An Elluminate
Success Story
Fire and Ice: Communication, Collaboration, and Education with a Global Reach
K-12 school-to-school collaboration is exploding worldwide, with several international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and corporate foundations leading the charge. However, most of these use only asynchronous collaboration technologies like blogs and text chat. Fire and Ice is Elluminate's contribution to the cause, enabling schools in many countries to extend the boundaries of the physical classroom with live, real-time collaboration.
Co-founded in 2006 by Elluminate's Dan Rickard and Stace Wills, Fire and Ice is a series of interactive, international dialogues between students worldwide. The project objective is to translate dialogue into action by inspiring students to develop their own solutions for helping combat climate change in their local areas. The program is part of Learning Across Borders, the company's global initiative that promotes live, real-time knowledge sharing and collaboration between students and teachers in North America and the developing world.
One recent Fire and Ice event featured four schools Brazil, Canada, and Mozambique, who showcased their exciting projects for a global audience. During the session, students reviewed the results they achieved to make a meaningful contribution to the environment. One school that took part was located in Massambara, a remote village several hours from Rio. At the school, two computers shared one Internet connection with a capacity of only 100 kbps total (50 kbps per computer), clearly demonstrating the effectiveness of Elluminate technology even where connectivity is far less than optimal.
A few months later, Elluminate presented the Fire and Ice Leadership Award to Massambara at a special ceremony at their school. "The event was a milestone for Elluminate and its Fire and Ice program," explained Wills. "Not only did we successfully conduct a rich, interactive session from a remote Brazilian village school, but thanks to partner iEARN.org, we also hosted several guest schools from five of the seven world continents, in countries that included Botswana, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Pakistan, Canada, and Australia."
"The Australian school is located in an indigenous community, which is so remote that it's only accessible by plane," continued Wills. "Sustainable collaboration continues as iEARN, Australia, and Canada are now engaged with Massambara in new Fire and Ice projects."
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