Calling all members of the Innovation Academy community! This summer, you are invited to contribute to this blog. Whether you are flying to an exotic location far away or staying close to home, we want to hear about your global citizenship.

If you are traveling this summer, consider sharing about your experience. Whether you are an IACS parent, teacher, or student, we’d love to hear about your experience, and see photos and videos about what it is like. You can send in the entry while you are on the road, or when you get back. Check out some of guest posts from previous years:

• Ms. Patterson in France
• Ms. Shaby in Portugal
• Mrs. Kapeckas in China
• Sra Schmalz in Costa Rica
• Mr. Ticotsky in Italy

If you are staying local, you could still write an entry. You could blog about eating a new kind of food, meeting someone from another country, seeing an international performance, or any other global experience. There are lots of ways to learn globally without going too far from home.

If you are middle school student at Innovation Academy, you’ll even get extra credit for your Social Studies summer packet work. It’s not too hard! Here are some tips for blogging:

• Give detail ~ Try to describe what happened so that your readers can imagine being there themselves.
• Read others’ entries ~ Ms. Krakauer will be blogging this summer from Japan and Iceland, and there will be lots of other guest posts. Before you write your own entry, explore the blog and read the posts of others!
• Focus on a theme ~ Instead of trying to cover everything in one post, choose a theme to focus on (for example, check out Ms. Krakauer’s entry about Turkish food, Mrs. Kapeckas’s entry about what’s polite in China, and Ms. Shaby’s entry about Portugese art.
• Include lots of photographs and videos ~ The easiest way to show a video is to put it on YouTube and then send the link, but you can also upload to GoogleDrive and share.
• Proofread your writing ~ Spelling and grammar mistakes on a published blog would be embarrassing.

Send your photos and text (3-6 paragraphs) to Ms. Krakauer (skrakauer@innovationcharter.org) via email or GoogleDrive. The best entries will be published on this site. We cannot guarantee that every entry will be put online, but we will do our best to publish all entries written with attention to detail.

Note: Whenever we publish content online, we need to be careful about internet safety. If you are under 18, we recommend that you don’t include your last name in the actual post. In addition, ask your parents if it’s ok to include photographs of you online, and have them email Ms. Krakauer to let her know that photographs of your image are acceptable to publish. Photographs of you having a global experience are always fun to see, but internet safety is most important.

So, summer begins soon and I’ll be posting from Japan (June 17-July 1) and Iceland (July 26-August 5). But don’t just expect to hear from me! There will be LOTS more posts coming soon. Look out for a first guest post from Mr. Mac who will be traveling to Ireland next week.