Global Collaboration: A Polish Perspective
Mike Fitzgerald, a 7th grade History teacher, recently described how he created The International History Detectives wiki to study the Second World War from a global perspective. One of the project participants, Aleksandra Blalteberg, from Junior High School No. 4, in Gdynia, Poland, crafted her perspective on the project and graciously agreed to share her experience with a wider audience. Enjoy!
Junior High School No. 4
When Mike first wrote to me with the invitation to the WW2 project I thought – ‘Great! That will be an interesting experience for my students.
They are really interested in global collaborative projects and simply being in touch with students from different countries. We have already exchanged mail with schools in China, the Philippines, Japan, Italy, Romania, the USA and the United Kingdom. Every exchange is different in a way and brings different, sometimes quite surprising experiences connected with learning new cultures and finding out about different ways of living. All in all, global connection between classes and individual students make school days more exciting. That is why when a new school year starts kids usually keep asking me if I find new pals for them.
And what luck! This year I did not even need to look for a new project ideas – Mike of MICDS found us via epals com. At first I thought about students and classes only and it did not cross my mind what impact the project would have on myself as a person. Although WW2 is a topic familiar to me and so it is to Poles of my generation (due to history lessons taught at school, plenty of books and films based on that time we have read/seen and thanks to many personal stories we have heard and been told about), I realized I may need some self tutorial as I am not a history teacher myself.
Day by day, talking about the project and exchanging ideas with Mike via emails, I found myself more and more involved in the project theme. Being on the net for quite different purposes, not connected with our collaboration topic, I most often somehow ended up with new links and new information on WW2, also on the facts I had not been taught at school. And I did enjoy the research though I had not been interested in history before the project started.
The Battle of Gdynia
On the other hand, reading all the responses written by the students of the countries participating in the project and looking at the compilation of photos made by Mike and Pat, put up by them on the wiki page, I could see the war from a new perspective. It appeared not only as a matter of a nation or nations – global in general – but also as people’s fortunes whose lives had been influenced and changed by the time of WW2 no matter where they had lived then.
To sum up, the project and its collaboration benefits go beyond the usual school learning environment experiences. It has made the learning and teaching authentic and interesting. It has also involved both students and teachers. Shortly speaking, just a great idea – worth following by other educators and experiencing by themselves and their students.
For more information, I would encourage you to visit The International History Detectives and read the student responses from Aleksandra’s class.
