For a number of years I have used The Candy Cultures Activity, first as a multiculturalism activity, then as a leadership activity. I had a chance to experience it on two other levels recently. First, I ran the activity at our Pro-D with staff a week ago.  I also shared it with the Student Leadership Council (SLC) Executive and, this week, they ran the activity at their first meeting with about 60 students participating.

In the activity members of a specific culture greet and chat with members of other cultures. One culture consists of 'close talkers' who like to make physical contact when talking, others like their personal space. Some cultures feel subservient and/or superior to other cultures. Participants mingle and a funny social 'dance' begins.

 With the staff: After running this activity with students for so many years it was wonderful to run it with adults. I was impressed with the involvement of my peers, they really engaged in the activity. What I enjoyed most was listening to the meta-analysis of the activity during the debrief. I didn't have to lead the conversation anywhere, it simply flowed from why we did it as a staff, to why to do the activity with students, to how it relates to our school beliefs...etc. I ended the debrief talking about how sometimes in a meeting we might all have the schools' best interest in mind, but yet because of a defensive tone, or because of someone taking a different approach, we end up seeing each other in adversarial roles. We misinterpret 'delivery' with 'intent'. I then pointed out that in 9 years at the school this is the first time we have almost all of the staff back. We know each other, and don't need to do the 'cultural dance' we do with new people, so we really have the potential to have a great year.

With the SLC, (student leaders representing each middle and high school in the district): I have never had the opportunity to casually observe this activity without being involved in some way. The approach taken was very good, and what I really liked was the debrief questions they came up with.

• 1. Describe your frustrations/challenges.
• 2. How do you improve communication?
• 3. Relate the experience to school.

Question one is about the experience students went through. Question two asks students to look inward and improve their own experience. Question three asks students to look outward at their school experience. The discussion went very well and it was great to see students pulling this off so eloquently with their peers.

I heard Alan November speak tonight and although there were many great ideas, one key idea hit a cord with me.

"Students will work harder for an authentic audience than for a grade"..."Students will do more if they leave a legacy beyond a grade."

The technology is there! I remember for a couple weeks after my On-line Renassance Fair Davinci Project, students were coming up to me saying they still went home and checked the site to see if anyone posted something new. When Alan told us about his course that ended months ago and students are still blogging, I had to wonder, Why didn't I keep mine going? The students had a voice... and an audience.

Think of how you would change what you do when your audience changes:

Making dinner for yourself vs making dinner for a new friend.

Thanking someone personally vs thanking them in front of 100 people.

Teaching a class vs teaching peers at a Pro-D.

...Our audience matters, wouldn't it make sense that this is true for our students too?

And the audience is out there on the web... from experts to parents to peers to billions of internet users.

On a fun side note, think about the boy sitting in his basement lip sync-ing Numa Numa -hundreds of versions are on the net, millions have seen it! More people have seen this than some Multi-Million dollar movie productions. Furthermore his fans have now copied this guy, here is a version: Lego Numa Numa (Over 250,000 views for this copy alone!).

I've seen some really bad, poorly made video clips on google video and YouTube that have had over 15,000 people see it... there is an audience out there, and if that helps motivate students, if it gives them a legacy or a global voice as Alan suggests, well, what are we waiting for?

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I added a clustrmap to this blog on Nov. 23/06. What a great tool show kids that they have a global audience!

Cheryl Oakes posted How Many Hits Has Your Refrigerator Had? on TechLEARNING.com- have kids post their work on a "worldwide refrigerator", rather than the one at home.