More and more, with the advancing technology, countries and communities with diverse backgrounds are more easily able to connect and work with each other! Because modern society is pushing towards a globally accepting and collaborative community.
To promote the skill of being a global communicator and collaborator and to expose the children at an early age to cultural diversity and support them to develop empathy and acceptance of differences, a monthly lesson plan that I would do is to connect the class with an international classroom! By using the website epals.com, I would find the international classroom that would meet the needed criteria, exchange contact information and connect through Zoom for a live session as well as set up a pen-pal system for each student to personally communicate with.
Teachers would be able to refine their search by the purpose of the virtual encounters, age, class subject, and the primary source that would be used!
Each month, the children would be able to see their pen-pal partner face to face via zoom and throughout the months, they would write/draw to their pen-pal about current events that may be occurring in their city, family, school community, etc. For example, around the time of a holiday, such as Easter, the student can write or draw a picture (or both) to describe the traditions as well as expectations surrounding that holiday which may differ in the pen-pal's response letter depending on where they are from/what cultural environment they identify with.
Each month, the children would be able to see their pen-pal partner face to face via zoom and throughout the months, they would write/draw to their pen-pal about current events that may be occurring in their city, family, school community, etc. For example, around the time of a holiday, such as Easter, the student can write or draw a picture (or both) to describe the traditions as well as expectations surrounding that holiday which may differ in the pen-pal's response letter depending on where they are from/what cultural environment they identify with.
For the actual online interactions, we will be using the Zoom application to have a live virtual face-to-face meeting.
By using the advanced technology that is readily available for our modern society and younger generations for intentional interactions and productive experiences, we steer the use of technology in classrooms for a positive and beneficial experience.
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing about how you would use epals. It was a neat app to learn about, first in Novembers text, but your explanation here about how you would implement it (along with the screenshots) makes the idea come to life even more. I could see students being very excited to connect with students their age across the globe. As a kid I had a few penpals in other countries through a website (I don't even remember what it was called now). I think it would have been so much fun to connect with a whole other class.
Making this kind of connection could lead to studies on the other classes culture and what better way to learn about something than to engage with those who have first hand experience with that thing! It could be beautiful to connect children across the globe. I particularly love that epals happens in a class (rather tan individual) format.
Thanks for sharing!
Samantha
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteI like that you plan to turn this lesson into a repeated classroom experience for your students. Allowing these interactions to happen throughout the school year will encourage your class to befriend these international students and form a personal connection. I think it is a great idea to share different holiday and events with their international peers. I am sure that your class will also benefit from learning about different cultural events directly from a primary source as well.