Welcome to the online collaborative component of Mountain Adventures: Exploring the Himalayas, Andes, and Appalachians. This project brought students from Nepal, Peru, and the United States together in a shared learning experience. Using the Internet as a communication and publishing vehicle, this partnership became the framework for cooperative learning about the social, cultural, and physical world.

Through telecommunication and collaboration with peers, students worked—as a cross-classroom community of learners—-toward a common goal: understanding the role of native plants in their own and other cultures. In this project-based learning experience, students were challenged to think and act like scientists, exploring their backyard, making observations, gathering data, and analyzing information. By sharing knowledge with their international classmates, students were encouraged to think outside their own experiences and to consider other perspectives and cultures.

Global communication took place initially through a simple email exchange activity where students shared personal information about themselves with their international classmates. These social relationships became the foundation for their shared learning experience. As the project progressed, students constructed an understanding of the presence and use of local native plants-as food, medicine, and fiber-through fieldwork, interviews, and research. Finally, students shared their understanding by building a Web site, enabling them to consider similarities and differences and completing the knowledge construction cycle.

Learn about the importance and use of native plants in the Andes, Himalayas, and Appalachians by visiting the student-created Web pages.