as curricular or not, it doesn't really matter. Our aim is to engage our students with issues beyond them and right now the refocusing is particularly important. I am including a link to a Forbes article which you may like to read and perhaps share bits of with your participants. Building strength, resilience and joy as a means to celebrate the life we have as others lose theirs or work on the front lines to protect ours, is crucial at this time.
To this end I have also included a Mindfulness page for our students on our website. You will find a few videos, more to come, and two Connect Four grids for students to complete in pairs remotely. I must add though that the grid only operates as a grid in a browser not a phone. Please feel free to use them if you would like to.
Please contact us if you would like to participate with your students, for those who aren't already doing so.
Keeping you all in my thoughts and prayers and continuing in my digital bower bird way to build interest and advocacy in creating a participatory culture in our students. Stay well. Stay safe and...
Video of Elora used with parental permission.
On another note, Australian Teacher Magazine 2020 just ran a story about last year's project. Somehow they mixed up one of fifty projects with one of 1700 applicants!!!! all of a sudden I am now project queen! HARDLY!
