Jeff Golden and Warren Cornwall are looking for a few more people to take with them on a two-year, airplane-free trip around the world. Their trip, however, won't be your average bohemian trek: instead, the Odyssey team will be turning its voyage into an educational project for the benefit of kids back in the United States. And unlike some other "online field trips," the nonprofit group hopes to turn disadvantaged student followers into both local and global community activists.
Ten travelers of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, and skill sets, drawn from around the United States, will set out in June to cover the globe: from China to India, Iran to Egypt, to Zimbabwe, Mali, Israel, Turkey, and Russia. Team members will spend six to 10 weeks at each stop, collaborating with local organizations on community work in areas such as education, health, or the environment. Meanwhile, students at home will follow along via a Web site, bulletin boards, and a carefully constructed ongoing classroom curriculum. Not only will they be learning about new cultures and countries, but they will be encouraged to learn about each region's social issues and get involved in political action campaigns to help those communities.
This modern-day Odyssey was envisioned on a hike through the desert two years ago by teachers, activists, and avid travelers Golden and Cornwall. "We were thinking how there's a lack of perspective kids have on their own lives, and how great traveling had been in our lives for getting that perspective," says Golden. Realizing that a lot of disadvantaged kids don't have opportunities for world travel, Golden and Cornwall set out to create a program that would allow students a window onto the world that might motivate them to look more closely at their own communities.
"The goal is having students get involved in their own communities through service learning projects, and to have students use technology for learning and community-action purposes," explains Golden. For example, students might examine some of the problems of the educational system in Iran, communicate with foreign students, participate remotely with the activist organizations, and then take the lessons they learn back to their own communities to see how they can effect change in their own school systems.
The Odyssey members are still seeking corporate sponsorships, donations of computer equipment and digital cameras, and volunteers to help train teachers in disadvantaged schools back home on how to incorporate the Net into their classrooms. But the activism angle has brought them assistance from nonprofit groups like IGC, which will host the multi-tiered Web site for free, and Cultural Survival, an organization which connects indigenous activist groups around the world.
"There are a lot of programs from people who travel around the world and write back to students, but at the heart of ... Odyssey's work is building this community curriculum and linking kids along the way," says Lisa Jobson, project coordinator of International Education and Resource Network. The nonprofit has learned firsthand the power of linking up students in different cultures - IEARN unites kids in 45 countries around the world to work together on social action issues, such as banning landmines.
Odyssey members plan to take the entire trip without ever leaving the ground. As Golden puts it, "Tourism often takes the form of jetting to a place, visiting a hotel and a beach, and jetting back. It's very artificial and you miss the richness of what can be seen.... A lot of understanding people has to do with understanding their geography as well."
That outlook is similar to that of another successful online field trip, Mayaquest. Leaving on 9 March, Mayaquest members will take their yearly six-week bicycle ride through Central America in search of "clues" to why the Mayan civilization collapsed. Last year's trip was followed by 55,000 schools; students talked to archeologists and rainforest experts, and came to their own conclusions about the demise of the Mayans.
But although Mayaquest is focused more on education than activism, the trip introduces social issues through profiling local kids they meet. One result of this was a fund-raising campaign last year by students in rural Minnesota that helped put an impoverished Mayan girl through school. And, like the Odyssey founders, the Mayaquest organizers feel that being able to somehow effect a global community is even more powerful than just learning about foreign cultures online.
As Mayaquest program manager Nick Buettner puts it, "If nothing else was successful, this was: These kids in Minnesota were able to look outside and realize what it's like to live in Central America, and with that knowledge make a difference in the world."
