
Group Discussion Activity Examples
Interlink
Grades: 9-12
Ongoing? No
Here, you will see how schools in the United Kingdom and New Zealand communicated with each other to explore the history, economy, and culture of each other's countries. Be sure to check out the Projects Page and the What are they Like? section to see some truly interactive learning.
KidCast for Peace
Grades: K-12
Ongoing? Yes
Here’s an exciting opportunity for your students to reach out to the world! The KidCast program gives kids a chance to make a difference on Earth Day. Children draw pictures of the world as a better, happier place. During a CU-SeeMe worldwide videocast, they hold the pictures up for other participants to see. (They also have the option of creating a website linked to KidCast.) Another way for participants to contribute is through a MIDI Music Jam - they send the URL ahead of time and the link is added to the KidCast site. Resources include a page for submitting stories or poetry and detailed instructions for teachers.
Money Around the World
Grades: 2-12
Ongoing? No
You can almost hear the multi-lingual voices of friendly studentsin this project's Web site. Here, students from all over were invited to use an e-mail list to discuss minimum wage, item costs, and other money-related topics. Because participants were enco! uraged to communicate in their native tongues, this project supported social studies, math, and language learning while helping participants to reach out to others.
Utopian Visions
Grades: All (mostly secondary-level participants)
Ongoing? No
This project is "designed to help students simultaneously reflect and speculate, considering their place in history's continuum." To achieve this, the site offers a digital time capsule, critiques of utopia-related books, and links to on-line resources; however, the meatiest part of this project is found in the Dialogues, which includes submissions from Estonia to North Carolina and topics ranging from "Pacifism vs. Military" to "Do We Need Internet?"
Voices of Youth
Grades: 4-12
Ongoing? Yes
Unicef's Voices of Youth is a place where students worldwide can discuss (in three languages) social and economic issues such as child labor, the girl child, and urban children. This attractive site also includes quizzes and interactive "games" to set the tone for deep discussion and learning...one particularly powerful example is an interaction on stereotypes.
©2005-2009 Judith B. Harris, Ph.D.