Making Multicultural Education Manifest by Steve Feld
When we first began our ThinkQuest International involvement, my students partnered with
their peers in Borlange Sweden to produce the Why is the Mona Lisa Smiling? Project.
Although we were using Tandy 1000 computers, without Windows or a mouse, we managed to get the project online in 1997.
Summary Slide
The project represented an integration of multicultural themes into a key strand of my fine arts and computer graphics students’ investigation into Leonardo’s achievements as artist and as thinker.
Therefore it inherently realized the third dimension of Banks’s Multicultural theory-the transformation dimension.
This collaboration with Sweden inspired the students at John F. Kennedy High School to link with other countries for cultural exchanges.
Of course, this is a cyberspace social interaction and again the most elevated and desired dimension of James Banks’s theory—social outreach.
When Ovation TV ArtsZone asked us to participate in the Miho Museum project, my students eagerly provided questions for their Japanese peers who visited this Museum in a Mountain marvel.
Social Studies teacher Soto Duprey transformed his curriculum through engaging his students in this authentic cultural exchange
in which the uniqueness and commonalities of Japanese and American cultures were examined by the students as part of their Asian studies curriculum.
The questions were answered and posted on line in both English and Japanese.
The posting nicely affirmed first language learning for the Japanese students, a principle of EFL education.
An online Shangri-La Gallery of student art work is displayed and a guided tour of NYC for Japanese visitors.
was provided, in celebration of this Multicultural exchange.
Our next Multicultural Adventure in International Partnerships took place when our students were working on the Microsoft Challenge ArtiFAQ 2100
Our entry included a Future Art Gallery. The visitor gains access to the work on display by first examining art of the past and present.
Then the virtual museum visitor successfully completes the quiz...
Indeed the future predictions are based on the trends and motivations of art history.
We can only know where we are going after examining where we've been.
Within this project, the present section showed the work we were doing with Estonia.
My students volunteered to translate a Space Module from English into Spanish and created their very own
Rosetta Stone. They translated the French and English African River Festival into Spanish and Russian Languages.
Here they were using cyberspace as a conduit to transformation and social outreach on the highest level.
After a Danish Study Group visited our classroom, home of the Mona Lisa Web Site, pages of our site were translated by them.
For those students from foreign countries who collaborated with us we provided
affirmation and contextualizaton of their native and second language abilities. This was true for JFK ELL students as well.
By providing multilingual versions of web sites you are broadening viewership of non-English readers and increasing exposure.
By having my students use the Internet to partner with people in distant places,
makes the learning about these lands authentic and brings them in contact with primary sources.
As my students tracked the Arctic Explorers Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnessen, they became involved with the perils of their mission. Through tracking their online journal, students developed understanding of gender role models and hero studies.
My students met the explorers at their NYC Press Conference.
Projects can begin with the simple request for a cultural exchange.
Such is the case when an email arrived from Brazil.
Although the school in Brazil had only one computer, the potential for cultural exchange was still possible.
Through email and postcard exchanges, my students were able to answer questions posed by their peers in Brazil
about our country and city. My students provided a guided tour of the city, including the Egyptian Art exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This one question motivated my students to create Curse of King Tut : Fact or Myth.
We were delighted to receive a newspaper article of our SchoolLink in Portuguese.
The postcards were displayed and the site was presented at the launch of ThinkQuest New York City .
To learn more about the ways in which Multicultural Principles, concepts and themes are realized through learner centered Why is the Mona Lisa Smiling web resource consult the works of the following:
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