I*EARN in Practice

Curriculum Applications

How can I*EARN be integrated in various curriculum areas? Some examples,

I*EARN in social studies:

Classroom activity: The Sophomore "Participation in Government" class calls for a study of current events, with an emphasis on teaching students how to be savvy interpreters of what they read in newspapers and magazines, and see on television. The class as a whole chooses a particular current event and track it across the course of the semester. The hot issue in this case is "free speech" as it relates to a local hate group in the area and their right to assemble and distribute propaganda in the community.
Networking activity: Students work on the I*EARN project, "The Contemporary," a newsmagazine dealing with a different set of themes each issue, ranging from "When should a politician's private life be made public?" to "Teenage Drug Use" to "War: When is it Justified." The Participation in Government class proposes a discussion of the issue of "Free Speech" for the upcoming issue of the magazine, proposing specifically a number of questions and activities that will allow for a cross-cultural comparison (school,local,national,international) on provisions for/protections of freedom of expression. Among their questions 1)Are there internationally recognized protections/human rights concerning freedom of expression? 2)What provisions are there in your national constitution for protections of free speech? 3) What rights do students in your school have to express their beliefs? (example... who has final control over what is published in the school newspaper?) 4) What are various examples across different communities (local to global) of freedom of expression being called into question or challenged? 5) What are students' personal views on freedom of expression? Censorship? Hate speech? In the end, students working in "The Contemporary" decide to create a Common Draft of Free Speech for all Students around the World to present as an insert in the next issue of the magazine.

In addition, another group of students joins the new Holocaust/Genocide Project, "The Rise of Nazism," being facilitated by I*EARN students in Russia who are witnessing a rise of hate groups in their own country.

In both cases, the Participation in Government students research and share with their peers in I*EARN what they are following in their local community.

I*EARN in geography:

Classroom Activity: Students in a "World Geography" class are assigned to research a particular region of the world and report on their findings in a five page research paper. As the class progresses, a large map hung in the back of the room is filled with facts and images from the students research.
Network Activity: The class as a whole joins the "Local History" project, a project to teach students local history while at the same time, building a tapestry of images and writings about towns all around the world. To launch their world geography project, the class compiles a rich history of their town, and posts it to the local history project. At the same time, they begin corresponding individually with other participants in the project about what they are learning as their distant peers post their own local histories. In addition, the geography class uses the I*EARN People Database to outreach to students in regions of the world not yet active in the Local History project to bring them into the group. G1 students have the opportunity to post questions to the project group about what they are learning about different regions of the world and to correpsond directly with actual students from those regions. As their final class project, students build a Local History website using the correspondences within the project, as well as their own research.

I*EARN in Math:

Classroom Activity: Students in a 6th grade math class are learning about Statistics. Their assignment is to come up with a research project in which they gather and compile date related to a community issue and then report on their Statistical findings.

Network Activity: As part of their classroom work, students take part in the "Connecting Math to Our Lives" project. Students join with others around the world in examining their own lives and communities and broader issues relating to social justice and equality from a mathematical perspective. The class chooses to get involved specifically in the "STATISTICS AND SOCIETY" section of the project. They ask others in the project all around the world to complete a brief survey relating to the issue of Smoking, including questions about media advertising, rates of smoking in schools around the world, and attitudes about smoking. Students create a graph depicting their numeric data or statistics on a theme of interest. After creating the graph the students explain the information that it conveys and write about the implications they think the data projects.

I*EARN in Science:

Classroom Activity: Senior students in chemistry are studying the chemical make-up of various pollutants in their environment.

Network Activity: As part of the "Virtual Chemistry 2000" project, students join with peers in Russia, the Ukraine, South Africa, and Argentina to take samples of soil around local highways and railroads. Students take samples of soil and water, analyse these samples in the school chemistry lab, and eventually compile their finding in a Web-site "Virtual Chemistry 2000."

I*EARN in English

Classroom Activity: Students in an English class are doing a unit on poetry.
Network Activity: The class joins the international poetry anthology "A Vision," whose purpose is to use art and the medium of creative writing to demonstrate that despite linguistic, cultural, ethnic and racial differences, teenagers around the world share the same hopes, fears, interests and concerns. Students submit their work to the online project group and receive critiques, feedback, and encouragement from their online peers around the world. In addition, they assume the role of peer editors for the work of their online peers, learning how to analyze and critique works themselves. The hard copy publication of "A Vision" (coordinated by an I*EARN school in Bulgaria) is received by the school at the end of the year, and includes a number of the submissions of the class!

I*EARN in Languages:

Classroom Activity: Students are studying to learn Spanish.
Network Activity: The class joins iearn.latina, a forum for current projects and discussion among educators and young people who would like to develop collaborative projects to contribute to the the health and welfare of the planet and its peoples using Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, or other Latin-based languages. Over the course of the year, the class participates in projects and discussions on a number of issues, including the environment, math, history and traditions of different countries, literary expressions, water, mathematics, and sports, among others.

I*EARN in art:

Classroom Activity: A fourth grade class meets once a week for an arts unit.
Network Activity: Global Arts Projects have a strong tradition in I*EARN, with art being a theme threaded throughout many of the various projects of the network. After exploring the different arts projects currently happening in I*EARN, the students decide to work with the project "Folks Tales around the World," a project involving schools in Argentina, Australia, the Czech Republic, Ghana, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and the USA. Students became quite interested to learn that modern kids all over the world do really know "Three Little Piglets", "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella". And unfortunately they know little about folk tales of their own country. And they know nothing about folk tales in other countries. Students began collecting Folk Tales in their school library and from their families to compile for the project. Each story became animated in their art class with drawings and paintings that soon became part of the project's collective Folk Tale anthology of stories from around the world!