What we did each week

Newspaper Article

Sun, 6 Dec 2009 19:26:23 -0600

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.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

Sat, 5 Dec 2009 10:37:59 -0600

When asked “What was your favorite part of Rock Our World?” and “What did you learn that you didn’t know before?” the Digital Divas sent the following responses:

Emily:
1. My favorite part of Rock Our World was making the Garage Band!

2. One thing I learned from Rock Our World was that everybody's different and that doesn't mean that they are ugly, rude, poor, or weird. I also learned that you should treat everyone equally.

Chandra:
1.Going to Grand Island
2.That everyone in the world is different

Sidney: I learned not gest a new word but i also learned that everybody has a say and apart in what they do.thats what I learned though this D&D's I would like to say thanks to you Jenny and Katie.

Family Night

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:08:46 -0600

Despite numerous technical difficulties on the Rock Our World end, we experienced our first “Family Night” on Friday, December 4, 2009. Nearly 50 family members and guests joined us at the downtown public library meeting room as we watched the events live from California. We heard from several other schools and then got to share our ten minutes. We showed our movie, heard our GarageBand music, and answered three questions asked to us by Carol Anne’s students. A highlight was seeing ourselves in Australia’s video as well as the music video to the Stephen Petree “Rock Our World” song!

Final Touches

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 10:08:26 -0600

Julia, Emily, and Claire had a BLAST finishing up GarageBand songs from schools around the world who didn’t have time to finish theirs. They especially loved thinking of creative lyrics and singing them to all the different GarageBand tracks! We are going to make a CD of all the ROW music for everyone to listen to!

We also finished our final movie. We had to record a few more small pieces and the voice-over track. We like how it turned out! It will be shared at Family Night, but you can also see it on our website on the “Movie” link.

Week #11

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:08:11 -0600

For our last Monday meeting, we met at the downtown Public Library and tested our equipment for the Family Night video conference on Friday. We created and sang lyrics for two different GarageBand songs.

Then we started practicing our lines for Family Night. They will ask us three questions during our part of the program and we will each give part of an answer. We can’t wait for Friday night to come!

Week #10

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:07:37 -0600

Scott Poese, of KBRX Radio, helped us record our public service announcements in the real recording booth at the radio station. We each were responsible for two PSAs each, so all together there will be 18 different messages plus our jingle aired on KBRX in the weeks to come. Hopefully thousands of people for miles around will be reminded of “Tolerance. It’s about respect.”

Be sure to listen to some of our PSAs via our website as well, by clicking on the PSAs link in the button bar above.

Week #9

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:16:29 -0600

We’ve decided on our solution. We are going to get the word out about tolerance to our entire community through a radio ad campaign. We are going to record a whole bunch of short PSAs at the radio station with the tag line “Tolerance. It’s about respect.” These radio ads, along with our website and videos and everything else, will hopefully spread the word to as much of our community as we can possibly reach.

We also divided into three groups and each researched a famous example of tolerance from history and created biographical movies about the people we choose. Look for videos soon about Helen Keller, Ruby Bridges, and Anne Frank!

Finally we each took home a story from an issue of the “Teaching Tolerance” magazine to record ourselves reading in GarageBand or on an ipod with a voice recorder. We are going to post these “Reader’s Theater” performances on our website as well and call the section “Tolerance Tales.”

We are getting better at the ROW beat... as a matter of fact some of us never stop clapping and snapping! There is a lot to accomplish before Family Night, but we couldn’t be more excited to make it all happen!

Week #8

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 15:16:26 -0600

We filmed our music video in three different places.

1. at the Irish Dancers building
2. the old train depot
3. a hay field

People that drove by got to see how much fun we were having- dancing and singing all over O’Neill!

Video Chat with Lisbon, Portugal

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:05:22 -0500

Dear Katie,

I learned that Portugal had beautiful castles and narrow streets.

Love, Allison B.

I thought it was interesting that Portugal has narrow streets
~Allison L.

I loved the castles and one thing I learned was that people in lisbon have drive tiny cars on tiny roads.
~Emily

I didn't know how small there streets where and how small there cars are and were they live is so butiful
~Julia B.

week #7

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:05:27 -0500

October 29
Digital Diva Sleepover at Morrows!
Watch videos on the Ning
Update iweb – Allison L
Script for intro to Bullying episode – Allison B
Skit – Emily, Sidney, Julia B
Updating website- Allison L
Thank you for Carole Ann-Chandra S and Claire M

We filmed our bullying Rock’n Respect podcast episode,
got a little sleep, and video chatted with Portugal!