Seems like getting schools to link with foreign counterparts is a silver bullet. Improved citizenship and motivation they say – for both pupils and staff. There is a surprisingly excellent UK govt site that provides a match making message board along with plenty of well writen articles on how to inititate a link and then gives you ideas on what kind of activities can be done. The BBC and the British Council are also heavily involved.
www.globalgateway.org UK Govt. Dept. for Education & Skills
www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass I enjoyed the Radio 5 Live audio
Any way it seems that the first thing that happens is that the teachers go on holiday/ make a cultural visit to the country in question. Months, if not years later maybe some kids get to go. If this improves the motivation of teachers, I’m all for it.
And from the otherside of the fence… When I was at school, we had a French exchange program and it was great! Perhaps 25 pupils from different age groups jumped on a bus and went down to Normandy for 10 days to stay with our pen pals . We went to school with them, we went on trips, we messed about and certainly improved our French. I hope the teachers enjoyed it too.
Nowadays with falling flight prices schools are being more adventurous, Africa is popular. I guess the fact that we share similar time zones helps, making real time communications easier, and what an incentive to use all these new communication tools, email, Skype, Video conferencing. Schools are actually trying to do development work collaborating with poorer schools.
Ok, its a hell of a lot of work to initiate or even maintain school linkages, a lot of it unpaid, but it must be worth it. I’m a fan of travelling as part of a cultural exchange and that means going with a group – a lot more fun than going with the family.
Also see previous postlet : Skype for Schools
