Student participants, and anyone else in the world who wishes to follow the collaborative, will want to subscribe to this project's RSS feed.  (For more information, click on the link, "Subscribe to this project's feed" at the bottom of the sidebar on the right.)  In this way students can monitor the project without having to visit it every day.  When new questions or answers to questions are posted, the RSS will notify the student.  More information on setting up an RSS Aggregator are available at this link.

So How Does This Work for Mabry Student Participants?
Students who wish to participate must contact one of the teacher's sponsoring the project and give the teacher the Parent Permission to Participate form.  General participation guidelines are available at this link.  The teacher sponsors are listed below.  Once approved, the teacher assigns approved student authors a UserID and a Password and gives them the URL to be used for logging in.  Students may then submit their carefully thought-out and well-written questions by logging in to the collaborative using the information provided to them.

All questions submitted by approved student authors are reviewed by the teachers supervising the project.  If a given question is considered appropriate, well-crafted, and significant, the question is then posted to the collaborative by the teachers.  From time to time the participating scientists, researchers, doctors, and engineers will log in and answer the questions.

All questions and answers may also receive comments from anyone in the world.  Only comments that fall within the purpose of the project will be considered for publication by the teachers working with the project.

So How Does This Work for Non-Mabry Student Participants?
Students who do not attend Mabry Middle School are also welcomed to participate until the project is closed for participation.  Students who attend other schools must have a certified educator from their school agree to help sponsor the project.  The guidelines for non-Mabry student participation are available at this link.  General participation guidelines are available at this link.

Teacher Sponsors for the Connect2Science Collaborative
This project is presently sponsored by two of our 7th grade Life Sciences teachers:  Mrs. Kulkarni, and Ms. Larkin.  To contact either collaborative sponsor, just click on their name.

Dr. Csete has graciously agreed to participate in our Connect to Science Collaboration!

A Brief Biography about Dr. Csete

• Graduate of Princeton with A.B. in Music, 1975
• Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, M.D., 1979
• Residency and Fellowships: Harvard and Tufts
• Board Certified in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
• Specialty Interest:  liver transplantation
• Director of Transplant Anesthesiology, Emory University Hospital
• PhD, 2000, from California Institute of Technology.  Thesis:  Less is More:  Oxygen and Stem Cell Fate
• Currently: Associate Professor and John E. Steinhaus Professor of Anesthesiology at Emory and
• Director of the Emory/GaTech Human Embryonic Stem Cell Core Facility

Dr. Csete's Current Work

• My clinical research is directed at optimizing perioperative management of liver transplant patients.
• My lab research concerns the role of oxygen and oxidants in directing stem cell fate, and how stem cells age.  Members of the lab are also working on neuroprotection including stem cells for the treatment of pain, and the use of anesthetic gases to direct stem cell fate.
• Students in the lab are from a wide variety of disciplines and include undergradates, graduate students, MD's and PhD's in training from programs in bioengineering, developmental biology, muscle biology, and neurobiology.

Dr. Berry has graciously agreed to participate in our Connect to Science Collaboration!

A Brief Biography about Dr. Berry

• Undergraduate degree at Emory University
• Medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania
• Anesthesia residency and fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
• Joined the faculty at Emory in 1978.
• Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, 1997

Dr. Berry's Work

• Published in several areas of occupational health including fatigue and prevention of occupationally acquired infections in anesthesia personnel
• A member of the Board of Directors of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education
• A member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research
• Senior oral examiner for the American Board of Anesthesiology
• The immediate Past Chair of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Occupational Health

One of our instructors, Geo, was even a former Mabry student himself.  You can listen to a podcast interview with Geo at Podcast Central!

Visit The Shift Key at this link.

The purpose of The Virtual Media Center is to provide students with an avenue to publish exemplary, student-written non-fiction work. The Virtual Media Center contact person is our own media specialist, Mrs. Gail Hendrix. If you have outstanding non-fiction work you wish to publish, see her about having your project added to these stacks.

Visit The Virtual Media Center at this link.

The purpose of the project is to conduct a detailed, ongoing study of the flora, fauna, environmental and sociological issues in Sweat Mountain Park, which is contiguous to our school property. In addition to keeping detailed records of the water quality and plant and animal life in the park, semi-annual clean up and maintenance events, wildlife demonstrations, lunch in the park, and movie-making activities are scheduled for the whole family and our greater community. These events have proven to be great fun for the whole family in addition to meeting an important environmental need in our community. The movies of past events have been shared with a sing-along for young students at two of our elementary schools on Earth Day.

The Mabry Global Learning Collaborative will feature information and data related to this ongoing community collaboration. If you are interested in participating in this project, you may contact any of the Mabry science teachers; however, Mrs. Carroll, who actually began the project, will serve as your primary contact.

Visit the Sweat Mountain Environmental Impact Study at Mabry's Global Learning Collaborative at this link.

No Direct Participation
Some projects or posts are simply designed to present information, like this post, and offer no means for feedback, online review, or publication.

Commenting for Review
Some projects, such as Mrs. Glenn's students' upcoming Realia Museum, are designed to showcase exemplary student work. This type of project affords the reader the opportunity to comment about the work posted. We suggest comments be of a constructive, evaluative nature, highlighting strengths and areas of significant contribution as well as offering suggestions for enhancement and broader perspective.

Commenting for Peer Review
Some projects, such as Mrs. Abrams' Virtual Language Arts class, are designed to afford students the opportunity to post assignments and projects for review by their peers. In these projects, students may comment about their peers' work. These comments are generally required of the students by the teacher and must remained focused on the rubric the teacher gave to the students for the specific peer review assignment. Such assignments are deeply centered in critical thinking.

Publication for Questioning
Some projects, such as Mrs. Hartnett's upcoming Sixceed, 2006 writing project, offer the opportunity for participants to post questions. In this particular project, the parents of rising 6th graders will receive instructions on how to have their student log in to the project to post questions that will be answered in this project by Mrs. Hartnett's students under her supervision.

The Antarctica McMurdo Station Collaboration project is another example of students submitting questions for publication to and answers in the project. Here, participating students may submit questions to Mabry's Polar Education Coordinator at the McMurdo Antarctica Research Station working on the Ross Ice Shelf.

Publication of Work
Some projects, such as Mrs. Abrams' Virtual Language Arts class or Mrs. Miceli's Family Heritage Projects, allow students the opportunity to publish their assignments and special projects online. If your teacher has a project in the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative and you wish for your work to be considered for publication online, contact your teacher to discuss your interest.

Exemplary student writing, both fiction and non-fiction, is also published for peer review in such ongoing projects as The Shift Key and The Media Center. If you would like for your work to be considered for publication, simply download the pdf at this link, fill it out, have your parent(s) sign it, and take it to Mrs. Hendrix in the actual Media Center at Mabry. She will meet with you and your teacher to discuss your interest.

Ongoing Publication Versus A Published Project
Some projects allow the global learner to publish on an ongoing basis, for example: asking questions throughout the year of our scientist living and working in Antarctica. Other projects, such as The Shift Key, afford the global learner the opportunity to have a single (or multiple) projects published.

All Mabry students who wish to become online global publishers in an ongoing project simply submit a completed Request for Publication Rights to the front office. The form must be addressed to the teacher in charge of overseeing the project of interest. You may find out which teacher(s) is overseeing the project by visiting Project Central and reading the project descriptions. Once the form is completed, signed by your parent(s), and turned it at the front office, the teacher overseeing the project will contact you with your log in and password information.

If you are not a Mabry student and wish to participate as an online global publisher, you must have one of your teachers or school administrators contact our Instructional Lead Teacher, Mr. Chris Swanson. You can find additional information about that process at How to Participate. Anyone can comment at any time to the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative. Special permission is not required. Comments do not immediately appear in the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative as they are only published once approved.

We suggest you also read the Guidelines for Publishing and Commenting before getting started.

• Always use correct grammar, mechanics, and spelling.
• Content should use standard language free of jargon, slang, or idioms and abbreviations commonly associate with online chat or instant messaging.
• Published material and comments should be succinct and remain focused on the educational purpose of the project.
• The tone of all material should promote intellectual inquiry in a respectful, empowering, and age-appropriate manner.
• All content should be that of the author (or commenter) or should be given proper attribution.
• No personally identifying or contact information should ever be included.

The principal at Mabry Middle School (and any of the principal's designees) may choose not to include or to remove previously published content or comments for any unspecified reason.  All content published at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative is licensed under a non-commercial, attribution, share-alike Creative Commons License.  Publication and commenting to the collaborative indicates acceptance of these terms.

Presented in this project are two of the students' digital stories of their family heritage.

Mr. Swanson is the contact for this project.

The center of activity at the station is the scientists and their projects, but there are also many people who are there to run the station: everything from cooks to carpenters, firemen to crane operators. This town supports about 1,000 members. They all live in dorms, eat in a common dining room, have a hospital, and a post office.

The purpose of this collaboration is to share the science and the adventure of living and working in the unique environment of the station with our Mabry students. Right now there is a Russian ice breaker off the shore churning up the sea ice so the supply ship can come in. Only one ship comes in a year and brings all the supplies for the next 12 months.

If you have any questions about Antarctica, you may post them here for Ms. Pennycook, Mabry's own Polar Education Coordinator at the McMurdo Station, Antarctica! To go to the Antarctica McMurdo Station Collaboration and start learning, just click here!

Collaborations are completely flexible. We invite creativity. Projects may be very short and simple or as complex and extended as the collaborating teachers agree upon. As we begin the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative, we would suggest specific, highly defined projects that can be completed in a short timeframe and can remain on our site for extended educational reference. We are eager for the collaboration between your students and Mabry's students to be richly rewarding and educationally empowering.

If you are a student outside of Mabry Middle School and are interested in participating in Mabry's Global Learning Collaborative, you should contact one of your teachers or school administrators and request that he or she contact Mr. Swanson at the email address above. Participating students must have one of their teachers, in addition to the project teacher at Mabry, overseeing their participation. Mr. Swanson will work with interested teachers not affiliated with Mabry to explain how this works. If you are a student attending Mabry Middle School and are interested in participating in Mabry's Global Learning Collaborative, you should contact one of your teachers at Mabry or see Mr. Swanson at school and request to be added in a special online project.

At Mabry, we are eager to leverage pervasive computing and connectivity to harness new ways of learning, to expand our students' learning experiences beyond the walls of our classrooms, to open our classrooms to the world. Our ultimate goal for this project is to nurture ambitious, creative, independent problem-solvers who will make the world a better place. We invite you to join us in that effort.