Aussie Yr 5-7 class looking for international partners

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Laura Gonzalez on August 27, 2009 at 7:48am

Hi!

I teach a reading improvement class in the suburbs of Dallas. My students range in age from 11-16.

My district really loves for us to collaborate and provides us with all the support necessary. Would you be interested in us?

Laura

Permalink Reply by Aaron Maurer on August 27, 2009 at 12:04pm

I might be able to work something out with you as well. I teach talented and gifted so I would have to tie part of the process to curriculum, but I don't think that would be hard. I have the same age group as you. Let me know if interested in creating a communication

Permalink Reply by Betsye Sargent on August 27, 2009 at 1:52pm

Jason,
This is something that would interest us. We're a small school, very interested in global collaborations and learning how to use Web 2.0 tools to make this happen. Let us know if you are interested and how to begin.
Betsye

Permalink Reply by Bernadette Roche on August 27, 2009 at 7:40pm

Count me in! I'd love to be able to communicate with other students on other continents, skype if we can, or even share voicethreads and/or podcasts. I'd really like my students to be able to see and hear with whatever we do with other countries.

Permalink Reply by Chris Llewellyn on August 28, 2009 at 5:48pm

Hey Jason-

You might like to have a look at www.rafi.ki, our not-for-profit online community for schools from 114 countries (including quite a few from Oz). We have lots of totally safe communication tools and projects that you and your students could use to work with people around the world. It is totally free for any school outside the UK.

Many schools have been doing joint audio and video podcasts which you might be interested in. Anything that I can do help please let me know. I've attached some press articles which give some really good case studies,

Cheers,

Chris

Attachments:

• RafiKiPressLeaflet4pp.pdf, 505 KB

Permalink Reply by Jason McMahon on August 29, 2009 at 4:31pm

Thanks Chris, I had a quick look and it looks really good. I'll check it out in the next few days.

Permalink Reply by Rashidah Tutashinda on August 29, 2009 at 6:29pm

Thank you for the resource. My students have used http://www.globalschoolnet.org in the past.

Permalink Reply by Jason McMahon on August 29, 2009 at 4:29pm

Thank you all for your interest. It is great to have so many keen teachers out there!

I was planning to match each of my students up with an email style "pen pal" (is there a new cyber name for that?) I'm feeling a bit guilty with only having 1 class and 4 responses. We have 3 other classes within our school of 11-14 y/o students so I think we may be able to accommodate for everyone. I'll let you exactly how many classes I've got for that in the next few days. If we get more people on board you may be able to find more interested classes at your school.

Our students have their emails but I think we may be better off using epal for the student emails. They scan the emails for any inappropriate use, we can access them and there is also a translate function if we have any non-English speaking schools come on board. It feels a bit "Big brother" like, but until we are confident with the students global citizenship skills, I think this is the way to go.

Themes and activities: Please put forward your thoughts on this one! I really like the idea of learning about other cultures, communities, ways of life etc. It sounds like I'm not the only one new to International Collaboration. I think we need to start off with small, manageable tasks. Due to our timezones making live work difficult, perhaps we could begin with Voice Thread (for those of you who are new to this, Voice Thread is very easy. Once we establish contact details, each school/class can create at least voice thread that other classes can respond to.

As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself. If you want to be part of the student emails activities, send me your class numbers, and approximate ages. At the moment, we've got 4 US classes and I'm pretty sure I can arrange 4 Aussie classes (or if you've got better ideas about organising this, let me know)

As for the idea of a cinema day. I think we can aim for that but we need to start small and easy as I know we will have varying degrees of expertise.

Most importantly, your students MUST know cyber safety thoroughly. I'm thinking that we begin this project after October 5th (we will return from school holidays) That should give you time to cover it. Perhaps even integrate it into activities through Voice Thread, Xtranormal, lovelycharts, blogs etc so you become familiar with the web2.0 tools.

I would like to hear your thoughts.

Permalink Reply by Jody Watson on September 2, 2009 at 9:40pm

Hello there I have a small classs of 22 students that would be interested in doing some collaboration we are located in Canada. They are aged 13-14.

Permalink Reply by Betsye Sargent on September 3, 2009 at 6:37am

Jason,

Are you hoping just to connect with one class or more than one throughout the world? Can't tell if we all are joining together which would be quite a rich and diverse group. We don't start school until Sept. 14th and only can offer 13 5-8th graders, but we continue to be very interested. One question about Skype? Is it just used to talk by phone or does it use a web cam which is nice because we can see one another. We'd love to share our city and culture with others. Know there is a time difference, but maybe we'll stay late one day so we can chat.

Betsye and Barbara

Permalink Reply by Jason McMahon on September 10, 2009 at 6:45pm

I have forwarded this link to my collegues so they can establish a connection with your classrooms (I'm sorry for anyone who doesn't successfully find a partner school through this, but keep at it!). As Laura was the first to respond, I will contact her to see if her class and mine can work together. I am happy to put some activities up for us all to be involved with such as Voice Thread but this perhaps a collaborative site such as Rafi might be more effective.

Permalink Reply by Laura Gonzalez on September 11, 2009 at 7:20am

Whoo-hoo! I was the first to respond! :)

My students use both Gaggle.net and Moodle.com to correspond electronically. We have a few days off scattered here and there but for the most part my classes are very flexible. Each of my students is online doing projects and exercises for about 30 minutes a day. They'll have time to respond to e-mail.

I'm working each year on improving my tech skills. This is my experiment for this year. I really hope that it's successful!

Thanks for everything and I hope you have a fantastic school year!

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