Global Collaborative Project: Will it take off?

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I’ve just opened the Pandora box ( YES, tech is evil!!!). For the last five weeks, I’ve realised the power of new technology integrated into teaching, the impact it could have (or not) on learning. For me, a whole new world of possibilities is out there. Thanks Coetail! I’m becoming paperless! Last week, my French department had Open class days. That’s a day where parents came to participate to French lessons and to receive information about French curriculum and resources. This year, I uploaded everything on my Wiki pages. No more paper copies!!!
Back to my reflections for this week: how can we embrace globally collaborative projects in our curricular areas to address this facet of 21st Century Learning?
By the way what are global collaborative projects? Why do we do that? How do they take place? Do I do collaborative projects in my classroom?
As a language teacher and a linguist, I was curious to find out the real meaning of to collaborate and to cooperate. Here are the definitions from Merriam-Webster.com.

To collaborate: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.
To cooperate: to associate with another or others for mutual benefit.

I then realized that I was making my students to mainly work cooperatively. Although they created a project at the end of or towards the end of each unit, this so-called project is much more of a “wrap-up” of their learning. It is always an authentic document as I want them to use the French they learned in real situation. Lately, my Grade 5 wrote a song using classroom instructions.

Those wrap-ups are fun to do. Kids ask questions, a lot of questions about how to say a word in French. They ask questions more freely about topics we’ve been learning. It’s always a time where we learn to know each other.

How do you know and why is it important?

What defines a good project is the importance of the questions. As Sara Armstrong explained in “How do you know and Why is it important”: “Our ultimate goal as teachers is to create curious problem-solvers and critical thinkers. Answering every question sends the message that they cannot do it for themselves and even discourages creative thinking and exploring new directions for solutions”.
I enjoyed watching Dan Meyers talking about the tank filing as it reminds me of my students when they made connections.

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With the new technology at school, make a global project? Easy!

Fully embracing a global collaborative project would be more than linking schools, it would be really working on the same unit of learning, asking the same essential questions.
Building a project takes time that in a sense is completely opposed to the fast pace of technology. Writing that makes me think of Paul Salopek and his Out of Eden walk. In this project, schools are connected to the journalist and his amazing walk of our ancestors from Africa to South America. In Out of Eden Learn, children connect with the journalist to explore their own neighborhoods, investigate contemporary global issues and reflect on how they as individuals fit into a broader geographical and historical context.
I know that in my school some grade levels have already signed up for this project.
I believe that finding such a project that suits our curriculum would be more difficult than embracing them.
I also believe what we have been doing here with Coetail: blogging, it is embracing global collaborative project.