I recently attended a presentation from French teacher, Bernard Garcin. He has been running a collaborative project with 30 schools around the world. They use online technologies to support their students’ language learning. They started with email but have slowly graduated to more sophisticated web-based tools. The students are given projects to do, covering a range of themes. For example, two groups were asked to compare and contrast their countries’ energy consumption levels; another group was asked to describe a tour around their home city. All students must write in a foreign language in their correspondence (ie. they are not allowed to use their native language!) One interesting technique he talked about was the use of ‘online pools / surveys’ to initiate interest and spark debate amongst students. On a practical level, Bernard said that because of time zones, theyneed a min. of 4 schools to make the projects work and approx. 10 was an ideal number of participant schools.
Footnote: A number of similar collaborative projects with a creative and language arts theme can be found here.

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12 Responses to “Connecting learning across the world.”

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