Ready to Launch 3... 2... 1...

Our project is ready to be launched out into space... cyberspace that is.

Andy and I have put together a PE unit we are very proud of. It was really fun doing this unit with the 7th grade students and enjoying their work and their pride in their culture.

The unit is MULTI-CULTURAL GAMES. It is great because students get to learn about their own culture and the culture of others, they gain organizational and teaching skills, and they incorporate technology throughout.

Students did all the research, put together their lesson, taught it to their class and posted it all up on their blog. We took the best of the best and made a wiki for the world to use. It includes the game, country, rules, history, a video, and the student's reflection.

Our hope is that PE teachers and students around the world will use our games in their schools to teach about other cultures. We also hope others from every corner of the globe will contribute themselves by doing a similar project and having their students post their work on this wiki.


We hope you have as much fun with these games as we did!

MULTI-CULTURAL GAMES

Setting up the Multi-Cultural Games Wiki

My colleague, Andy V., and I decided to expand our multi-cultural games unit to make it even cooler than it already was (which was pretty cool to begin with). The basics were the same; students do a little research on the history, rules, how the game might relate to that time or that culture, etc. Then students share this game by teaching it to the others in the class. Only this time we wanted to go beyond our class and share it with the world. All students were expected to then video their lesson, edit the video and put everything up on their blog. In the end we compiled nearly 100 games.

From what I recall, all the games were great and about 95% of students did a great job of being prepared and teaching it well. Since blogging was new to many of the students there were some things missing, but overall we were very happy with the results.

We then asked about 15 of the best groups to volunteer to meet with us once after school and transfer their work from their blog to our new wiki for multi - cultural games. More than half showed up. The lesson is in the video below.



Overall, I am very pleased with the lesson and was amazed at how smooth it was. The kids were switched on and with the exception of a few glitches of getting used to a new program (Wikispaces), it was pretty easy to figure out.

Stay tuned for the actual site itself... coming up!