Last week, I met with the 14 MAGPI Fellows for this year via videoconference for an informal training session. The bulk of the 3 hour meeting was spent with Fellows presenting about their previous collaborative projects and talking about their ideas for upcoming collaborative projects.
I’m amazed at what these diverse and innovative educators have come up with! One group of educators created a student-generated CSI-like series of forensic videoconferences for high school students to solve. Another group planned and facilitated cross-cultural book sharing between U.S. students and students in Portugal. Our third group of Fellows created a Science Career Demonstration videoconference for students in their school district - - and pediatric patients at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in New Jersey.
And while I was really impressed with the projects they’ve undertaken so far, I’m even more impressed with what their cooking up for spring 2009! The Arts and Humanities Team (which brokered the cross-cultural book share this past fall) is planning a wonderful international video project with high school students. Students will be creating videos about what it’s like growing up in their community and then discussing the video projects via videoconference. Take a look at this wonderful promotional film the team has put together!
- - and they are looking for partners! So check out the website and register if your school is interested.
The Science and Technology Team is working with Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to design a series of interactive videoconferences (and demonstrations) that show various states of matter. And our Career Education and Work Team is working on a project that will have students envisioning what journalism will look like in 2020. They are partnering with local and regional media organizations for this project to work with students on their explorations- - talk about bringing the world into the classroom and expanding resources.
Can’t wait to report on their progress as the projects develop. And if you’re a MAGPI Member and are interested in being a Fellow for 2009-2010, please download the application from our website. Applications are due on May 1, 2009 and we’d love to have you apply!
1 comment:
This is a really cool model, Heather. Tell us more about how you make this work. Are they Fellows for just a year? what happens after that? what support do they get besides the initial training? What do you include in the initial training? It seems like you have a model of training plus creating collaborative projects plus implementing them plus support. Maybe in another post you can tell us how you got this started.
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