The Tale of Three Cities Project is an extension of the highly successful younger sibling , "A Tale of Two Cities" which ran in 2003 between BEPS and Nathaniel Alexander School in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Click here to check out the original project

It once again involves the original schools but with a third participant, St Pauls Primary School in Cambridge, England.

This project aims to achieve the following:

• To develop a global classroom environment that fosters international cooperation and understanding between students and teachers
• To share and exchange information about different communities
• To create a rich online learning environment for all students
• To develop higher order thinking, technical and communication skills
• To enhance knowledge and understanding of different cultural settings

The project will be run using IBM's Learning Village tool, "Team Projects". This is a very powerful web-based communcation program that allows students to exchange information over a secure site that is password and user protected. Web pages will be created using the "Homepage Designer" tool.

IBM's / DE&T's role and the Video Conference

Brunswick East Primary School and Nathaniel Alexander Elementary have had a long association with IBM through the Reinventing Education Project which has run in both schools for some years. Victoria's state education department (The Department of Education and Training - DE&T) and IBM have operated the Australian RE Project in partnership since 2000 and this work is a product of that support.

The project will culminate in a video conference link up between each of the schools (courtesy of IBM). This will give students an opportunity to reflect on the project "face-to-face" and share their thoughts and ideas on the process.

Links

• Visit Nathaniel Alexander Elementary School's website
• Visit the original "Tale of Two Cities" website
• Visit St Pauls Primary School's website
• Have a look at some great work completed by BEPS students in the previous project (A Tale of Two Cities)
• Find out more about Global Projects...

There will be three schools involved across three continents: Melbourne (BEPS), Charlotte - North Carolina (Nathaniel Alexander Elementary School) and Cambridge (St Pauls).

Each school will be paired up with students from BEPS and will exchange information about their local community, culminating in the creation of web pages or Powerpoint presentations about the information that they've learnt.

The staff list for the project is as follows:

• Tony Iannone (gr 4-NAES) working with Darren Moran (gr 3-BEPS)
• Jennifer Moore (gr 4-NAES) working with Linda Weste (gr 3-BEPS)
• Jennie Dunn (gr 6-St Pauls) working with Julie Maclure (gr 4-BEPS)
• Tim Murphy (gr 5-St Pauls) working with Phill Cristofaro (gr 4-BEPS)

The students will complete 7 activities through which they will post information about their local community / city. These include general orientation, school, local festivals and celebrations, my favourite places, popular sports / recreation etc. The students will then analyse and compare information about each place to determine similarities and differences.

Resources for Teachers and Students involved...

Click here to download a copy of the note taking proforma to be used by the students throughout the project.

***VIDEO CONFERENCE***

On Thursday the 8th of December (Wednesday the 7th for Charlotte) the students met their e-buddies via a video conference link-up.

The grade 3 students from BEPS went into the Department of Education and Training at 8.00 in the morning, while their counterparts in Charlotte met them at 4pm on the previous day at IBM in Charlotte.

The grade 4s (BEPS) went to IBM Melbourne at 6pm on the same day to meet the students and teachers from St Pauls courtesy of Cambridge University and IBM UK. All in all this is an exciting and rich opportunity for the students to meet, greet and share their learnings across global boundaries. The students' webpages will be launched to a global audience.

This is some footage from the grade 3/4 "Tale of Three Cities" video conference.

When we got into the video conference room the kids saw two screens, one with us and one with the Cambridge kids on it. Everybody introduced themselves and we got to know each other better. We asked each other questions about themselves and about the project. My kids had to say goodbye to the Cambridge kids after a bit. The kids thought the video conference was very interesting.

Click image to view the Grade Four's Video Conference

Click image to view the Grade Three's Video Conference

Go to the Team Projects area...

Click here to enter the engine room of the project...