In an eight week exchange between Texas, USA and Telangana, India students started off their first two weeks by playing a popular game, two truths and a lie, by using Padlet. In this activity students from India posted two truths and one lie about themselves and then students from Texas would try to identify the lie. Then students in Texas would post their two truths and a lie and students in India would guess. It was a great icebreaker for this project and students seemed to enjoy getting to know each other through this activity.
Weeks 3 and 4 were spent with students from India posting a movie review about a movie that they enjoy and American students would have to find an American movie that is similar to the movie the students in India explained. During this activity students were able to communicate through Padlet to share their reviews. Since movies are a large part of many cultures around the world students really enjoyed being able to discuss and relate to movies in their own cultures.
After building a foundation for collaboration, students decided to choose a common focus for the rest of the exchange.
Entering into the final weeks of the exchange students decided to focus on the topic of “overweight book bags” and how they could resolve this issue. The students needed to do research before hand to gather statistics and information about overweight backpacks in their country. Students were then asked to create a presentation of the information and to try to come up with a solution for the problem. Students in both Texas and India found out that many students, world wide, have overweight book bags and suffer from this. This has a lot of strain on the body and can also cause a great deal of stress for students. Students created skits and video presentations to help explain how they see and how they would solve this issue.
Students from India created poster presentations along with a video of their conclusions on the overweight backpack issue.
Through collaboration and critical thinking, student’s found common solutions. Their conclusions were that backpacks need to be created with students height and weight in mind that way they don’t carry more than physically capable. Students also concluded that teachers need to divide homework up in a way that students don’t need to carry every book home.
