PROJECT SUMMARY:

“Let the world change you and you can change the world.” ― Ernesto Guevara.

One can only truly understand a culture by being in that culture – a near impossibility for students in the United States until the power of digital technology unshackled learning from the four walls of a classroom. Resources to visualize this interconnectedness must be developed through genuine partnership efforts of experts in the field, each of whom address this goal from their unique backgrounds and lenses.

To address this urgent and unmet need, our team creates sustainable and innovative academic connections that integrate site-based and situational-based technologies into teaching and learning. By identifying places to anchor our research, we develop education resources to meet the following goals:

• Assemble key scholars and experts to identify rich common ground topic(s) for cross-country research with a focus on an issue of civic concern that requires understanding through site and place
• Recruit a cohort of master teachers in STEM and humanities fields who will work as colleagues to understand the scholarly intentions, be trained in the application of innovative technologies (including geospatial technologies, timeline tools, augmented reality, and 3D Lidar scanning technologies), conduct field work, and apply to best practices of teaching and learning
• Disseminate these findings as an aspirational digital toolkit to apply this model to a variety of topics and subject matter research
• Recommend future ways to incorporate technology at the university and K-12 level as an iterative process of tech development

Project work has focused on contested landscapes in France, Belgium, and Barbados. Developing projects are focused on Vietnam, Poland, New Zealand, and the Middle East. Specifically, these educational resources capture the cultural geography of key places in each region, then provide access to teachers in the United States.

FUNDING & SUPPORT: Previous funding of project-based research has come from the American Battle Monuments Commission, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy (UK), and the U.S. Department of Education.

Chris Bunin

Rhyannon Curry

Dr. Todd Ogle

Lynn Rainville