Title: Laws of Life
The Laws of Life Project is an international collaboration project for 9-21 year-old students. The project discussed below will be tailored to the developmental levels of 4th and 5th Grade students.

The project begins early in the school year while the class starts discussing the rules and principles with which it interacts in the school. By looking at the Core Democratic Values, the class can start to have discussions about the rules, ideals, and principles that govern our nation and how they apply specifically to the individual. This leads to the Laws of Life Project. The teacher would arrange students into groups of 4 or 5 students. These groups discuss and form their own "Laws for Life" that they feel everyone should follow. As a group, they need to find persuasive reasoning for each Law of Life and describe the underlying source for its creation. In collaboration, each group chooses their strongest-supported Law of Life and write an essay that explains and supports their view.

Upon completion of peer editing and group revision, the students e-mail their essay to the Laws of Life website where other members (from around the world) can post comments and responses. The intention is to get a variety of feedback from students that live in different places and have different perspectives on the world. Each group can look at the comments and suggestions offered them and choose to revise and resubmit their Law of Life essay at any time during the school year. Also, the students are required to read several submissions from other project members and respond thoughtfully to their Laws of Life.

The project can then be expanded to applications within the classroom (and beyond). After creating their own Laws of Life and viewing many from the website, the class chooses 3 or 4 Laws to live by while in the school. Further work could continue in the creation of a community action project developed and led by the students.

• To relate the Core Democratic Values to the Laws of Life Project
• To collaborate effectively and thoughtfully with the purpose of creating a law, ideal, or principle to live by
• To support an idea using personal experience, an understanding of the social environment, and a persuasive voice
• To utilize peer editing and revision skills
• To use technology to e-mail text to a website and submit thoughtful comments in relation to someone else's essay
• To bring to life some new ideals within the classroom and perhaps the community

Students within the 4th and 5th Grades are developmentally able to relate similar ideas (Core Democratic Values and Laws of Life) and are developing the maturity to form persuasive arguments relative to a social matter. They see themselves as part of a group and can understand the underlying theme of the Project as finding an ideal for everyone to live by (especially when it is applied within their own classroom). Lev S. Vygotsky, stated that "All learning is social." The Laws of Life Project exemplifies this principle on many levels, from the discussion of school rules, to the study of the Core Democratic Values and their place in society, to the creation and implementation of each Law of Life. Each part is steeped in social context.

The Laws of Life Project is a very social activity that encourages collaboration of students with varying opinions and backgrounds to dialogue an appropriate principle for all people. Further, the group must come to agreement on the ways to support this principle and the structure of their persuasive essay. There are opportunities to take skills from instruction (editing, revising, giving constructive criticism, etc.) and apply them socially within this group framework.

Individually, participating students must internalize their learning about the design of a principle, and its use in the social world, to submit a thoughtful and reflective paragraph to e-mail another project member in regards to their Law of Life.

The NET Standards that are most prevalently seen in this program would be:

• Use keyboards and other common input and output devices efficiently and effectively.
• Discuss basic issues related to responsible use of technology and information and describe personal consequences of inappropriate use.
• Use technology tools for individual and collaborative writing, communication, and publishing activities to create knowledge products for audiences inside and outside the classroom.
• Use telecommunications efficiently to access remote information, communicate with others in support of direct and independent learning, and pursue personal interests.
• Use telecommunications and online resources to participate in collaborative problem-solving activities for the purpose of developing solutions or products for audiences inside and outside the classroom.