Beth Weed’s third grade class at Andalusia Elementary School has been using the power of social media to learn about and reach different cultures around the globe.

“We are doing our Around the World study, in which we learn about seven different countries,” Weed said. “I recently posted a picture and asked everyone to like and share it and it just kind of took off from there.”

The picture that Weed posted was of her students lying in circle with a sign in the middle telling people to like and share it. When the Star-News went to press Tuesday night, the post had been shared more than 800 times and had reached more than 30,000 people.

“We started getting people from all over sharing our post and writing to us in the comments,” Weed said. “Some have even sent us packages with things from their countries. The kids have just been mesmerized by the all the different responses.”

To help keep track of what all countries the class has reached, Weed has been using the app PinBox.

“With PinBox, you are only supposed to have about 80 pins to place, but we needed a lot more than that,” Weed said. “I talked to someone with the company and they set us up with a map that we could place 400 pins on. We went through those 400 quickly and are now on our second map.”

When they began the experiment, Weed said she initially printed out maps for the children to mark the places they had reached, but with the overwhelming response for the post that quickly became impossible.

“Our goal when we started was to have someone from each state respond,” Weed said. “It didn’t take long at all for that to happen. We have been very surprised by the amount of responses from all over the world. The people from the Philippines and Australia have had some very friendly responses. One lady from Australia even sent us a package of vegemite for us to try and she is trying to send us a package every week.”

Weed said her students have really enjoyed learning about all the other cultures around the world through talking with the people who respond to the post.

“We have been trying to respond to each individual comment that has been left on the post,” Weed said. “It’s really helped the kids a lot. They are learning about different cultures, but at the same time they are learning about social media and computer safety. When they respond to the post they take their time and they are making sure that all their punctuations are correct because they would feel embarrassed if they post something wrong.”

The students said they were amazed to learn about all the different cultures around the world.

“I just never thought that places like Tasmania and Africa had the technology of cell phones and stuff like that to get on Facebook,” Riley Zane Tucker said. “I also didn’t know that so many people from different countries spoke our language.”

When asked what they hoped to gain from the experience the students had many different things they hoped to learn.

“I want to learn about the different animals and maybe learn an African ritual dance,” Cade Cassady said. “Just talking to the people who have responded has been very exciting.”

Tucker said he hopes to get a response from every country in the world.

The project will last until the end of the school year when they will have their “Around the World” event at school where the students will get to try foods from several different countries.