The NCEA 2013 Instant Project

This blog was created to demonstrate how simple it is for teachers and classrooms from far distant places to collaborate online.

The project debuted on April 4, 2013 at the NCEA convention in Houston, TX, with a presentation by Barb Gilman and Nick Senger called "Catholic Classrooms without Wall: Interactive Projects Connecting Classrooms around the Globe."

Attendees were instructed to take pictures of their shoes and email the pictures to a special email address with the answers to these questions:

• Where do these shoes walk? (In other words, where do you live, what is the name of your school?)
• What is one way these shoes walk the life of discipleship in your school? (In other words, how do you try and bring Christ to life in your classroom?)

The emails then automatically became the first posts of To Teach as Jesus Did.

This same concept can be used to connect classrooms around the world.

For instance:

• Imagine your students are studying the different items in the church, like the ambo, stations of the cross, baptismal pool, etc.
• You could create a Blogger blog and set up the "Post via email" option with a secret email address
• Then, have your students take pictures of the items in their own parish and email the pictures to the blog where they would become posts.
• You could then give that secret email address to other teachers you have connected with and ask them to have their students take pictures of the items in their churches and email them to the blog.
• In this way, the blog becomes a catalog of all the different styles of liturgical items used at Mass.
• Students could then visit the blog and leave comments on the different items.

Take another example:

• Suppose you are teaching your students how to reflect on themselves as gifts from God. 
• Again, creating a Blogger blog with a secret email address, instruct each student to take a picture of a natural object that in some way represents them: a smooth stone, a piece of bark, a blade of grass, a pine cone, and so on.
• After taking the picture, have the student compose a one or two paragraph email explaining why the object represents them. Attach the picture of the object and send it to the secret email address.

More examples of pictures for students to take:

• Their favorite books, with the reasons they love them
• The plants that grow in their yard or neighborhood
• Statues of saints in their home or church
• Rosaries they own

This project doesn't even require students to take pictures. You can simply ask students to respond to questions or a writing prompt.

One of the advantages of this way of blogging is that students don't need to sign up for anything. They only need access to an email account. They could use a parent account, their own account, or perhaps a gmail or hotmail account that you set up specifically for this purpose.

If you decide to use this with your students, please let us know @BarbinNebraska or @nsenger so that we can share your ideas with other Catholic educators.