I hope that this project will work for the public schools on many levels. The participants can learn more about the geography of the earth, the roots and distinguishing features of the world's various culture, the relationship between outer space and the close-up and the long shot of a real geographic location, and the importance of ancient art of map making. In my project design, use of the free Google EARTH web software can instill a love of geography and the planet earth, as well as bridge communication gaps in the classroom and in the home. Bringing the classroom to the home is meaningful. It is an educational activity which uses play in the present tense, or an interactive adventure which is both serious study and narrative play. The title, "...Dream Vacation..."  speaks to the need to allow for dreaming in children, and to creating ways to teach an individual how to realize a special dream. Although the dream here is an imaginary voyage, it is a metaphor for living and sensing; another way to know the conditional of a specific community on Earth, and through this specialness, something universal about the community of the world as a whole.

   
Making the CLUB DREAM VACATION ON GOOGLE EARTH Scrapbooks.     

     Everyone loves to make something. Producing an original product of one's own imagining, successfully by one's own hands, gives a sense of self-esteem to the maker. Self-esteem, in turn, inspires sharing, connecting to others. Sharing with those most meaningful to you- friends, family, classmates- is the essential communication.  Yet in the same strength there exists a fragility. The tenuous factor here is tribalism, clanship,  and/or territorialism, an underlying principle in the designation and recording of geography, borders, countries, and, perhaps, a basic tendency of mankind. The creative learning process itself is just this. The underlying strength is not just sharing knowledge, it is supervision and reinforcement of a natural instinct to reach outside the 'group' and extend a hand across a border. What we do imust be vital, an effort known by and useful to others. It is important to understand customs and expectations in such a global process, where the pieces of our selves and our efforts stand relative to the whole earth picture. This perception is critical to the true establishment of personal and community identity. Knowledge of boundaries and territories are traditional in geography study. Knowledge of culture within a locale and its history and relationship to other localities are a traditional element in social studies. Attempting to secure a plan of a dream voyage, including geography, itinerary and calendar, from start to destination, is a challenge.  Ultimately, in any travel plan, nationalism and identity is expanded, contours and their limits  are stretched, and the traveler cannot help but to understand how temporal they are and how potentially connected the human race might be. The activity in Club Dream Vacation mirrors such a phenomenon. The Club geographer is a journey man, and the Clubscrapbook/syllabus is the journeyman’s journal. The journey to achieve a dream 'vacation' is the ideal goal, and it is recorded in the Club scrapbook.

     There are many time elements in this project. Time and its meaning to travelers is one of them. Time as a dimension, a space both personal and public, is another. A Club journal kept as a way to measure the moments of a journey, the start point and destination,  the distance traveled and the budget required are part of the club Scrapbook process. There is the reality of taking a journey, and there is the dream of making the journey. Both are an experience in the learning and appreciation of the study of geography and social science.The Club Dream Vacation participant travels in the present tense, with an eye on past histories in the establishment of world geographies. Yet with the Google software he/she can alter this. Many geographies are shaped by the natural attributes of various locales on the planet. Google Earth offers many ways to view a terrain, by physical attributes, historical attributes, global positioning, or even as viewed from outer space. So the process of taking a dream vacation now becomes more about preserving self identity on a living timeline of a voyage. The concept of money exchanges, language differences, time differences, locale as well as global transportation systems, climate shifts, weather predictions- all these and more are factors in planning a trip. Stretch a finger, extend a hand, log on, Google ANYPLACE on Earth, dream a vacation. But then, plan to realize it- from packing your belongings to depart to unpacking them after you return. Not so easy- in fact it is surpisingly complex. This workshop challenges the Club participant's sense of the immediate reality of location and time, and his/her relationship to it.
 

     Geography is different when a person actually applies it to a personal experience. Web surfing is just that too- spontaneity and unpredictability at its most reliable. In my experience, the Club geography and computer tech curriculum encourages the participants to become explorers in the big territory of their dreams  and in the bigger landscape of the world. An item on the Club agenda is a new admiration  of the Earth and its natural systems of being. A improved geography skillset is another, and this includes a personal understanding of what constitutes a public vs a privete space. There is no better contemporary geography tool than Google Maps and Google Earth on the wordwide web.

     The scrapbooks are uploaded to google docs for workshopping in the Club.  Past participants have been very excited about showing their vacation scrapbooks to the group. At the end of the Club meetings, there are presentations in the Club room.At points throughout the timeline of club activity, the in-progress scrapbooks will be saved in pdf format and sent home for sharing. For security reasons, the actual Club activity is conducted on a password protected page in Google docs. There is no access to it outside of the school. Skills built upon in the Club include data research, retrieval, downloading and organizing, how to interpret, remember and apply all data to a particular agenda and calendar. The free Google web browser and tools supports the possibility of the Club member sharing dream vacation ideas at home. Although there is no access to the club page outside of the school, there is a lot to remember and to share. Parental input in such a dialogue can be brought by the Club participant to the next session of the Club. (As a parent, I would want this option.) Statistically, social awareness of self in the face of a global internet geography is a serious issue in our time. Here, a code of ethics suggesting respect of one's own person and the person of others might be added. And it can, through outside dialogue, be supervised by the parent. This supervision at home could be tailored to the needs or challenges of specific groups of club members, via club member creative activity or, in special circumstaqnces, via dialogue with teacher and parent. There is room for discussion on this topic.

 Touch, Hearing and Sight in CLUB DREAM VACATION ON GOOGLE EARTH Web Activity.

     Tangential to, yet sprouting from categorizations such as public versus private, tolerant versus careful, behaviors ascendant in a time versus those rooted in the past, there is the ever present voice of the human senses. In web communication, sensed messages of touch, hearing and sight connect us to our browsers and on our screens. With touch, word, sound and image together, four mediums mix and a message can reach a person on many levels.  We understand and learn differently through each sense, by different media and through various blends of sensed experience. For example, an image may be understood through sound and touch, a sound communicated by word and image, and so on. Touch is the sense which makes us feel included.  Club Dream Vacation pays special attention to this phenomenon and strives to make the Club members aware of sense perception and sense induced connectivity in Club web activity. Sensual perception is key to garnering information, and at the core of education.

The CLUB DREAM VACATION ON GOOGLE EARTH Participants’ Reactions.

     For me, the reactions of the Club members are important. I would like the world travelers of Club Dream Vacation to be filled with a new self-esteem, as only a positive learning experience can inspire. Different children are- well, different. This should be and is cause for celebration. In the uploading to Google Docs during each workshop, I hear recountings of conversations held outside of the class. This is a moment of truth to me. It is the seminal revelation of time and thought present in the Club room, or expressed elsewhere by social network on the World Wide Web. The three realities of any classroom in this new cyber age are the individual, the group in the room, and the presence of the World Wide Web on the school network. All co-exist and are an intricate part of the learning experience,  Like the www experience itself, this Geography and Computer Google workshop is serendipitous, perhaps a large part of its appeal. It is such a call to adventure which awakens the will to learn more about the world and how things work.