Carol Anne McGuire's class makes music with the world.

In fifteen years of teaching the blind and visually impaired, Carol Anne McGuire has learned that it's not enough to tell her students what the world is like. They need to experience it firsthand. That's meant filling her classroom with nearly 100 plants for a rainforest lesson, bringing a lion cub to class, and helping her students make an award-winning short documentary dispelling myths about blindness called "Get a Clue What We Can Do." But it's her latest project, Rock Our World, that is literally bringing the world into her classroom.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Rock Our World (www.rockourworld.org) brings together classroom teams--from the U.S. to New Zealand--to compose songs collaboratively using Apple's GarageBand software. Each class lays down a track (like guitars, drumbeats, or strings) before passing along the file to the next, until the original track has made it all the way around the globe. Throughout the process, the kids gather online to exchange stories, photographs, and films about their lives. "In one 30-second piece of music," says McGuire, "we could hear the flavor, culture, and drama of every single country."

RELATED ARTICLE: How You Can Connect with Classrooms Overseas

* EPALS GLOBAL NETWORK: The best known penpal service boasts a safe online environment used by students and teachers from 191 countries. www.epals.com

* EUROPA PAGES: Teachers looking for a language or cultural penpal exchange can post a free request on this site. www.europa-pages.com/school_form.html

* PEN PAL SWITCHBOARD: Post a request on the PenPals Project Chatboard to connect with a classroom abroad. http://teachers.net