Connecting students with others

The other day a colleague shared his learning from a workshop he attended at the beginning of the year, of being globally connected. It was cool to see what he had learnt and what he had taken away from the workshop and used in his class. One thing that stood out was e-pals (modernising the old-fashioned pen pals to become an online pal). He had used his contacts around the world to do a similar thing and it was neat to see emails between children saying 'mince and cheese pies were her favourite food and she enjoyed netball,' her buddy replied with 'what is a mince and cheese pie?' This opens up real and exciting learning opportunities for the children. Giving their writing an audience and purpose and more ownership over ensuring it makes sense and that they give detailed descriptions for others to understand. He also touched on some other cool websites like Kiva (which would be great to use if you were doing an entrepreneurial study as you loan people in third world countries a small sum of money to get their business ideas up and running. This means recognising a good idea as well as giving someone the break they need, showcasing another way of life that many are not exposed to. But getting back to e-pals. Following my colleagues sharing I attended a session at Southwell to do with e-pals. This teacher had used it with a range of age groups and loved seeing the learning that came out of it. She had made contact with schools overseas but also said it is nice to make contact with a school in your area and then at the end of the term meet up face-to-face for a picnic. She talked about the benefits that she had found from using e-pals. Getting the kids to take home their email replies and use them as a reading task at home. The idea of the audience and if their buddy is a good writer it may encourage them to lenghten their own writing as well as proof-read their work especially if they find their buddies hard to read due to surface features. E-pals do have pre-planed units for getting to know each other and the different cultures each pal brings which she had used and created a DVD with her class to showcase their school and community. The only down fall being that sometimes the buddy school isn't as into it as you are and this meant her school didn't get a DVD back which can be disappointing. So getting excited about the prospect of e-pals I headed home and jumped on the website. I thought about buddying up with a London school and looking at what it is like having the Olympics at their backdoor step. But with holiday differences this wasn't going to work. So then I started to think more locally. I have a friend who has a Year 3 class at Frankton. Her and I have started going on each others class blogs and leaving comments. My class just love getting comments from anyone but the idea of a comment from another schools teacher really gets them excited. So with the kids excitement and this newly formed link I thought why don't we try giving it ago with the two schools. On the Olympics theme I thought why don't we buddy them up and give each buddy a country. They can then be responsible for researching about that country that is attending the Olympics and put together there work on a Google Docs or email a powerpoint back and forth depending on ability. Stacey and I are going to meet in the holidays to look more at how we will work this for Term 3. But it is an exciting venture and one I am sure the kids will benefit from. One of my students yesterday came into school excited that she had made a face-to-face link with a girl from the Frankton class. It just so happens they do Ballet together. So I guess the limits to this e-pal concept are only limited by our imaginations.