Over the past five years, we as a society have witnessed the rapid development of Web 2.0 technology. Interpersonal communication is more advanced, more accessible, and more direct. Blogging allows people to communicate stories and thoughts to a broad audience. Platforms such as Facebook help individuals keep in touch with each other over long distances. Skype allows people to talk face to face from miles apart. Twitter provides the ultimate in real-time digital communication.
EYE of the World will be using all of these innovations to bring classrooms and students at home closer to the world abroad. The main focus of the program is a personal connection formed between crewmembers and students. The crew will be making visits to participating classrooms in September and October of 2009, providing added reality to the digital communication while abroad.
While underway, the backbone of the program will be this website. The entire voyage will be divided into legs and site visits - each of which will feature journal entries and updates cataloged into one of six Spotlight Series' or one of seven Interactive Classroom Projects. The Spotlight Series will feature journal entries on a given topic, while the Interactive Classroom Projects will be published in a format designed to fit a fixed worksheet or in-class activity. Teachers will have the opportunity to assign readings, assignments, or work on projects in the classroom, as well as create and share their own assignments with other participating teachers. All information will be geared towards a middle-school age group.
In addition to the website, the crew will be filming, producing, and publishing a monthly guerrilla documentary series. This series will highlight the sights, sounds, music, and culture of each site visit along with documenting the intricacies of sailing a boat around the world.
To continue the interpersonal connection between students and the crew, direct communication will be encouraged across a variety of formats. Besides becoming Facebook friends with the crew, students will be able to 'friend' students in classrooms abroad - creating a 21st century version of the pen-pal. Students and classrooms will be able to e-mail the crew and ask direct questions, and additionally, will be able to video-conference with the crew live in real time via Skype.
To create the ultimate real-time environment, the crew will be using a satellite phone to provide daily updates to the eyeotw Twitter feed. Short updates about sights, weather, and progress will be featured in the upper right corner of this webpage. But on top of that, the crew will be using a GPS tracking device that will update the tracking map on this page every ten minutes from almost anywhere in the globe!
The information on this website will be freely available to all during the voyage. Classroom visits, video-conferences, and the distribution of the documentary series will be conducted at a pure cost basis. If you are a teacher and would like to use EYE of the World in your classroom, simply request more information using the form on the left side of this page, or e-mail us at info@eyeotw.org and we will send you a teacher participation packet.
We are relying on public donations to support our communication and production equipment and to pay for the costs of transmitting data from halfway around the globe. If you would like to support the program, please visit our support page or our page detailing our equipment needs. EYE of the World is a 501(c)3 public charity.
