The past week my friend from New Zealand and I have been getting everything ready for our students to begin their online penpal experience. We set up accounts for each of our students on kidblog.org and put our students into groups of 2 or 3. We thought this would make the conversations be more realistic and personable. Additionally, we decided that we were going to focus on economically friendly schools as a discussion topic for our students. Their school in New Zealand is an Eco-friendly school and they go above and beyond to be green. I don't know a whole lot about what they do at their school, but I am anxious to learn. I have talked with my class about the topic, vaguely, and asked them to brainstorm ways that our school is eco-friendly. Additionally, I told my students that throughout these discussions I want them to be thinking about a school-wide project our school can implement to help our school in North Carolina become an eco-friendly school.
Today I checked the blog and saw that my friend's class has made their first posts. My students will go to the computer lab tomorrow, read, and respond. I am so anxious to hear the reactions from my students when they see the words "rubish" (trash), "mum" (mom) and "nude foods" (foods with no wrappers). The whole language diversity/similarity is going to be a new learning experience in itself. This is my first penpal experience with another class, let alone another class across the world. I am anxious to see what comes from this experience!
This is an awesome idea! I love it! What grade do you teach?
ReplyDeleteI have always wanted to do penpals; however, I have first graders and when they first come to me many of them can't really read :( So they may not be ready for this until Jan or so. But, I love to teach them to read!
I hope you post again in the near future on how this project is going with your students. Way back when I was in school (before ANY technology existed), we thought we were something special when we had penpals to whom we could write letters on paper! It was so cool! I can't imagine how much more dynamic the experience is for today's students who could easily send multiple entries in one week alone. The potentials for learning are truly vast! Have fun!
ReplyDeleteLike Karen, I can't wait to hear how this project goes. What a great opportunity for students to develop global awareness and learn to communicate with people in a different place in the world! Do you have any plans to use YouTube and video-pals similar to those mentioned in the "Digging into YouTube" article?
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