SchoolTown user VOISE Academy HS uses virtual tools to collaborate across the globe

by Frank Shapiro
June 17, 2011

This is a very interesting article from the MacArthur Foundation website about how VOISE Academy High School, a 1:1  laptop school in Chicago and SchoolTown blended learning platform user, collaborated with a high school in Fiji to learn about conservation and the coral reef off the coast of Fiji.

Entomologist Akinisi “Cagi” Caginitoba was in town for a week of technology training before the late January launch of The Conservation Connection,  an environmental collaboration involving students at Marist High School in Suva, Fiji, and their counterparts at VOISE Academy in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Both sets of teens, like Caginitoba, were about to be transported to a different world.

That world included a real reef in Fiiji and a virtual one designed by the Field Museum.

Once the hands-on project was underway, the students were much more engaged, says Sanzenbacher—so much so that when Drew gave a lecture about the science of reef ecology, they listened intently for an hour and a half, asking questions about impacts on the reef.

This is an incredible story of what students are capable of doing with engaging online tools and interesting work that they can relate to. Read the article. It’s really wonderful.  

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