This 3-4 weeks telecollaborative project aims at showing k-3 grade children cultural differences on New Year celebration around the world. Through the project, they also can improve their communication skills, either virtually or in real life.

CURRICULUM OBJECTIVES
Children observe how people celebrate the new year in his /her hometown or home country, and communicate with children in the same class and children around the world on the different celebration customs.  They will learn about New Year music, food, drawing, and other related information. Also they will learn effective communication skills, observation skills, internet surfing skills, and presentation skills.

PROCEDURES

STAGE I:   LOOK AROUND AND TALK
In class, the teacher will let children discuss how they spent their New Year holiday last year. Teacher will keep notes of what kids have said. Then ask them to collect information on how people are going to celebrate the New Year holiday this year. Kids will find their own partner and form into groups of 3-4 people. They will do the following activities:

• Look around:  for anything about how people are preparing to celebrate the New Year (The atmosphere, the activities going on...etc)
• Ask around:    ask parents, relatives, neighbors, how they are going to celebrate the new year (Decoration, music, food....etc...)
• Keep a journal:  with photos, drawings, and can ask the teacher to help them write down their discovery.

STAGE II:  LOOK AROUND A LITTLE FARTHER….  And tele-communicate :))
In this stage, children will collect information on different ways of New Year celebration around the world. The teacher has provided many links to the websites about different  New Year celebration customs, with pictures, songs, and brief history. Since most of the kids cannot read yet, the teacher can explain these information to them or they can ask their parents to explain these information to them.

Also children will exchange online what they have observed of their hometown New Year customs with kids from other countries. This could be done through Email, voice message, or a drawing board.  These tools will be provided to the kids to choose. Pictures, music, and story will be exchanged to better present the other culture's way of celebrating.

STAGE III: CELEBRATE the NEW YEAR in THEIR way...
Kids need to have real experience to understand something. So the third stage is to give them a chance to plan a New Year celebration in a different way instead of their own traditional way. So for this stage, each group of kids will be assigned with a certain task to prepare for the celebration, following the information they got from the web links and from their communication with friends around the world. The teacher will help the children make notes and take pictures for future presentation.

STAGE IV:  LOOK WHAT WE'VE GOT…
Kids will do a multimedia presentation of their new year celebration with KidPix  power point. They are going to add their own interpretation (dub the slides) to each slides, or music to the slides. Also all the materials they collected will be add to the project gallery page. It will be put on the web to share with kids around the world.

EVALUATION
The evaluation doesn't mean grading what the kids have done. What's important is the involvement and sense of competence kids get out from this project. By the end of the project, kids will be asked of the following questions:

• Did you actively participate into the activities in the four stages? what have you done to contribute to the group?
• Did you get a lot of information about how people celebrate their New Year around the world? What is the most interesting part?
• Did you efficiently communicate with your friends online and off line? How do you feel about it?