Marian Faulkner
Social Action Projects and Keypals
Social Action Projects and Keypals
Social Action projects give students the opportunity to learn about a real world problem and then work to solve the problem. Keypals are activities in which students email each other to learn about different cultures or discuss common topics. Judi Harris, in her article Curriculum-Based Telecollaboration, has identified three types of telecomputing activities, which are interpersonal exchange, information collection and analysis, and problem solving. She suggests a number of activities and projects within each of these three. Keypals is a type of interpersonal exchange, while social action projects are a prolem solving activity. A number of the activities Harris mentions would be easily used and/or adapted for foreign language classrooms. I am interested, however, in using a type of keypal and a possible social action project in my classes.
Although Harris states that keypal were one of the first types of telecomputing activities and that they are a burden to manage, I think I would like to try them. EPals Global Network gives teachers a opportunity to try keypaling free of charge. It includes 35 accounts, which have to be used on the Global Network. Otherwise, you pay from $8 to $14 an account for their all access, high quality Epals School M@il (www.epals.com). I generally have less than 35 Spanish 3 and 4 students a semeser, so the free account may work well for us and I could have the students send me a copy of one email and reply per month to keep check on their progress. Additionally, once we started emailing we could develop questions to ask our epals and bring the answers back to class discussions.
The social action project that Harris discusses in her article about Nicaragua sounds like a wonderful experience for students. It is an I*EARN project called The Rope Pump Project Clean Water for Nicaragua where students from the United States contribute money for a rope pump and then communicate with the people it helped (Harris, 1998). After checking out the I*EARN website (http://www.iearn.org/index.html), there are a number of projects that would be ideal for our school, my Spanish classes and even the Spanish club. Friends and Flags is a multicultural learning project to promote cultural awareness and respect. For many of my students their foreign language and social studies classes are the only places they are truly exposed to other cultures. If I could give them the opportunity to communicate and work with students all over the globe on projects of peace and awareness, I believe we could foster an attitude of respect and understanding. Other projects include Operation H.O.P.E where countries in crisis are partnered with students who want to help and develop long-term relationships and other more laid back collaborations like an International Teen Scrapbook. There are a number of choices and most appear free. This may be an excellent way to get my Spanish club out of its stagnate meetings and into some worthwhile projects.
Harris concludes by pointing out the value of these projects that use technology, but where the technology is not the focus. Students are given the opportunity to collaborate, to construct their own knowledge and to be a part of something larger than themselves (Harris, 1998). It is my responsibility to give these types of experiences to my students. Now that I know about them, I do not have the choice not to share them with my students.
Posted at 10:32AM Jun 20, 2006 by mrfaulkn in General | Comments[0]