Project+Overview

The 2010 Olympic project is designed as a six-week project for students and teachers to research, learn about and follow the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada.
===The project is designed to give teachers and students an opportunity to engage together researching, learning and creating through the use of wikispaces, classblogmeister, Animoto, VoiceThread, Skype, and other digital avenues.===


 * ===The project begins on January 18th with students researching the history of the Winter Olympics. Students will create timelines or other online tools to provide a visual representation of the history of the Winter Olympics.===
 * ===During week 2 students will be focusing on the sports of the Winter Olympics. Classes or students may choose to focus on one country or work in groups on different countries. Students then choose a specific sport and an athlete competing in that sport to research and focus on during the duration of the Olympics.===
 * ===In Week 3 students will learn about Vancouver and British Columbia in order to understand where the games are being held. Students will then research their country and create a visual representation of their country.===

===During the project students and teachers will communicate through email, blogs, Skype and use of the wiki discussion tabs. The richness of the project will be further enhanced when students visit the participating school pages to learn about the countries the other classes are studying and see other student work.===

Project Proposal for EC&I 831
How can I facilitate a group coming together as an online community then implement and maintain a web presence using various digital tools?

I want to expand my own practice stewarding various networks of teachers as we work together on projects with our students. The creation of a large collaborative project would give me the opportunity to look at the tools, features, platforms, and configurations of the technology that our community would use. Stewarding a large group of educators would also give me the opportunity to adapt technology that the community can add content to and respond to the needs of members of the community. As I word with the community of users I will be challenged to know what strategy did I need to use, how would I solve difficulties and how would I meet the changing needs of my community. Finally, I needed to consider the activities and tools I would need to work with my community.

Using the LoTi Framework ( http://loticonnection.com/lotilevels.html) The project strives to achieve Level 5 - Expansion: At a Level 5 (Expansion), collaborations extending beyond the classroom are employed for authentic student problem-solving and issues resolution. Emphasis is placed on learner-centered strategies that promote personal goal setting and self-monitoring, student action, and collaborations with other diverse groups (e.g., another school, different cultures, business establishments, governmental agencies) using the available digital assets.

Students use of digital tools and resources is inherent and motivated by the drive to answer student-generated questions that dictate the content, process, and products embedded in the learning experience. The complexity and sophistication of the digital resources and collaboration tools used in the learning environment are now commensurate with (1) the diversity, inventiveness, and spontaneity of the teacher's experiential-based approach to teaching and learning and (2) the students' level of complex thinking (e.g., analysis, synthesis, evaluation) and in-depth understanding of the content experienced in the classroom.

The project I propose is the 2010 Olympic Project (http://2010olympics.wikispaces.com/). I've been working on the project for the last five months and it will continue for approximately another month. The project has developed my skills as a online community steward along with giving teachers and students an opportunity to engage together researching, learning and creating through the use of wikispaces, classblogmeister, Animoto, VoiceThread, Skype, and other digital avenues. I believe this project fulfills all of the requirements for the major digital project. The collaborative, digital nature of the project has allowed for students and teachers from 54 schools and 10 countries to work together on a common project. As creator and steward of the project I've worked very hard on being responsive to the needs of my online community of educators and students. There are definitely challenges when dealing with such a diverse group of learners and technological comfort amongst the teachers. Due to the remote nature of a digital project I've learned to to be very precise in the information I share with my community and answer questions promptly. I've also added content, pages and used the discussion tabs in response to the needs of the community.

In the past I've created projects that are very small in scale and are not as responsive to the community of users. This project is challenging me to work with a largely unknown group of colleagues while we navigate the digital landscape together.