Last week at Woodham Academy, a groundbreaking global collaboration project took place between two schools 3,000 miles apart.
Collaboration between schools has been said to be the key to raising standards, with experts sharing good practice whilst learning from one another. Throw in an international element and you’ve got some pretty excited students and staff.
How often do students in the UK get to meet, chat and dance for students on the other side of the world and then have the technology available to immediately judge and feedback on these performances? That’s exactly what happened at Woodham Academy and Merton Intermediate School in Wisconsin, America.
Using the Academy’s global contacts, Assistant Head Teacher, Jon Tait, established a link with Merton School and after having an initial chat about a dance project, it developed into a live ‘dance off’ over Skype where students danced for each other and then judged the performance. Lead dance teacher and Wooodham Sports Academy dance coach, Angela Minervini, led the development of the routines with the dance academy girls.
After four weeks of hard work practising routines, the ‘dance off’ took palce in front of the live Skype feed.
Each group of students came forward to the camera, introduced themselves with a big hello and then performed their routine. All dancers on both sides of the Atlantic were able to instantly judge the performance using modern technology on their phones and internet enabled devices.
It was quite amazing to think that the work that these girls had been doing at Woodham was being beamed across the globe to another school hall in America with lots of excited students watching on their big screen!
The dances from both schools were fantastic and a joy to watch. The respect the students had for each other was superb. They all sat silently whilst each school danced and then clapped and cheered once their performance was over.
Although they had never met before, there was a clear mutual respect between them all – they were young, they loved dancing and they were super excited about breaking down the barriers and working globally with each other.
Jon Tait commented ‘The excitement, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication showed by all of the dancers and staff in both schools was incredible. To be able to connect so easily with students on the other side of the world really shows how technology is changing the way we work and the way we live our lives. This is certainly a project that both schools are already talking about continuing and developing further’.
