My name is Maria Swygert. I am currently a graduate student at the University of South Carolina working towards a Masters of Arts in Teaching degree in the area of Educational Technology. I wanted to create a unit that would appeal to all learners. By utilizing the magical world of Walt Disney's© Fantasia 2000, I hope to have created an enticing learning environment. I have combined the concepts of music, art, science, and math with technology simultaneously to create a productive means of gaining knowledge.

This technology unit focuses on Fantasia 2000, specifically, Ottorino Respighi's "Pines of Rome," and how the Disney artists interpreted the piece to integrate music and art. The unit is based upon National Math and Science standards for 5th through 8th grade students in the curriculum areas of science, music, art,, mathematics, and technology. The ideal goal to the conclusion of the unit is for the students to complete the activities, webquests, and have a greater understanding of the different subject matters and how they are integrated.

According to the National Middle School Association, curriculum integration is a curriculum design that promotes personal and social integration through the organization of curriculum around significant problems and issues, collaboratively identified by educators and young people, without regard for subject area lines. Planning for curriculum integration begins with an organizing theme followed by the question, "what significant activities might be done to address the theme?" Projects and other activities involve "integration" and application of knowledge in the context of a theme. Content and skill are taught, learned, and applied as they are needed to work on particular themes. While knowledge is drawn from the traditional disciplines (among other sources) students move from activity to activity, or project to project, rather than from subject to subject during the school day (as in the multidisciplinary approach). With its emphasis on real-life themes, contextual application of knowledge, and constructivist learning, the curriculum integration approach is particularly well suited to help students integrate learning experiences into their developing schemes of meaning. For this reason, the term "integrative" is often used to describe this approach. In one variation of curriculum integration, teachers and students plan together to create a thematic curriculum based upon questions and concerns students have about themselves and their world.

Curriculum designs based upon the philosophy of integration have been referred to variously as "transdisciplinary," "problem-centered core," and "unstructured core." Note that unlike other non-separate subject approaches, "curriculum integration" does not have the word "discipline" as its root and the same may be said for its use in schools.

Curriculum integration is rooted in progressive educational ideas like the Project Method, Gestalt psychology, the experience curriculum, and the problem-centered "core" curriculum. Because of its emphasis on collaborative teacher-student planning and real-life personal and social issues, the curriculum integration design is frequently associated with movements for democratic schools and curriculum.