Virtual Africa River Festival

Dear Deborah:
As per your request I have had time to reflectively explore The TappedIn 'moo' environment through the lens of MI student centered virtual communication center potential capacity.

I would like you to know that among my criteria/rubrics for viability in this regard I focused on the following digital divide barrier elimination factors:

Accessibility:
-Low income students or third world countries where state of the art technology is not easily accessible, require accessibility to all browsers.

-Downloading:
Required software has to be easy to download.

- Logging in as a non Java user

- Most likely case for the physically challenged student member of the digital divide, special needs in particular and multiethnic.

In light of these "Frames of Millenaire Student Mindset" criteria/rubrics, my multiple intelligences engagement and emotional intelligences "take" on this resource is as follows:

Spatially, and kinesthetically the look and feel of the environment nurtures interpersonal, intrapersonal, social skills (EQ), motivation (EQ), naturalist intelligences. This makes it appropriate for our Millenaire mission and most importantly a fertile grounding for student web ownership.

In terms addressing the broadest spectrum and number of active student participants it should be noted that only the teacher need have email and not the students-- Millennaire and MI philosophy resonant!

Diagrams are easy to follow sample discriptions White board and adding links to homework assignments are flexible tools for teaching and learning.

The guidelines set forth with respect to student conduct are explicit and readily comprehensible/applicable. These foster Internet emotional competencies, particularly competency 2, handling emotions, competency 4, empathy, and competency 5, social skills.

In terms of setting up a communications center, students could model their own projects on the style of the calendar and archive.

The chatrooms offered a rich selection of topics appropriately moderated; obviously fostering interpersonal, linguistic, social skills, empathy and self-awareness under adult mentor guidance.

Overall, these are the salient criteria, rubrics and components through my evaluative MI entry point. Certainly from this expert veteran secondary teacher educator "frame of mind", the environment could well be a virtual training ground for "leading minds."

Respectfully,
Steve Feld

Subject: Re: Thinkquest Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 15:14:32 -0700 From: Deborah Phelan To: luke ryland CC: sjfeld@erols.com, mihkel@miksike.com

Luke wrote deb - tell me what you want - i think ill be meeting Lisa next week in NYC

cheers

lr

Deborah Phelan wrote:

> Luke,
>
> I would really like to get Thinkquest teams involved in the River Festival
> tour of Europe this fall...... We can also submit this project to Classroom
> Connect as well as to Online Educator which produces several tours each
> year (but they want $ for participants).... I have a few more contacts
> (including TappedIn and Cyberplayground to help us 'student feed' proejct,
> but what we really need here is ADVANCED INTERNATINAL students to cover the
> tour in various places along the tour route in Europe......
>
> I will be getting this route from Camel Zekri......
>
> any suggestions?
>
> Deborah

Luke,

In short, I am thinking about the possibility of using Thinktank teams to perform as researchers, site designers for projects with various MA members perhaps as mentors to develop interactive pages with indepth background on cultural and artistic histories of particular countries .... this would be thematically based . so that each team would be exploring the answer to a particular question.... such as exploring India's culture and art to determine what is says/reflects about the nation's concept of life/death, the individual and his rights/role, or something even broader such as good/evil....

I also like the idea of having students participating as translators, both on the work they create (teaming up with other students to translate it) AND serving as a virtual thinkquest team, participating with students in other countries on developing a thematic unit which would compare the concept as it is expressed in other countries, etc.

This is very rough.... I'd want to run this by Steve...

Tomorrow we will finish the Space Module and send it to you when we are through.

Most of my students are in the tenth and eleventh grade. Therefore they will be steeped in leadership experiences which can be expanded upon in the coming years as the virtual factory evolves under their peer direction. My students and I look forward to your feedback.

We invite you and your students to our Learning About Leonardo web site as a playground and training ground for your own teaching and learning.

We are confident that in your thoughtful examination and exploration of our site you will tap into its richness in multilingual, multicultural and multiple intelligences applications. We would appreciate a link from your site to whichever of our pages that you feel appropriate.

Sincerely,
Steve Feld

http://library.advanced.org/13681/data/davin2.shtml

Subject: Re: miksike etemplates
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 21:27:21 +0300
From: Mihkel Pilv mihkel@miksike.com
To: sjfeld@erols.com CC: dphelan@nbn.com, Luke@GiftedU.com

Hi Steve and friends,

I am very glad that our collaboration develops.

After holidays Estonian schools can read news story about your work. Will also mention Moist Art and think of how to integrated arts into this tranSlation project.

As one idea.. maybe your kids find interesting to make illustrations to the space theme they translate now.

Why not substitute current illustrations there with the ones your students create?... There will be no problems to publish this theme besides our site also to your webpages.

Will also write about Leonardo project to our schools. Maybe some collaborative idea comes out also from this.

.. meanwhile .. Happy Easter!

Thanks for your time and sunshine,
Mihkel

Subject: Re: miksike etemplates
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 17:02:15 +0300
From: Mihkel Pilv
To: sjfeld@erols.com

Hi Steve,

Glad to hear you again. I was just working with your kids Spanish translation when your message arrived.

I put Sun into Spanish http://miksike.com/space/space8_esp.htm

English version here: http://miksike.com/space/space8.htm

Sorry, my Spanish is even less then limited, so this text may be pretty confusing:)

> Steve Feld wrote:
> I am really impressed that my students have 
> such a strong sense of responsibility that they
> are willing to give up a day of their vacation to 
> meet together as a team and pool their talents.

Subject: Re: draft
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 17:41:06 +0300
From: Mihkel Pilv
To: sjfeld@erols.com

Dear Steve, pages

http://miksike.com/space/space9_esp.htm

http://miksike.com/space/space2_esp.htm
and

http://miksike.com/space/space1_esp.htm

Please check if they are OK.

Yes, good news from Sweden. 2 projects from Miksike went to the Stockholm Challenge Award final (this award is something like Nobel Prize of technology.. its being issued also in Sweden projects from 84 countries are participating .:)

Greetings to your students.

Thanks for your time and sunshine,

Mihkel

 Mihkel Pilv wrote:
 Dear Steve,
 Sounds good.
 ... besides, i also voted for Leonardo :)
 Mihkel Pilv wrote:

> > > > > > Dear Steve,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Please find a draft translation of the article about your work and
> > > > > > school.
> > > > > > It is not excactly word to word translation. I just tried more to
> > > > > > translate the mood of the writing.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Please let me know how does it sound.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Thanks for you time and sunshine,
> > > > > > Mihkel
> > > > > >

There's always something happening in NY. It's a very Big Apple - we all know that.

There's more then 5000 students in John F. Kennedy High School, Bronx alone. "Mega" we say about this size. During Information Age physical size is not that important any more, sometimes being big and visible is even a problem sometimes. Specially considering that education in the future will be more personalized and smaller classrooms are in better situation here.

But of course, lots of things depend on the teacher. Steve Feld, a teacher in John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx has discovered the Web and how it can help students change their education into a creative process. He believes that teamwork and the right motivation are the catalysts which make education move.

He succeeds in bringing students to school even during holidays. .. and why not come to school if there's so many interesting things to do. For example translating a couple of eWorksheets, which originate from Estonia (which lies between Western Europe and Russia) There are the results of preparing for the International Cows on Parade Project or something even more interesting.

For a couple of years Steve and his students have worked with the project Learning About Leonardo. Check it out (link here).. you will find lots of interesting things about Leonardo Da Vinci, such as the Mona Lisa morphing to Leonardo or listening to music composed by Leonardo da Vinci.

Contact Steve sjfeld@erols.com. He is a cool teacher.

Mihkel Pilv,
mihkel@miksike.com