Global cooperation (Part 2)

Among those tools we discussed in last mod, I will use BigThink to explore my project. BigThink is one of the asynchronous tools we explored in our WIKI group, and the great merit of BigThink is that it can facilitate global cooperation in ways of offering learners and teachers great freedom to express ideas through uploading videotapes made by our own, from which not only could we get to know other people’s thoughts but also hear their voice. Besides posting our videos, we can also reply with plain text to have a conversation with the public intellectuals in various fields.
If I had the chance, I will use BigThink to conduct a Weather project. And I will search and contact another classroom on ePals who is making the same project as us. The objectives of this project are to intensify students’ cooperation ability and let them learn how weather works. After this cooperation project, students will learn the components of weather like air pressure, humidity; and how weather affect their daily lives and the choices they make about clothing, food, transportation, and mood, etc.. They will discuss essential questions like what factors make the weather change, in what ways does weather control our lives and what methods should we use for predicting the weather? And post their thoughts and ideas as videos on BigThink. In exchanging ideas through BigThink, students will gain more than the fact from reading: they could make friends with people from other culture backgrounds, learn from each other, and see how similarly and differently their opinions are towards the same question, and improve their 2 skills (listening, speaking) and computer skills as well.
Doing global cooperation project is a good way to elicit students’ learning interests. Students will benefit a lot when they engage in this.