Life+'round+here

Life 'round here  Life Around Here was a global connection project that the fifth grade class at Obee participate in this year. The purpose of this project was to make a global connection, integrate writing across the curriculum, technology, and social studies. First, the teacher took pictures of the community. This step was done by the teacher for time and convience. Then the pictures were burnt onto CD's for the students to use. Before students could work on imvoie, they had to plan their project. Next, the teacher reviewed the rubric for movie making with the students. This rubric can be found at []

Students used an imovie graphic organizer that included speaking parts, clips to use, and time. This took about three days to complete because students resisted the planning in the beginning. However, they quickly realized the importance of this steip once they begin making their movies. After the planning was finished, then students placed pictures into imovie software and recorded their speaking parts. Finally, they added transitions, music, and credits.

Because the class could only load six movies into this project, Intel Vsual Ranking tools and rubrics were used by students to decide which movies would make the final cut for the project. The movies were then uploaded to the website [] When other participants finished their movies they were viewed by the class. A class discussion was held before viewing each movie. The question was alway ask, "What do you think life will be like in ...?"

In the beginning, students always stated that life would be so much different in that part of the world. Students usually stated the people will live in poor housing, and they will experience poor conditions. They quickly learned that life in most participants in this project had lives very similar to theirs. In my opinion this was the best part of the project. Students learned that others are more like them then different.