Hello!

Imagiverse Educational Consortium (Imagiverse.ORG) and TechnoSpud Projects (TechnoSpudProjects.COM) are pleased to announce our first combined exchange project! Hands Around the World is an international classroom exchange project geared to students in pre-school through 8th grades.  Homeschooled children, high school and even college students are welcome to participate as well.

Through Hands Around the World, students of all ages will learn about different countries, states, cultures and traditions from students who live in those places.  Participants will send a "handprint" which is created by tracing their own hands or using a template handprint.  The front side of the handprint will be decorated.  The reverse will include information about the place the handprint comes from.  Additional information may be sent electronically for posting at Imagiverse.ORG.

Jennifer Wagner has been using her extensive classroom experience to create fun, educational activities through exchanges and online projects.  Teachers around the globe have been participating in TechnoSpudProjects since 1999!  Jennifer is always in the midst of one project or other!

One of those participants is David Anderson, a retired Social Studies teacher in New York.  Like Jennifer, David is passionate about education and finding fun, innovative methods for sharing his joy of learning with students and teachers everywhere.  He shared the idea of Hands Across the World with other teachers in online teacher groups.  One of those teachers was Michelle Mock, co-founder of Imagiverse.ORG, who lived almost 3,000 miles away in California.

In 2001, Michelle and Imagiverse co-founder Stephanie Wong, launched Imagiverse.ORG.  Michelle and Stephanie believe that imagination is the key to learning.  Teachers can teach, but learning comes from within.  Projects that involve the students, in a fun and imaginative way, set the foundation for learning outside the classroom  The Internet connects people in a way that was not possible barely a decade ago. Today it opens the doors of communication between the peoples of the world.

Michelle loved the idea of the Hands Across America (and Around the World) and planned on doing the project at Imagiverse.ORG ... someday.  Dave later sent Michelle information on a Holiday Card Exchange, organized by...  Jennifer Wagner.  Michelle joined the project in December of 2006 and in response to her registration, she received a note from Jennifer who said she lived in the same town in California!

Michelle and Jennifer met for coffee and quickly found a number of ways they could collaborate.  The Hands project was one they both thought would make a wonderful joint effort.  What neither one of them knew at that time, they were both discussing the same Hands Across America/World project that Jennifer had created!

To participate, or to learn more, please click on the image to the left. We hope students everywhere will enjoy this project as they learn about the world and one another.  If you have already registered, and are receiving this mailing in response, thank you!  Detailed instructions and hints for the exchange will follow shortly.

Our world is in the hands of the children.  It is the children who will nurture our planet and make it a better place.