The Digital Divas of O’Neill, Nebraska “Rock Our World”

A small group of girls from O’Neill have been working after school since the beginning of the school year on a global collaborative project focused on promoting tolerance in the world. 

The Digital Divas, as the group is named, were accepted into the “Rock Our World” program in September.  Rock Our World was started nearly five years ago by a teacher from California named Carol Anne Maguire.  Aimed at joining kids around the globe, the project uses music as the foundation, incorporates video chats, and builds projects based on a theme for all students to participate in. This was the 11th round of Rock Our World, and the theme of “Tolerance” was suggested by Will Smith, the actor, whose own children happen to be in Carol Anne Maguire’s class.

The group of O’Neill girls, led by Jennifer Troester and Katie Morrow, met weekly and worked in a challenge based learning format to come up with a solution to promote tolerance in our community and world.  Their technology skills were put to use in a variety of ways.  Each week they added a music track to an original GarageBand song and passed it on to another school in a different country.  In the end, more than two dozen original 30-second songs were created, each being touched by kids on every continent.   The Digital Divas also participated in a number of video chats with other Rock Our World teams in places such as Florida, California, Canada, and Portugal.  They used email to communicate with pen pals in several schools.  In addition, the Digital Divas created a website where they published numerous multimedia productions teaching about tolerance including: a “Rock’n Respect” video podcast, “Tolerance Tales”   reader’s theater stories, and a final movie explaining the entire Rock Our World experience.  The girls’ final solution consisted of recording a series of short public service announcements to be aired on KBRX radio all ending with the phrase, “Tolerance. It’s about respect.”  The website can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/divasrock.

One of the highlights of the semester was a bus trip to meet Carol Anne Maguire in person.  She was conducting a workshop in Holdrege, NE and wanted to meet the Digital Divas and so the group met in Grand Island and got to talk about Rock Our World and tolerance and what life is like in L.A. 

The culmination of every round of “Rock Our World” is a “Family Night” where the participating countries meet in a live webcast to share their projects.  Nearly 50 guests attended O’Neill’s Family Night, held at the O’Neill Public Library, and got to watch the Digital Divas share their movie and be interviewed by Carol Anne’s students, while also meeting schools around the world. 

Additional opportunities that have developed from this round of Rock Our World include being part of an original “Rock Our World” song and music video by Grammy-award winning artist Stephen Petree (available on iTunes starting December 15) and a chance to have Will Smith choose one school’s question to ask President Obama when he presents him with the Nobel Peace Prize next week.  As incredible as these experiences have been, the girls will most importantly take with them a deepened understanding about different cultures, increased friendships and global connections, and a true belief in their own power to make a difference in the world.

The girls participating in Digital Divas are: Allison Becker, Allison Ludwig, Sidney Breiner, Emily Morrow, Amanda Brown, Julia Bauer, Julia Emme, Chandra Spangler, and Claire Morrow.