Project Description
This is a year-long project designed for elementary school students who are studying their Community. The project seeks to broaden their understanding of and appreciation for their own community as well as communities all over the world. It involves classes from all over the United States, Europe, and Australia. As students study their community, they will share what they have learned by writing monthly letters and creating a website with images from their community. They will have the opportunity to publish their findings online and learn from their peers how their environments are alike and different.
There are five different topics relating to community. For each topic, classes create a webpage to share different aspects of their community and to describe the various environments and conditions in which they live. On their webpage, they post digital pictures relating to the topic. They may also share what they learned on their various field trips to different locations in the community such as the Fire Station, the Police Station, the Post Office, the Hospital, the Grocery Store, etc.
Students then read each other's letters and view each other's websites to learn how their communities are similar and different. For some schools, this is a cross-age project in which older students help build the "community project" website with the primary students and help younger students read the pages.
Internet Public View Galleries
The project is hosted by The Collaboratory at Northwestern University (http://collaboratory.nunet.net). Schools have the option of only publishing their pages within the Collaboratory so that only those with login access can view the pages. They may also publish their pages to Public Internet Galleries that are viewable to anyone with internet access. Below you will find links to the Internet Public View Galleries. Not all schools that participated in the project are represented here.
> Introduction: Our Classroom and School and How We Take Care of It
> Our City or Town - Important Buildings and Community Helpers
> Changing Weather - What the weather is like where we live
