I'm doing some ICT consultancy at St James' CofE Primary School in Gorton, Manchester at the moment. The ICT Leader is Hannah Mahapatra and she recently told me about an interesting project her husband, Raj, has set up. Entitled "Run the World" it's a collaborative attempt to circumnavigate the Globe by adding together the individual distances run by participants. You can raise money for any charity or body (say,school fund) you like, or just run for the fun or personal challenge. Each run is entirely organised by the individual or group concerned making it simple and flexible to get involved with.
In Hannah's words:
On January 11th 2010, people all over the world will take charge and run the world. Literally. They will run a distance that is uniquely challenging to them and work towards a goal which is uniquely important to them and maybe even change the world in the process. It’s a great event which works on three different levels; a personal, an altruistic and a global. It is co-ordinated centrally through a website, run-the-world.org, and can be done by individuals as well as groups. Participants choose a distance to run that would be a challenge to them; choose a charity to run on behalf of and to raise money for; pledge mileage to a country of their choice via run-the-world.org and then open the door, step outside and start to run. It’s as easy as that.
Run the World is open to everyone, regardless of their age, level of fitness and the charity they wish to support and this alone makes it a good one for kids to get involved in. I teach in a primary school in Gorton, Manchester and our head has agreed that everyone can participate in the Run the World event which we will be holding on our school pitch. As my class is Y6, I see this as a great opportunity for some wider learning and so I am putting my pupils in charge of the event. First of all in the next couple of weeks we will do some PSHE and Citizenship work on charity and the power of joint action. Off the back of this the children will identify the charity that they would like to support and research the work this charity is involved with. We will then be able to talk to other people that we are asking for sponsorship from in a more meaningful way, explaining the premise of Run the World and talking about how many people working together can bring about change. Then we need to decide which country to run for. The children will be asked to prepare a fact file on a country of their choice as homework and present their reasons for choosing that country in class – a great opportunity for me to focus on some speaking and listening in the context of persuasion, not to mention looking at geographical vocabulary. ICT will play part here as I know that many children will want to present their information to each other in digital format and we could use our blog to get their messages about what we are doing for Run the World out to the wider community.
Our next move will be to calculate distances both for us to run and how far that will get us across the country of our choice on the run-the-world.org website. This will involve measuring the pitch and working out the perimeter, calculating how many miles we will achieve if every child in the school runs round it twice or more and then linking the two together to the distance across our chosen country. Plenty of real-life maths problems to get our teeth in to! And the children will be in total charge of their learning. The next step will be to get the whole school community involved; teachers, TAs, parents, LOs and of-course the children and again this will be up to my class to get their support. Their powers of persuasion will be put to the test as there are a number of adults in the school community who “don’t run” – me included! I plan to play the part of the dissenting voice here and get them to work very hard to persuade me to dust off my trainers. There will also be opportunities to test their persuasive writing abilities with letters to the local press and more entries on our school blog.
On the day itself, the children will be given the job of marshalling the runners, noting the miles and collecting and counting the money raised. They will also be able to challenge themselves to run as many circuits of the pitch as they can. This is just how I plan to create a meaningful and personal learning experience for my class that can be shared with the whole school community. I would be really pleased to talk through any other ideas people have for any other opportunities linked to this event so please do email me. But even if all you do is run and talk to your class about the whats and the whys you will be taking a stand and making a difference.
Go on, run the world! And for the next few weeks, let your pupils run it with you.