Understanding By Design Collaboration - Video Conferencing in

Global Collaboration
(That will be part of something bigger)

Title of Unit The Story Behind the Cover Grade Level 7

Curriculum Area Personal/Socio-Emotional Time Frame 8 weeks (1- 45 minute class period per week)
Developed By Athena Said
Identify Desired Results (Stage 1)
Content Standards
The subject area is the Personal/Social Domain from American School Counseling Association National Standards for students. Standards A: Students
will acquire the knowledge, attitudes and inter-personal skills to help them understand and respect self and others and Standard B: Students will make
decisions, set goals and take necessary action to achieve goals will be addressed as outlined below (ASCA, 2004).

PS:A2.2 Respect alternative points of view

PS:A2.3 Recognize, accept, respect and appreciate individual differences
PS:A2.4 Recognize, accept and appreciate ethnic and cultural diversity
PS:B1.7 Demonstrate a respect and appreciation for individual and cultural differences.

Understandings Essential Questions

Overarching Understanding Overarching Topical
The students will understand the importance of getting to know someone How do my personal beliefs, 1. What cultural beliefs have
based on their interests and personalities and not on their appearances. culture, and family history impact been taught?
my judgement of another? 2. How do I feel about
people who are different
than me?
3. What is the first thing I do
Related Misconceptions when I meet someone
1. You can tell everything you need to know about a person by the way new
they look.
2. Everywhere in the world values the same things
Knowledge Skills
Students will know… Students will be able to…

Students will learn to recognize, accept, respect and appreciate individual, Through communication, collaboration, critical thinking and complex
ethnic, and cultural differences and to understand that everyone, regardless cognition higher order thinking skills will be enhanced. Written skills will
of appearance, has worth and something to offer this world. also be improved.

Assessment Evidence (Stage 2)

Performance Task Description
Students will learn to recognize, accept, respect and appreciate individual, ethnic, and cultural differences and to understand
Goal
that everyone, regardless of appearance, has worth and something to offer this world.
Role Each student will be an active participant having a pen pal to introduce during the conference
Audience Teacher, classmates, collaborating students and teacher
Situation In a classroom with video conferencing
Product/Performance A classroom introduction and discussion of the project
Standards Personal/Social Domain from American School Counseling Association National Standards for students
Other Evidence
Ongoing discussions, emails, collaborative projects

Learning Plan (Stage 3)

Where are your students headed? Where have
they been? How will you make sure the
students know where they are going?
How will you hook students at the beginning of
the unit?
What events will help students experience and
explore the big idea and questions in the video
conference or what will it be part of? How will
you equip them with needed skills and
knowledge?
Students are headed to an increased awareness of understanding, kindness, empathy, and
leadership. They will have had prior instruction on character development. Students will be
made aware of the goals of this project and data will be collected via Google Form Survey.
I will show the students this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVvpgwx3_r4
The purpose of the project is a global collaboration to address the topic of “never judge a
book by its cover”. It will be primarily classroom based with the email exchange happening
during class time. Communication skills will be enhanced through the use of email and
discussions about how what we say in writing is not always received the way it is intended,
especially when communicating with another culture.

How will you cause students to reflect and
rethink? How will you guide them in
rehearsing, revising, and refining their work?
How will you help students to exhibit and self-
evaluate their growing skills, knowledge, and
understanding throughout the unit?
The emails and collaborative projects will be in a Google Classroom. I will provide feedback to
each student, reflecting on their work and posing additional questions. This is not a graded
class, so the goal is to challenge them to think more about their beliefs and behaviors.
Students from each class will be shown a picture of a student in the other class without their
name being revealed. Each student will write a short description of the other class participant
based completely on looks. Each student will then be assigned a “digital pen-pal”, which will

How will you tailor and otherwise personalize
the learning plan to optimize the engagement
and effectiveness of ALL students, without
compromising the goals of the unit?
How will you organize and sequence the
learning activities to optimize the engagement
and achievement of ALL students?
Learning Plan Continued
What Video Conferencing technology will be
used (Skype, Google Hang Out, School Video
Conferencing)? What other technology will you
use?
What are the ways that you will overcome the
obstacles or hurdles?
From: Wiggins, Grant and J. Mc Tighe. (1998). Understanding by Design, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
be the same as the picture shown but students will be told they will be assigned randomly.
Communication will take place weekly via email that will be monitored by myself and the other
instructor. Students will be given prompts to respond to in the emails to start a discussion on
topics such as friendship, the dangers of judging someone based on looks alone, etc. Students
will also work on collaborative projects through google classroom such as creating digital
slideshows of the perception of the other culture and a discussion about how perception and
reality can be distorted. The final assignment will be for the student to write a description of
their pen-pal as they have gotten to know them over the course of 8 weeks. We will compare
our initial impression with our final impression and explore how judging someone based on
looks alone can limit our ability to truly get to know another person. Their work will culminate
in the whole group video collaboration.
At the start of the project I will ask students what they are most interested in- creating
advertisements, movies, podcasts, etc and based off their feedback, they will be paired with a
pen pal with similar interests so that the collaborative projects will be tailored to their
strengths.
This is a semester long project involving 15 female, 7th grade student from SMS and 15 female
students from a middle school in Argentina. This video conference will take place during the
2nd to last week of the semester. Prior to that, each student will be assigned a virtual pen pal
from the school abroad. They will exchange emails with each other weekly based on prompts
provided by the teacher(s). Students will use their school email and emails will be monitored.
At the conclusion of the project we will “meet” our virtual pen pal through video collaboration.
Skype for the conference call. Google email will be used, Google classroom, slides, docs, and
possibly a movie maker software
There will be many obstacles to overcome. Finding a participating school that will align with
the ability to have a time zone conference (Argentina is one), equipment to make the call
(projector, speakers, camera, etc), connectivity for the call to take place, all students present
and available for the call, availability/interest of an international school, and administrative
approval. Before the process starts, I will meet with the principal to gain approval and then
with the director of technology to discuss an international phone call. I will get any necessary
approvals prior to starting the project. The students will be selected based on their interest in
the project. I will meet with them individually to ensure a good fit for the project. I will
research ways to collaborate with school abroad and make contacts.
ISBN # 0-87120-313-8 (ppk)

Specific to the Video Conference:

How will you introduce the students? I will welcome the participating class to our conference and then the students will introduce themselves and
provide a brief introduction of their pen pal (see below)

What will be the student’s roles? The students will be active participants in the conversation. Each student will say their name and then introduce
their pen pal, giving a brief (3-5 minute) introduction on their pen pal based on the work referenced above.

How will you monitor the conference? The other teacher and I will be active participants in the conference

How will you conclude? I will provide a brief overview of what the project entailed and share what our students felt they learned and how they
changed through the process. I would ask the other teacher to do the same. At our last and final session, the students and I will process what surprised
us, what didn’t, what we learned, and what were we hope to go from here.

Checklist
 Make sure you have the IP address of the site you want to call or that the site is listed in a directory.
 Set your camera presets before you start your call so that you can quickly use them during the call.
 Use the "mute" button on the remote control when another site is speaking and deactivate when you wish to speak.
 Set up the equipment before the scheduled time so you will have time to test the system and resolve any issues before the meeting.
 Make sure you have the IP address of the site you want to call or that the site is listed in a directory.
 Set your camera presets before you start your call so that you can quickly use them during the call.
 Use the "mute" button on the remote control when another site is speaking and deactivate when you wish to speak.
 Set up the equipment before the scheduled time so you will have time to test the system and resolve any issues before the meeting.
 Have all students sign a contract on acceptable behavior during the conference.
 Speak with the visiting school’s teacher to ensure that no cultural barriers exist and any behavior/language that should be avoided.
 Make sure both parties have active Skype account, “test” call will take place the day before.
Assessment
Level 5 Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1
Criteria
5 points 4.9 points 4.7 points 4.5 points 4 points
Developed: Use of
Sophisticated & Naive: Use of
Systematic: Use of In-depth: Use of collaboration has insightful
Comprehensive: Using collaboration is
collaboration goes beyond collaboration reflects ideas; extends and
collaboration in an unusually superficial; it is more
what is obvious or what some in-depth deepens some of what was
Explained thorough or inventive way that is
was explicitly taught; well understanding; there is learned; some “reading
descriptive than
fully supported throughout the analytical or creative;
supported in theory and support by theory or between the lines, and
theory and practice in the details ideas have started
practice practice, but insufficient. some theory with limited
of the lesson. but not matured.
practice.
Literal: The
Revealing: The
Perceptive: The Interpretive: The collaboration is
Insightful: The collaboration could collaboration could be
collaboration could be collaboration could be simplistic and a
be powerful and illuminating to helpful and illuminating
reasonable to the plausible to the learners mechanical
Meaningful the learners as it provides a to the learners as it
learners as it provides a as it provides a revealing experience for the
revealing context or a real provides a revealing
revealing context or a context or a real learners or a
experience. context or a real
real experience. experience. restatement of class
experience.
conversations.
Novice: Seems as
Skilled: Takes into Able: Takes into account
Apprentice: Takes into though the
Masterful: Takes into account account student needs, students, the some
account the student, conference could take
student differences, details of the details of details of
Effective videoconferencing, and the videoconferencing, and videoconferencing, and a
limited details of place with an
videoconference, and little additional teaching
structure of interaction. the structure of little structure of
structure of interaction. coach working with
interaction. interaction.
the lesson.
Overall Level 5 Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1
Score 14 or more 11 or more 8 or more 5 or more 0 or more