REFLECTIONS OF IEARN MOMENTS IN THE CLASSROOM
For over a decade I utilized educational resources, provided
by iEARN, to help develop groundbreaking curriculum initiatives in science
class. This effort motivated students to
want to learn and it planted the seed of inquiry into their mindset.
iEARN is the link to world-wide collaboration with students
and peers that is a hallmark of modern educational pedagogy. This wealth of
collaborative resources accessed by teachers can be used to strengthen student
cognition between the usefulness of what has been learned and its
implementation to real-world situations.
In the late 2000’s into early 2010 my science classes of 50
to 60 students were involved with the iEARN Earth Stewardship Project. It was a
project facilitated by teachers at my high school with the goal of developing
collaborative relationships with students from abroad on environmental concerns
facing our societies. During the
duration of this project, we frequently collaborated with a group of Iranian
female students in Tehran that acknowledged our concerns and held the same
motivation to want to help protect and preserve local ecosystems.
During this time, students in both countries shared many
messages with each other and expressed concerns about actions we thought needed
to be taken to preserve the vitality of our environments. Pictures and posters
were shared along with data from experimental discoveries to help each other
realize the commonality of the struggle of our issue to provide for the
well-being of people.
The girls in Tehran used the novelty of our exchanges to
promote and garner more interest and support for their efforts during a local
food pantry donation champaign. There
remained a strong feeling of support between these two groups of students, from
different parts of the world, during this entire collaborative project.
Most recently, students in middle school collaborated with
peers from Europe, Asia and Africa on important issues related to fresh water
and the protection and preservation of ecosystems world-wide. The Water is Life / Team Green International iEARN
Project, at its core, strived to promote, world-wide, the need to protect soil
through regenerative agriculture practices and planting trees, preserve
supplies of fresh water through wetland development and conservation and to mitigate
the release of carbon dioxide through reduction in the burning of fossil fuels.
Students in grades 5 through 8 worked on different aspects
of the project to draw together comprehensive plans to make changes to
safeguard our ecosystems. Students,
working on projects from countries around the world, presented at online and
real-time conferences to share what they have learned with peers. Facilitators
from iEARN helped orchestrate students’ ability to share ideas, explain
experimental outcomes, and to learn from each other about how they live their
lives across the planet.
These conferences were some of the most exciting events of
the school year because it was the culmination of student efforts to solve
problems then having the ability, through iEARN, to share results with peers
from faraway places. It was a model of
international educational initiatives that is essential in a world more tightly
networked than ever before.
Student motivation to learn was enhanced in both these
experiences and it is a rewarding feeling for me to have had the opportunity to
take advantage of resources that tap into the essence of what it means to be a
learner. Students in both situations were able to articulate to peers from
across the planet their beliefs, their discoveries and their hope for a better
future.
