If the names A-Town Penguins United or the Soaring Eagles sound familiar than you must have been involved in the Great Race Project! Columbiana, NOECA and the Lorain County Distance Learning Consortium teamed up to launch a multi curriculum event enhanced by videoconferencing. The involved schools divided their students into teams and gave them the task of taking a virtual travel from the horse shoe stadium at Ohio State University to Ipalook Elementary Alaska. The team with the quickest route and the cheapest cost were the winners.
Teams could only travel 7 hours per day, were required to eat three meals and pay for lodging. Students could rent cars, ride a bus, schedule a train but had to wait until they reached the state of Alaska to purchase a plane. While on there trip a group of students need to identify the landmarks they would pass on their route and identify souvenirs they would bring back.
While the A-Town Penguins or the Soaring Eagles did not win the contest, there presentation to the group was top notch. The students demonstrated their efforts with poster boards, maps and charts detailing their travel. The project was a lot of work and used real world data. The students used websites like triple AAA, Amtrak and Orbitz to get from Ohio to Alaska. The student’s real changes came when they had to convert currency and measurement in Canada and not traditional transportation.
The final videoconference will be with the students from Ipalook Elementary School in North Slope Alaska. The students will present their community and culture to our students.
