So I am thinking more and more about this collaborative project. I am still in the designing phase because I really want a solid project that will result in loads of learning. Low goals, eh?

The project must be scalable, which speaks a lot to how I design the use of web tools. I’ve made mistakes in how I designed wiki architecture in the past, so here’s to not repeating them.

What I’d like help with are the essential questions. The theory goes that this project is to help us understand our own culture as well as by reading the responses of others, understand other cultures as well. Since I am a foreign language teacher, this is at the heart of what I teach, outside of basic vocabulary.

I think I’ll divide my class into small groups, each focusing on one of the essential questions. I have not decided how to have my class answer (that comes after this step) nor do I have a clue as to how to assess it. That also comes later. I’ll keep you posted on my thoughts and ask for your help along the way.

I am not sure of the title, as the domain is already taken. I am thinking of a new title so I will go back and tag this later.
So here are the essential questions, please help me figure out if this is a good start!

Overall essential question: What is culture and how does it affect who I am?

Sub-questions:

• How is culture affected by imported products?
• How is culture being lost by the invasion of western culture?
• How is culture being affected by the United States of America? (for schools outside the USA)
• How is culture being affected by other countries (choose a country or region)? (for schools inside the USA)
• How is culture being affected by tourism?
• How is culture being affected by television?
• How is culture being affected by immigrations/migrations?
• How is culture being affected by the Internet?
• How is culture being affected by mobile phones?

Your turn!

Chris

Update: Changed question 2 as noted.

I had an amazing time with some incredible educators and other folks yesterday at the San Jorge School in Miraflores, Peru. (spanish version here)

We are working on a pretty great new collaborative project that is taking a design-based approach, so lots of great brainstorming on essential questions. Look for updates on that here soon.

I wanted to publically thank the folks at San Jorge for such a fun time together chatting, sharing, and tell them how much I love their enthusiasm for learning!

Something else that blew my mind was meeting with some of the students. They have a blog about pencils.

Yup, pencils.

They design pencils and make great little toppers, and then sell them for somewhere around 7 to 8 nuevo soles (exchange rate right now is $1 USD to 3.15 PEN so that works out to a bit less than $2.25 on the lower end). The proceeds go to support their involvement in Junior Achievement Peru. They are super excited about the pencils and the opportunities they provide. I think my students and I might help them out a bit, we’ll see.

I asked the kids to figure out how much it would be to ship pencils to the United States, and they need to consider blogging in English (since they all speak it!) to expand the boundaries.

The conversation turned really fun when Lucy offered up this salient comment which I can only paraphrase by saying, “there just are no borders any more”.

I probably don’t do the comment justice, but the profundity stands on it’s own. Maybe a good title for the project we’re developing would be “Learning without Borders”. Just a thought.

Thanks for everything, San Jorge! Here’s to developing new relationships in the days/weeks/months/years to come.

Update: Here are all my pictures from San Jorge on flickr.

I found out there’s a Starbucks within walking distance of my apartment. Happy days!

So here I sit with a hot beverage (it’s cold here, remember?!) and an ok internet connection.

Oh yeah, and I’ve got a book I’m dying to finish.

Skitch helped me snap this photo with my isight camera, enjoy! Click on the picture to see the larger size.

Incidentally, one thing that is interesting it hearing all the folks speaking Spanish. The conversations are no different than what you’d encounter in any other Starbucks in the USA, which says something for cultural differences or the lack thereof.

Chris

I feel quite certain I have hosed my copy of Mac OS X here on my MBP. I have installed, reinstalled, and uninstalled too much or too little. Now every time I try to install something it throws nasty errors. This was my first mac, and then got neglected once I got my iMac. Pretty sure I need a nice clean, fresh install. I can’t see any other way around it.

It seems I have no /usr directory at all. And yes, I’ve tried repairing disk permissions. Any other suggestions? I don’t have my install DVD’s down here in Peru and I have some things to drop off here before I can reinstall anyway.

Just this morning I finally finished downloading the newest version of Parallels to give it a try and it threw this error. Thank you Skitch for the nice screenshot…

Seems I cannot install anything new these days. Even a new version of Call Recorder cannot expand the package. I can’t even run Software Update.

Ahh well, another two weeks and I will have some time at home stateside. Until then, we go limping along.

Hey Jeff, you’re not the only one who’s been to a country famous for knock-off’s.

There’s a saying here in Peru that Peruvians are expert copiers. Everywhere you go there are pirated CD’s, DVD’s, clothes, appliances, and the like. My favorite is this cheap imitation of a certain bottle blond we all know. She’s been around for a lot of years, as I understand. This is the “screen” from a toy cell phone that someone gave to my daughter. Tragically, they do now know what benign means, so the irony is lost on them. They wondered why I was laughing so hard. Enjoy the chuckle…

Click the picture for the flickr page. Ahh, Peru.