The World at Your Fingertips
Kyrgyzstan. Pakistan. Argentina. India. South Africa, Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia. They sound like the far-flung stops stamped in a secret agent's passport. However, they're just a few of the places the Challenger Learning Center connected to virtually through its e-Missions™ program in 2009. All it takes is a videoconferencing hookup and some preparation by the students to make for a successful mission. Besides those aforementioned locales, each of which was experiencing its first e-Mission, Challenger also hooked up with teachers and students in Rome and Northern Ireland, contacts that had been established the year before. And for the second year in a row, South Korean educators visiting New York City also experienced e-Missions—and in their native tongue no less—as a Wheeling Jesuit University student served as translator. Other international missions are planned.
Dr. Debbie Denise Reese, senior educational researcher and leader of the CyGaMEs videogaming research, also added to her passport. She presented at the Analogy '09 Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria.