Global Communities

The idea of collaborating with classes around the world is certainly appealing, especially when teaching language and culture. The ePals classroom match finder would be a great way to connect with other educators, both within the United States as well as internationally, who are interested in exposing their students to other perspectives and putting names and faces on other cultures and countries. Whether it’s through interacting via Skype or a more traditional penpal-like email exchange, getting to know another classroom somewhere else in the world is a great way to make the rest of the world (or country) seem both more real and more accessible to students.

The lessons and projects suggested on ePals are a great way to get students thinking about other parts of the world, and if they actually got to interact with students from those places, it might seem more relevant to them. While some of the projects seem a little superficial, they could still be great introductory lessons or background to a more authentic collaboration. I liked the Walk a Mile in My Shoes  project they suggest and could imagine doing something like that with students in both ESL and LOTE classrooms. I know my students in Germany had a lot of questions about what life was really like in the United States, because they had a hard time imagining that the things in their textbook were true. Having a real person they could ask questions of was fascinating for them, and since we can’t all take our students to other countries, trying to connect in other ways is that much more important. 

Digital Storytelling

Using webtools to create short digital photo stories, comic strips or even simple mini-movies like this one created using GoAnimate is a great way to get some creativity flowing into traditional conversation practice activities like role playing. Letting students create their own characters and backgrounds or choose from those available on some of the sites can be a lot more fun than simple writing dialogue on notebook paper and acting it out in class.

One of the advantages to creating a digital story of this sort is that once something like that is published or saved, it can be added to a portfolio, instead of just being forgotten as a classroom role play might be. This would be a great group activity or project, and the students could even develop the characters throughout the semester or school year, creating a series of comics or videos as different topics are addressed in class.

VoiceThread in the Second Language Classroom

Here are two excellent examples of how VoiceThread can be used in the second language classroom. Melissa's Spanish VoiceThread asks her students to use vocabulary and concepts being covered in class to complete a task on VoiceThread, and Yuechen's EFL VoiceThread  gives the new students in his English as a second/foreign language class an opportunity to introduce themselves and share a little of their experiences arriving in the United States. Both Melissa and Yuechen provided clear, detailed instructions about how to use VoiceThread and came up with creative tasks for their language students.