Collaborative Project

I am thinking abou how I can have students do a collaborative project using some of the ideas from this presentation. I think that this would work well with The Giver. I could put students in groups and have them create their own virtual community. We would look at the problems in our world now and talk about how we can do away with those problems. They would do research and look at some communities in our world now that are structured differently and also the community in which Jonas lives. I would have them create their own government, education, housing, laws, ect. for their community. I have seen other teachers do a similar project, but it was more pen and paper or draw a poster kind of a project. What if we had each group create their own website for their community? Other students could then spend time looking at the ideas of their peers and evaluate the different communities. Would these changed communities create new problems to be faced? This is a great starting point for me to look into for next year.