WebPals

Well, this is my entry into Teach Paperless 's Cinco de Mayo contest for using Web 2.0 tools, a great blogger by the way. (It never hurts to butter up the judge:) WebPals is taking the traditional pen-pals idea, but using Skype to make it a real conversation between students of different cultures. If you are unfamiliar with Skype, it is a free download that allows you to make free video calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world. I know there are many classes with pen pals through email, but I believe using a program like Skype for a face-to-face conversation takes it to a much higher level.

Students would be signed up with another student from a different culture around the world. They would have 5-10 minute conversations once a week. It would start out structured with certain topics to talk about but allowing free conversation. The goal would be to develop cross-cultural friendship that would decrease students prejudices and stereotypes and increase their tolerance. I used to teach in an alternative school in a rural district that had very little diversity. I had students in class with neo-nazi tattoos and who had gotten in trouble for burning crosses in people's yards. WebPals would give those students a chance to get to know personally someone who is diiferent from themselves and discover the similarities that they have.

Of course, other tools like edmodo (twitter is blocked for students at our school) could be used too, but I think Skype would be the most fun and interactive for the students. The long term goal would be to develop cross-cultural friendships and then develop a social action project to work collaboratively on. The main pitfall holding up my plans is finding the right international school that is interested, speaks English, is in a timezone that is compatible, and has the technology to do it. I would really like to connect to a school in South or Central America because the time zones are similar and they have the largest cultural differences to my students, sorry Canada:(

In my class we have made a few successful Skype calls, but next year I hope to take to the next level with WebPals. How about you? Anyone interested in giving it a shot with us? Leave a comment or tweet me @concretekax

Frozen Water Crystals in Church

I love my pastor, Rob Bell, because he always challenges in relevant ways. He showed pictures of Dr. Emoto's work demonstrating how thoughts (words written on paper and taped onto glasses) affect the patterns of frozen water crystals. This clip shows some of them.

Clip is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWn4QF6dCwM

The logical, skeptical part of me has trouble comprehending this, but it demonstrates the power of thoughts. We all have had feelings where we can sense a tension in the air between people even when no words have been spoken. My wife has an incredible sixth sense about people and situations. Dr. Emoto's work possibly shows the science behind those feelings.

As a teacher who is getting very excited about Web 2.0 teaching and tools, I have been following many conversations on blogs and on twitter. I am excited as I change my teaching style through the new tools available. I was also considering the TPACK model as shown to me by Matt Townsley here. We were tweeting about the importance of curriculum and pedagogy driving the proper use of technology and not vice-versa. As many have argued, it's not about the technology.

I could not help but think that with all of the excitement in blogs and twitter about the new tools, we always need to focus on the students first. The old cliche "they don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care" still rings true. The water crystals reminded me of this again. Our students need our positive thoughts and verbal encouragement as much as they need the "new tools". Take time, especially now in the crazy end of the year, to positively affirm all the good you can find in every student.

After the Call

I finished the Skype call with Linda Lowery and Richard Keep, wife and husband. Linda writes children's books with Mexican themes and Richard illustrates them. I helped a 6th grade Language Arts teacher facilitate the call. The students prepared questions and learned about Mexican culture and why Linda choose to be an author. The students really enjoyed talking to them in live time while they were in Mexico.

My opinion of the Skype call was that it worked great. I projected their image on a large screen with my LCD projector. We had good audio and video feed the whole time. The students were a little bit shy. I think with more experience they would be more natural with it. I would like to try some kind of backchannel next time. I will have to find a platform that is not blocked or get IT to unblock it. The greatest part is bringing experts into the room from around the world. The sky is the limit with Skype!

Skype with authors in Mexico

These children's authors will be meeting with one of our English classes from Mexico using Skype this week.