Winter Around the World - A Collaborative Student Project

As we head into winter in the northern hemisphere, Shannon Miller has a launched a global, collaborative project for students. Winter Around the World is an effort to collect stories, pictures, poems, and songs about winter. The submissions will be organized into a Google Slides presentation and then assembled into an ebook. The project is open students of all ages.

Applications for Education
Winter Around the World could provide a great way for students to see a different perspective on winter. My students associate snow and cold with winter while other students might not ever see snow during their winter seasons. Beyond the visual differences, students participating in Winter Around the World could learn about the activities that are popular during winters in different parts of the world.

The deadline for submissions to Winter Around the World is December 1st. If that deadline is too tight for your classroom, consider creating your winter around the world project with the teachers you are connected to through social media.

Global Schoolyard Bioblitz - A Global Nature Lesson from Project Noah

Project Noah is a global project to which anyone can contribute. On Project Noah you can share pictures and stories of the plants and the animals that you observe in your neighborhood. Project Noah has a section titled Missions in which you can find projects that you can contribute to. The Missions ask people to make contributions of images and observations about a specific animal, plant, or region.

Project Noah for Teachers allows you to create and manage Project Noah accounts for your students. You can also use Project Noah for Teachers to enroll your students in "missions" or projects on Project Noah. A great Project Noah mission for students that is currently running is the Global Schoolyard Bioblitz. The Global Schoolyard Bioblitz was created by the National Environmental Education Foundation and National Geographic Education. The mission is to have students collect and share wildlife observations from their schoolyards around the world. Contributions to the mission don't have to be exotic because what is normal to you is exotic to someone else.

Project Noah offers iOS and Android apps that you can use to record and share your observations on the go.