A team of very smart teenagers has set out to discover ways that maggots might make the world a better place. Two are from Loudoun County. Two live more than 9,000 miles away in Singapore.
To many U.S. politicians, educators and business leaders, Singapore's students have become a symbol of the fierce competition the nation faces from high achievers in Asia. But these four students call themselves "international collaborators" and friends.
Even as globalization has fed worries about whether U.S. students can keep up with the rest of the world, it also has spawned classroom connections across oceans. Teachers, driven by a desire to help students navigate a world made smaller by e-mail, wikis and teleconferences, say lessons once pulled mainly from textbooks can come to life through real-world interactions.
"When we talk on Facebook," Joanne Guidry, 17, one of the researchers at Loudoun's Academy of Science, said of her Singaporean peers, "you can't tell they are halfway around the world."
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