Art Miles Japan — Our successful completion!

BIG congratulations to the Grade 6s and Mme Caudarella from  École Edward Johnson who participated in a Global Project called Art Miles Japan this year.  It is coordinated through the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN.org) and is a fabulous way for students to have a global learning experience.  A teacher is matched with a class from Japan and the classes begin by introducing themselves in the iEARN online forum and through videos that they create.   The two classes then decide on a theme for a mural; in this case it was around the local culture and nature evident in our two countries.

The class from Japan begins the first half of the mural painting, and, once complete, sends it to the class in Canada to finish, which we shared earlier here. What a great opportunity for students to research, collaborate, design, and be creative with a classroom from across the world! Mme Caudarella’s class received the half-finished mural from Japan in January and sent it back just before March Break. Thanks so much to our partner class from Japan for this wonderful collaboration! 🙂

Here are some pictures of the class working on and celebrating the finished mural:

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Art Miles Project – Our Mural Arrives From Japan!

I’ve been working with Siham Caudarella and the students of her Grade 6 class this year on an international project called Art Miles.  This is one of the fabulous iEARN.org projects that make global collaboration fun and a great learning experience for students.  Art Miles is a new one for me this year; I’ve been lucky enough to take part in a few over the years and have written about them elsewhere.

Art Miles Japan involves connecting with a classroom in Japan and collaborating on a theme for a mural.  We are connected with Masaaki Kato’s Grade 6 class from Nuka Elementary School and in our case, we chose the theme of sharing nature and culture in our respective cities.  The Japanese class begins by painting the first half of the mural, and we complete the second half.  We began by introducing ourselves to our partner class through a video, and then we visited their city and neighbourhood via Google Earth.  Although we would have liked to arrange a Skype or Google Hangout, the time change did not work in our favour this time around. 😦

Yesterday was such an exciting day! The box arrived as soon as school resumed in January, and we got together to open the box and see what was inside.  We were sent paint and the mural and lots of discussion and wonderings came out from students and teachers…

What was the mural made of?  How did the other class decide on their symbols for images?  What do the images represent? How will we learn to write our names in Japanese so that we can sign the mural?  What kind of paint are we using and how will we solve the problem of reading the Japanese on the paint cans?  Should we paint our scene in the same season in order to blend the two sides or should we make our section look really different?

We’ll be busy planning, drafting and painting in the next few weeks — stay tuned for the final product.  In the meantime, we capture a few moments of the mural’s exciting arrival here:

 

 

 

Art Miles and Google Lit Trips

One of my favourite things to do with students is connect them globally with others around the world, and I’ve written about that here in earlier posts.   I’m starting to daydream about getting back to a school one day soon, and one of the things I’ve missed is participating in, not just suggesting, some of these awesome projects!

If you or your class are interested, consider signing up for the Art Miles Project in Japan this year.  The sign up deadline is May 31, 2014 and the English registration instructions are provided here.

 

 

If you are looking for interesting ways to use Google Earth, check out Google Lit Trips where you can see how media can be embedded into placeholders in Google Earth tours.  This place-based storytelling helps to bring some of your favourite children’s literacy alive, using Google Earth.  You and your students could consider making your own tours after you check out some samples. Very Cool!