Rock Our World   School: Imperial Elementary School Location: Anaheim Hills, California, US Name: Carol Anne McGuire

"I could have used our school library to teach my students about the world. Had I done that, we would have learned that the students in Japan all wore white make up on their faces and dressed in Kimonos. Had we used the media, we would have learned about war, stereotypes, and conflicts. Through Rock Our World, we learned about the people in our planet through music, laughter and friendship. We discovered kids that were just like us!"

Over the past three years, twenty teachers from all seven continents and diverse backgrounds have gathered to join in learning about each other and a curriculum topic.

Carol Anne McGuire began Rock Our World to teach her class of blind and visually impaired students about their world. Because mapping skills are a difficult concept for them, she instead chose music and authentic global connections to motivate them to want to explore their world. Each country represented in the project creates a 30-second drum track in GarageBand, sending it on to the next school in the circle to add a new layer, until the drums come back to the original class. By then, an original song has been composed by students on every continent! As the music travels, classes connect in live videoconferences to learn about each other and take virtual field trips around the globe.

Best Practice:
Allow the whole collaborative process to happen online, not just the sharing of end products or results