Internationalizing Technology Teaching with Blogs and Bananas.

"We have to do what?" exclaimed the Year 7 students, almost in unison in feigned shock that belied their anticipation of the fun ahead (Year 7 in Queensland is comparable to the sixth grade in the United States). The students were going to make an awesome "Edible Lunar Vehicle" (ELV) and as a bonus, they were going to work with U.S. college students. Thus began a project, described in this article for teachers to apply in their own setting, which focused on several key 6-8 benchmarks that are outlined in Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology (STL). In the table below, we have outlined the standards and benchmarks, and how each was addressed during this project. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Making Edible Lunar Vehicles I had just explained to my sixth graders that they would work in pairs, and each pair of my students would, in turn, be teamed with two U.S. college students who were preparing to become elementary school teachers. Each foursome would be working together on the Internet to plan the construction of a vehicle with the following qualities that also became the basis for assessing the vehicle: 1. It should be at least twenty centimeters long and ten centimeters wide. Bonus points would be awarded for the longest and the widest vehicles. 2. It should be constructed with at least four wheels that turn and be able to go down a ramp no longer than one meter and travel at least 50 cm when it reached bottom. Bonus points are awarded to the vehicle that travels farthest. 3. Students will research the Moon on the Internet and incorporate at least two design features that will make their vehicle especially appropriate for investigating the lunar surface. 4. When the activity is complete, students should be able to eat the vehicle. After all, if their design were ever to be taken into space, we would not want to leave clutter behind on the Moon. Also, by making the vehicle do double duty as a means of transportation and a source of nutrition, we would be able to save space and weight in our rocket. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, my coauthor was giving his preservice elementary school teachers the same set of directions. I set up separate password-protected blogs through Education Queensland, similar to U.S. state departments of education. Each blog was populated by the two Aussies and two Americans who made up each team; and the two instructors could monitor what was written in each blog. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] My pairs of students quickly began to envision vehicle bodies made of stale bread loaves, pineapples, celery stalks, eggplants, or candy bars. One innovative student thought of softening lasagna noodles, molding them to the proper shape, and baking them in the oven to the firmness needed for the body. They thought of biscuits, lollies, tomatoes, and oranges for wheels. Cake icing could be used to stick things together. Back in the U.S., my colleague was explaining to the preservice teachers that design technology, as described in Design Technology--Children's Engineering (Dunn & Larson, 1990), is reflected in Standards for Technological Literacy and also part of the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996). However, for reasons of tradition in self-contained elementary school classrooms--"we've never done it that way before"--there is difficulty of testing these standards on high-stakes standardized tests. These standards do not play nearly the same prominent role in U.S. education that they play in Australia. My colleague also pointed out that the U.S. is not alone in its standards movement. The ELV activity had been designed so my Aussie students were working on Queensland standards, which we call Core Learning Outcomes, just as U.S. teachers would modify the ELV or other design technology projects to fit their own state standards. …