Using Global Collaboration For A Classroom

This week I got the chance to explore ePals which is a global learning community for parents, teachers and students K-12. This is a platform where classrooms can collaborate on projects with other communities around the world. It is a safe learning environment to students to be able to communicate and share ideas. Student are able to learn about what is going on around the world, their cultures, language, and communication etc.I was amazed by how well organized and how many ideas and projects that are taking place. It's a great way for students and teachers to share their learning styles and ideas to continually make learning a fun experience! There are many themed projects and students and teachers are able to use the search engine if they're looking for a particular topic and are able to narrow down their search by country and language. What I like is the way it is set up in lining of the projects and describes them in a well organized manner by stating objectives and standards, activities, lesson plans, and resources to aid students in participating in these projects.

One of the projects that I stumbled upon while visiting this site was the Monster Writing Project, this one particular classroom in France was looking for another class to collaborate on this project with in order to improve student's reading and writing skills in English. Student draw a sketch of a monster and then write a detailed description of it. Their partner then reads it and attempts to draw the monster. Students are then able to look at the original sketch and match the drawing. Winners get their drawing displayed. I like that this is a project that can engage and motivate students to working on their language skills. It helps them build their reading, writing, and critical thinking. This would be something that I would enjoy using in my own ESL classroom one day. I would look into getting students to maybe share their stories of their daily activities or write about their favorite pet in order to get them to work on their writing and reading skills. Although the monster writing  project is one of the ideas that I really like because it really incorporates all the skills that student would need to work on when learning a new language. There are so many ideas and projects that teachers can use in their classrooms to motivate students to learn.