A math organization has students coordinating across the globe to expand the reach of math, discuss social issues, and bring an understanding of diversity to the world.

Math teacher Jose Israel Ramirez, Special-Ed Co-Teacher Jacky Aguilar, and Spring Valley’s JAG leader Mike Augustine are coordinators for Spring Valleys branch of International Community for Collaborative Content Creation (IC4), an organization dedicated to having students create math tutorials and videos on social issues that can be shared throughout the world. They work in collaboration with Pepperdine University to reach people in Kenya, Finland, Namibia, and many other countries.

“When my students— students create, collaborate with the students in Namibia or Kenya, and Africa, there is diversity happening, so they share cultural differences, they share knowledge, they share the way they learn mathematics over there, and they share the way they learn mathematics over here, for example,” Ramirez said.

The organization focuses on three main points of inquiry: learning, collaboration, and culture.

In this student-run organization, students are able to create com- puter games, computer programs, interactive books, short films, and more. The videos made can be found on creationsforlearning.net. Students come up with their own project ideas and are not directed by the advisors.

“The projects students create every year, it’s evolving into something new,” Ramirez said. “When we get to meet people from Africa, get to know people from California, New York City, Washington D.C., there is a lot of stuff, diversity going on,” Ramirez said, “And if you can learn about differences of people, you will be able to understand how people behaves; you will be able to respect people because we’re all different, different cultures.”

Funded by the International Science Foundation of the United States and the Department of Education for the United States, the students are able to hold real-time discussions with people across the globe using fuse.net, a global channel, to connect.

“Basically, what I do want from students [is something] that gives them the opportunity to do global collaboration,” Ramirez said, “I believe that if we do that, we’re providing this opportunity for kids to share ideas, to share culture, to share knowledge, in a global setting.”

One of the other coordinators, Jacky Aguilar, says that she loves to see students chat and become friends with people around the world. She enjoys working with students who truly want to learn and help, and who aren’t just taking the class to sit back and watch.

“[The students] see differences in everything about schools, about teachers, about social issues, so that students are engaged,” Aguilar said.

Sophomore Kekai Chun is planning to look at how much money Nevada and Las Vegas, alone, makes over the course
of a year, and how much of that money is put into education and the Clark County School District for his project.

“[My favorite part it] that you get to help students all around the world, and you’re basically like a tutor and a teacher, because you both learn and you both get to teach,” Chun said.

Chun definitely thinks that IC4 is going to make a change in
the world, by bringing students together from all around the world.