Saturday, September 15, 2007

An Online Science Project - Journey North

I think anyone who has heard me speak knows that I am passionate about the online collaborative project. I believe that allowing your students to become a part of a world wide community of learners has benefits that will fulfill standards and beyond! One such science-based project will meet standards in all areas of the curriculum including map skills, learning about many cultures, numeric data, and definitely all of the communication skills. That project is called Journey North, it can be found at http://www.learner.org/jnorth/. With the motivation of wildlife migration and seasonal change, students will track happenings within their own environment and then track the animals and plant life as one season goes into another. There are activities for every age group, maps, email updates, and many classroom activities. This project has been going on since the mid-eighties and just keeps getting better and better. Your class can choose any level of participation.
The beauty of this and many other online collaborative projects to me is two-fold. First of all, students are studying what is happening in real time with real data, and secondly, they are compiling and analyzing data coming from many sources throughout North America, rather than experimenting just within their own classroom.
A project like this, provided free of charge to all of us is a win-win situation! Give it a try!

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