Global connectivity has never been stronger and continues to get better and better with each passing day, thanks in large part to our advancements in technology; what’s more it can be applied to many facets of life. One such area is education.
Marketing expert Tim Fry and Tom Neville, a social studies teacher at the American School of Paris, teamed up to create an app called The Monuments Project. The idea behind the app is to connect students at Lopez Island Middle School at Lopez Island, WA with students at the American School in Paris in order to collaborate on a history and research project of 39 soldiers from Washington state who died in World War I.
The students were broken up into groups of six–three from Lopez and three from Paris–and had to research the soldier selected for their group. The students from Paris provide the research legwork of the Suresnes American Cemetery outside of Paris and historical data of the soldier buried there and the students in Lopez share their research of the state’s historical data of the soldier and their life in Washington.
The goal for Fry and Neville is not the product of the research but the results from the learning process for the students. They want the students to develop strong research strategies and come away with a heightened ability to understand their subject matter, no matter where or what time period they reside.