Saturday, December 6, 2014

"She has no children - but she would like to have a dog!"

Since the beginning of this term in August 2014, three young 6th grader girls have taken interviews from people around the world. Meanwhile they have caught up people from all continents and started to open the window into their new world.

They met Ibrahim Bahati ,
communication specialist from Kabale, Uganda
(They are using headphones, because we are
recording these sessions meanwhile)
It started in August 2014 after a mystery skype videoconference that class had had with a teacher from Japan. He gave them information about school life straight from the Japanese school's teachers' room. And he introduced some Japanese traditions to them concerning food. By that fantastic meeting the students got to know about the great power of using modern technologies in the classroom. Thea, Marie and Sophie from this grade 6 class told me straight after that lesson that they would like to meet people around the world getting more information from abroad and about their traditions and that they would like to be ambassadors of our German home country..

The ladies met at home in advance to create a questionaire for the persons they would meet. Questions about school life and personal questions concerning the unknown guest itself were written down.
Students from Brno, Czech Republic

We set up a certain time slot which has fit the students' time table. The girls have taken their chance to meet others from abroad,  teachers and librarians mostly. But they also met whole classes like that one from Brno in the Czech Republic, an English language class and a German language class, grade 7.

Every Wednesday at 12.30 am GMT they have hosted a different guest by videoconferencing in my classroom for about 40 minutes. The ladies always start with a mystery session. That means they want to find out in which country this person lives asking "yes"- or "no"- questions. After that excercise they usually ask question about the foreigners' likes and dislikes and how life is around them. They always write down the information they get. Finally they try to teach them a little German and they are openminded to learn the same phrases in the guest's mother tongue.

They are creating a profile at their map
about Athalo Carrao, teacher from Brazil
After the first four meetings we set up a google map to fix all the guests' locations. They gather all information they have got and write them down on this map in a certain text body.
Facing this map they are very proud to know that they have already met one or more than one person from each continent meanwhile. As a review the most fascinating person they met was a young teacher from Australia who isn't married yet, "...has no children - but would like to have a dog!" That is what they wrote down in the google map text body among others.




Thanks to all teachers and  librarians, engineers, specialists from the HLW skypers community and students from around the world who gave them the chance to open their window into their new world.


1 comment:

  1. That's a great article. It's like a skype japanese school. I'm also having classes at http://preply.com/en/japanese-by-skype and now I'm inspired because of your article. Thank you

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