Communication technologies have made the world smaller. Learning has become a borderless experience where students are not limited to classroom experiences. Instead, the world potentially becomes the classroom. On the forefront of this, students at Harry Miller Middle School in District 6 and Corlaer College in the Netherlands have collaborated on multimedia projects which have improved their learning experiences.
Confronting Injustice, a joint effort by the Anne Frank House, the New Brunswick Department of Education and School District 14, was a high school project that built on earlier experiences with the international project Understanding Diversity, which took place in more than 19 countries, linking students and classrooms across the globe.
The general aims of the project were to:
The specific aims of the project were to:
The Confronting Injustice pilot project was a collaboration between Richard Blaquiere's class in Woodstock, New Brunswick, and Velta Bertina's class in Latvia - connecting communities with very different histories and cultures.
Koluskap: Wolastoqewi-atkuhkakonol - Stories from Wolastoqiyik is a trilingual virtual exhibition created by the Wolastoqiyik Executive Committee and the New Brunswick Museum. The exhibition presents varied approaches for understanding Wolastoqiyik and their language, as well as material culture collected by the New Brunswick Museum, http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/Koluskap/index.php.
To enhance the learning objectives of the existing site, this project focuses on seven learning objects supported by material drawn from the Koluskap site. Users of the materials will gain an enhanced knowledge of Wolastoqiyik culture and be able to make connections to their own life and educational experiences.
Overall, the seven learning objects will create opportunities for researching, understanding, preserving, and in some instances, reviving this First Nations culture in ways that are not possible through traditional means.
Ten teachers representing all the school districts met on March 19th to develop sharable learning resources based on the themes listed below.
The project website will be launched in the fall of 2007 at the NB Museum Board meeting in Edmundston.
The McCord Museum's Keys to History site gives teachers access to a searchable database of 90,000 images from Canadian history dating from 1840-1945, of which 2,000 are documented by historians and museologists. It includes a tool for creating visual presentations, called the Web tour, which can include external images; once done, the tour is saved long term on the McCord server.
McCord Museum Project - Keys to History (Phase I and II) involved seven grades 7, 9 and 12 teachers. They examined the Keys to History resources and tools available on the McCord Museum website in relation to provincial social studies curriculum outcomes. The lessons they developed are published on the project website and student projects are featured. The focus of the pilot was inquiry skills, data collection, ICT skills and research skills.
Aboriginal Cultures (Phase III) will be piloted by four grade 7 teachers in April of 2007.
Keys to History is a partnership with seven museums in five provinces: the New Brunswick Museum, the Centre d'études acadiennes and the Musée Acadien from the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick; the Guelph Museums in Ontario; the North Vancouver Museum & Archives in British Columbia; and joining this group this year, the Sir Alexander Galt Museum & Archives in Alberta, and the Musée Minéralogique et minier, in Quebec. Keys to History is subsidized by the Department of Canadian Heritage's Canadian Culture Online Program.
The McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal received the Museums-Schools Partnership Award in 2004, co-sponsored by the Canadian College of Teachers and the Canadian Museum of Nature, for their work on Keys to History.
The objective of the project was to produce a virtual exhibition of approximately 500 images, consisting of both archival documents and photographs from the mid 1800's to the current time, expressing the theme of "Saint John, a city in transition." The exhibit is contextualized in a form which shows how the images are of significant importance to Canadian history, particularly for the benefit of Canadian youth and students.
This project was a partnership between the Archives and Research Library of the NB Museum, the Community-University Research Alliance program and the E-Learning Educational Programs & Services group of the Department of Education for the Province of New Brunswick.http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/Transition/English/index.asp
Seventeen New Brunswick Educators ensured that the objectives and materials are appropriate to the target groups, that the product is easy to use and adapt, that it is engaging for teachers as well as students, and that it is linked to curriculum by creating shareable learning resources to support the exhibit.
The online exhibit can be viewed at http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/Transition/English/index.asp.