 Hi, I'm Leslie Prowley-Keene and I'm a well originally a 612 social studies teacher at a small school in Iowa But now I am an instructional technology consultant for one of our regional education service agencies This is where I live Blairsburg, Iowa And this Is where I teach You can see that it's a small rural school in a small town The school consisted of about 230 kids K-12 And I was talking with my seventh grade geography class one day and they were telling me how boring it was to live in such a small town And I couldn't disagree with them completely, but of course as a teacher. I needed to find a way to spin it So we talked about why it was boring. They said well all it is is it's flat and There's lots of fields And our town is tiny And if you take a look at this you can't even see the next nearest town Let's go out a little farther And by the time we can see the next nearest town, we almost can't even see Blairsburg anymore So you can understand why the kids would be a little concerned about how where they lived was boring But I asked them why it was boring because we see the same thing every day is what they told me Okay, well, but what if you didn't see the same thing every day? What if you lived in a city? You didn't know that your food came from these fields that were surrounding where you live and You didn't know that You know across the street there were cows that you could even milk You didn't know that your milk came from those cows What if you lived in Alaska and all you saw were mountains each day or Colorado and what you saw each day was mountains which are beautiful when we go visit and I'm sure they're beautiful when you live there But think about if you were coming to Iowa and all of a sudden you could see for miles and miles and miles So we started to talk about what it was that made our culture Interesting what it was that made our town what it is And we started talking about how we could share that with others Now I'm a connected educator. So naturally I started sharing what I was finding with my students on Twitter And I found some other teachers who students also felt the same way about where they lived and who were interested in collaborating with others So we put out a Google doc and I've done a shortened Google URL at the top so you can access it if you want to And we started putting in our information Okay, and we started sharing our ideas when we started thinking about what could we do? What are some projects we could do together? What's some research we could do together? How can we get these kids outside their walls? And this is one of the things that I helped develop We came up with the five themes of geography project So we're looking at what makes our town what it is based on the five themes of geography They were gonna create a video Firstly because we're one-to-one iPads and anytime we can use technology We try to but second because it's so much more powerful when students are creating something to share with others And they weren't just gonna create it for themselves and they weren't just gonna create it for me But they were gonna create it for a wider audience So we went through and this Google doc isn't perfect, but again, you'll see this shortened URL if this is something that interests you We started talking about what makes Blair's Berg and they don't all live there, but that's where they we go to school What makes Blair's Berg what it is? So we talked about location in place human environment interaction Movement region we started brainstorming the other teachers and I some questions that we could have kids answer What we actually wanted them to do and then we shared our information To say hey, we're interested in sharing these So we started digging in and I have my kids getting to groups of three and they some of them We're a little bit bigger, but they started really digging into what makes our town what it is One of the things we talked about Was region one of the things that defines a region or can define a region is newspaper boundaries So that's what we talked about and we invited the newspaper to come in and cover what we were doing so the Daily Freeman Journal came from the next town over and Started talking to my students about what they were learning and we got to have a conversation with her not only about the area and The region that the newspaper covers, but about what they cover how they choose what they cover why it's important Why they don't cover all kinds of things from Hawaii or Scotland and how their local paper is Sustainable because it talks about what's important to people in this area So we're able to make an a real-life connection with some of the content that we were using So my kids went about continuing to create their videos and we took a field trip And we were able to go uptown and to see We're able to go and take a little field trip and see our community in a little bit different way My associate and I took the kids up to Main Street where we found the post office some churches the fire departments up here You know again, we walked just a short distance. That's unique to where we live Not many people can say that they can do that But the kids didn't really understand that at first And we took some field trips to some different places, but I want to show you exactly what they came up with now I'll tell you they're not perfect We had you know general education kids special education kids we had some English language learners and some of them and We were able to put together some pretty great videos telling about where we were from I want to show you a couple of them That's not my kids But their brother took those pictures Folks Like I said the editing isn't perfect, but they created it. That was their first time using iMovie You know the volume isn't always perfect either, but they created something that they were excited to share So after I gave them a public space to share their work My kids really were excited to see what other people had to share because they knew we'd been posting on Twitter They knew I'd been talking with other educators. They really wanted to take a look at what other people had done So if you remember we had gone in and shared our information and then shared what we had done when we were finished So not all of them got put into here, but some of them did So I want to share another schools with you and their take on the project We didn't do exactly the same thing and our students are all different in our areas are all different But here's what they came up with So these students started working with their five themes in terms of just their school and some of them you can see that There are some other ones on here They did it in different ways. Here's one that they did about Egypt Which brings us to where we went with this next so my kids really were interested in this idea of Explaining where they live to other people and sharing it But we didn't always have students that we were collaborating with at one point We're talking about sub-Saharan Africa and I took a chance and I emailed An employee that I knew at John Deere and said hey, who can you hook me up with what does John Deere do for charity? What does John Deere do in other countries and he sent me to a man by the name of Sumit and Sumit was an Indian man who had moved from India to South Africa and he was actually Working for John Deere and project management and sales but traveling around sub-Saharan Africa to get a look at What the different cultures were like what sorts of tools would best help them to be better farmers and that sort of thing So we're able to talk with even with the time difference We were able to talk with Sumit in South Africa about his experiences in sub-Saharan Africa So he told us about several different places that he had been able to visit one of the things that was really interesting about talking with Sumit was we were able to talk about environmental sustainability and the kids were actually researching at the time the United Nations Millennium Developmental goals and how they applied to sub-Saharan Africa Because we really wanted to learn about what it was like where they lived not just things like Borders and capital cities we really wanted to know what their life was like so he was able to share that with us He shared pictures from his travels He shared his personal experiences those of his co-workers He showed us what John Deere headquarters is like In South Africa and the plant that they're able to start processing the needs of some of the different types of farmers He talked about the types of crops that they grow in Sub-Saharan Africa and the things that they do for sustainability, but also how they even What tools they use and how they interact with some of the new tools that John Deere has to offer You know here's an irrigation and he talked about the role of women farmers And this is sort of it's not a great picture But you can see sort of what it looks like and the kids saw how different it was even just farming how different Farming was in a different place in a different part of the world So even though they're from Iowa and they think they know about farming because that's all they experience now Here it is in a different atmosphere in a different environment and because the students were able to talk about the five themes of geography in Their own language over the course of the year and then with other people when they talked to some meat They were able to then start doing some research on their own and start connecting and collaborating To figure out how is it that we describe other places even if we haven't been there and they started doing this for their Own individual countries that they were interested in and it went beyond just these are the highlights and these are the facts And these are the things that we That we want to see in guidebooks And what was it like for the people who lived there and really started talking about some of these different things that make up Human environment interaction that make up place What do you do when you know there's pollution around you and we had these conversations and what does pollution mean in different parts of the world What's so powerful about this is that the students were able to not only start Researching some of these things and practice some of those, you know buzzword 21st century skills But they're able to start collaborating with people beyond their walls Right and it started just by themselves getting out of their four walls of the classroom And the newspaper came and their story was shared with people all across Hamilton County And that story is important because it's part of their life And after their story was shared in the newspaper They started sharing their stories via their videos and we put them on the blog and we shared them on Twitter and other people were able to see What they were doing in their class what their life was like They shared their story with hundreds of other people maybe thousands of other people and Then they got to be a part of other people's story as they continued to share those videos We got to watch some from Hawaii some from Canada Letting students tell that story on an individual level or on a small group level is so powerful because it reminds them that their voice is important So as we went through and they continued to do this and they shared their story with each other They shared their story with peers. They shared their story with their area Then they started to share their story globally. They shared their story with some eat and they shared what they had learned With a guy who works for John Deere in South Africa who has seen all places of the world who travels around Who works with people all over the globe? Whether it's back in India whether it's in Africa whether it's in the United States and They shared their story with someone like that and he was listening and he heard what they had to say and he heard their story And let me tell you there is nothing more powerful than being on an equal level where you have something to share Where your story is important where what you value is important? Those are the types of learning experience that being connected and that working globally can offer Thanks so much for joining me on something that was an eye-opening Culturally aware Interesting way for students to share their voice share their story and learn a little bit about other cultures If you're interested in connecting about how you might do this project or how you might connect and continue Go ahead and visit my blog or go ahead and hit me up on Twitter at L. Prolly Keen