Oak Park Schools - Four Wins in International Web Contest
Article about District 97 Winners from Triblocal.com
Global Virtual Classroom Contest (GVC) is a free online collaborative learning project that fosters creativity, cross cultural understanding, helping others, and teaches IT and website design skills amongst students working together from around the world.
Sponsored by GSBI [Give Something Back International], the GVC program provides an opportunity for primary and secondary school students from different countries to work with and learn from students in other countries, as they collaboratively design a website on a topic of their choosing. Teams are comprised of either three primary or three secondary schools from different countries. A panel of international judges evaluates the final work and determines the winners.
Student efforts are judged for content, presentation, collaboration, and a helping focus. The helping focus was added to encourage students to also demonstrate achievement of a helpful objective such as personal, social and/or environmental responsibility or support for a worthy cause.
Each division has 3 prize winners and 3 special merit awards.
Oak Park Schools received 4 of these awards in the 2009-2010 contest.
In the primary division [grades 3-7]:
Julian Middle School's 7th graders won 1st prize with the site: Save Earth! Partners from: Olean, New York and New Delhi, India. Teacher: Janet Barnstable
Lincoln School's 5th graders won 3rd prize with the site: Imaginary Island. Partners from: Florida, and Taiwan. Lincoln School was also recognized for EXCEPTIONAL Helping Focus for their work in creating the Haiti House Project. Teacher: Matt Kuntz.http://gvc0905.gvc09.virtualclassroom.org/
Mann School's 4th graders won a special merit award for the site: Animal Stories. Partners from: New York, and Czech Republic. Teacher: Jim Hayward.
In the secondary division [grades 8-12]:
Julian Middle School's 8th graders won 3rd place for the site: Mystical creatures and gods. Partners from: Malaysia and Kenya. Teacher: Janet Barnstable.
These sites and all the winning sites can be viewed by going to http://www.virtualclassroom.
