educating for the journey

I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people’s accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man’s failures.
- Chief Justice Earl Warren

The notion that real and tangible activities increase learning and retention is nothing new; brain based researchers have been saying and re-proving this hypothesis for many years. When i took over the high school technology program here at Carol Morgan a goal of mine was to provide real world situations and “work” opportunities for my students. So far this year we have supported programs in all three schools, designed web sites for school departments and groups but also for government agencies, student bands, local businesses and a variety of intiatives outside the walls of the Carol Morgan School, we have provided marketing for the drama department, assisted in teacher recruitment as well as documenting CMS student and teacher life. The results have been fantastic! Students are excited, engaged and motivated to provide their “clients” with the best service they possibly can. Today we began conceptualizing our biggest project yet…

We are members of the Caribbean Area International Schools Sports Association (CAISSA). This group seeks to create, promote and foster cooperation among its’ member schools by providing a forum for communication and discussion through the medium of sporting activity (from eca website). This group of schools includes Escuela Campo Allegre (Venezuela), International School of Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago), Union School (Haiti), Academia Cotopaxi (Ecuador), ourselves and special invited guest - International Schoo of Curacao (Curacao). In May we will be hosting mens’ football and womens’ basketball here in Santo Domingo. I have openly challenged some advanced tech students to grab this event and “tech it up.”
The inside the box thinking is a student created comprehensive website with team information and bios that are updated with scores, injuries, game stars, podcasted player/coach interviews, a blog for players, lots of images for the end of tournament slideshow, some custom designed and engineered music for breaks in play and in between games, a tournament DVD (joint project with film students), and now we can feel the wheels starting to turn… i am combing the web for high school tournament sites and most that I have found are professionally done (ofsaa); we are definitely up for this task! We would really appreciate it if you would write us with any ideas you have in this vein. It is pretty exciting stuff, especially for the sometimes too cool for school, high school jocks (i can say that because i was one) who see this as a dream come true.

Right now we are trying to cooridinate across the Caribbean to ensure we are respecting the policies of the schools involved, as well as adhering to studnet/parent wishes. This was a process i went through a couple of years ago in the elementary school here, and almost without exception, once parents saw what was being posted on the internet they quickly retracted their request to keep their child’s picture off of the internet. They had simply checked that box to protect their student, but didn’t see the other side of the coin. I will have to see how things work on the other side of the school…I’ll keep you posted.

i will provide links here as soon as we get things up and running.