Ideas

Not using Skype is fine. We can do everything through Google Groups and a Wiki. Then we won't have to worry so much about time zones. You said that you want to pair up students for this project, but I will only have 15-20 students to do this with, spread over two classes. I may get more before the school year starts but probably not enough to pair up with each of your students. A couple of ideas: We are starting school on the 30th of August, so starting this project mid-Sept would work great for me as well. I have all of my students sign up for Gmail accounts which makes using Groups very easy. A wiki would be really nice in order to embed student work into at the end. I started a wiki, but it's completely blank at this point: http://www.wikispaces.com/crosscountryconnection. Please join it if you think it's a good idea. I'm going to start putting stuff on it for our project. Tell me about your knowledge using Google Groups and Wikis and also your access to technology for your classroom and what you think about all of this.
 * 1) We create 5 Google Groups, one for each of your classes. I assign 3-5 of my students to each of your 5 Groups. Within each Google Group, your kids and my kids will ask questions back and forth. I know that puts a lot of pressure on my few students to answer a lot of questions, but I think the way Groups works will make it okay. Plus, I can have my students working on this as much as I want. I write my own curriculum! Have you used Groups before? I have this year with a grant group that I was part of, and it was an amazing learning tool!
 * 2) This will not make a one to one environment for our students, but in the end, when creating a digital story, you will want your kids to work in groups of 2-5 anyway. Digital Stories are a lot of work! I hope I'm not stepping on your toes by saying this, but having 25 students in a class working on individual digital stories across five classes would be a nightmare. They //must// be grouped. Plus, they will really need each other's help and expertise on the computer.
 * 3) So basically, we use each others' classes for our students to get information from each other. We can even create private wiki pages that need a password to be accessed. We can put our students' pictures up on the protected pages so that they can feel like they know each other more.
 * 4) My concern is that you have large classes, so my 15 students just won't cut it. In which case, I can work with only 2 of your classes, or we can try to find someone to join us, or you and I will have to let this go for this year until we can get someone else to join us.
 * 5) Final Product Ideas: Digital story using Prezi, PPT, Audacity for a podcast, or a video. All of these files can be embedded into a wiki. You can have your students do whatever you feel comfortable with. I feel comfortable with all of these, and I'm not sure what I will have my students do at this point. But I will need your help on wording the assignment because I was not a Social Studies major!

In terms of products I love the idea of creating a blog or Wiki. It will be good as a way to have them answer some over arching questions like “What is a citizen?” or “How does where you live effect who you are?”, and I think Google groups would be a great way to communicate with each other. The idea I had was to pair up students and have them talk to each other about each other in terms of their communities, culture, daily lives and environment with the end result being some sort of digital story telling where my student presents a day in the life of one of your students and vice versa. These are just a few ideas, please tell me what you think. I am not sure if we will have any access to web cam for Sykpe.