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GLOBAL YOUTH DIALOG WITH KIDLINK
By participating in our forum and projects, you open your classroom door to the world.
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Find a Kidlink project suitable for your students in the "Project center" Explore the Project Archive
2) Do you want implement and promote a new collaborative project? Are you looking for ideas on how to do it?
At the end of this page you can read about:
A. Inviting other teachers.
B. Looking for PenPals?
C. "Learning about other cultures" from a-JuliaM (Ar)
D. How to structure a Kidlink Project
3) Are you interested in learning about how to encourage kids' global learning?
Kidlink encourages global learning engaging and connecting students in projects that are educationally beneficial, which promote responsible and caring citizens in the world.
"Project learning"
Enables students to become involved with academic content while being part of a social, knowledge sharing community. Deeper learning happens because topics are real and matter to the students.
"Charles Town Middle School participated in a math unit solving problems and interpreting graphs, data and statistics with math classes in Russia, Italy and Illinois through Kidlink." From The Journal December 2: Program encourages kids'global learning
Articles on Learning with Projects:
Why Teach with Project Learning?
What Makes a Good project?
Creating a Learning Revolution.
Playful Learnin.g (MIT)
Making Learning Visible. (Harvard)
Project Management Keeps Learning on Track.
Understanding from Collaborative Methods.
Why Teach with Project Learning?
What Makes a Good project?
Creating a Learning Revolution.
Playful Learnin.g (MIT)
Making Learning Visible. (Harvard)
Project Management Keeps Learning on Track.
Understanding from Collaborative Methods.
Research on Learning with Projects
New Media and Authentic Learning.
Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning.
Changing the Face of Traditional Education: Project-based Learning.
A Review of Project-based Learning.
A. Inviting other teachers
Cooperation between teachers and youth leaders is key for success with classroom projects with youths. When you want to run a project, it is important you talk with other Kidlink leaders to find more schools for your project and then coordinate activities and time.
Some of our projects do not require teachers to create student partner groups. But the benefit of the project is increased if there are more participants. It is very much a situation of "The More The Merrier".
Here are some things teachers can do to bring in more participants:
- Invite your grade level partners at school or within your district to participate with you.
- Invite partners from previous projects to join you in this project
- Post a message to your twitter list (or equivalent)
- Mention the project on your school blog (if you have one). Invite your readers to view the work your students have already posted, and encourage them to join.
- Remember that interesting colleague you met at the last seminar/conference/workshop/class you attended? Invite that person to participate with you.
B. Looking for Penpals?
Some teachers register in Kidlink to give their students a chance to meet someone from another country. They seem to help their students to find PenPals. "I would love for my students, who live in a small country town .. to have a chance to meet someone from another country..." - "I hope to find ideas to create a partnership with other schools and to connect my children with other children and work together." - "I want to open the world to my class. I want to learn about other countries from children who live there." - "I would like for them to communicate with other students to really expand their world."
About what should your students talk about with their epals? Kidlink has projects created for the classroom. These projects allow collaboration with classrooms speaking English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Catalan, Chinese and other languages. The language itself is not a barrier to collaboration.
Look e.g. at WAI project. Your registered students can create their pages, they can connect and work together . They can read their profiles in "Tools" and get new friends.
Every Kidlink project gives the opportunity to communicate peer-to-peer, each student or group of students can have a personal page and involve other students in the project. They will always have something to tell each other as they know what they are talking about. In this way they will overcome the difficulties of old-fashioned foreign pen-pal projects. Students will have the opportunity to talk using words and/or pictures about their culture, country, school, holidays, games and to make friends all over the world!
Consider the opportunity to involve your class in one of our projects or suggest a new one for all of us!
C. Learning about other cultures
Hi! My name's Julia and I'm from Argentina. I work in an English Institute and a rural school. I was thinking about a project where students from differents countries can learn more about others cultures. How to participate? Students make a calendar or write about their community's celebrations. When is it and how they celebrate it.
One example:
Argentina: March, 24 - NATIONAL DAY OF MEMORY FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE. It's the beginning of the military dictatorship of 1974. The meaning of this holiday is just to remember the victims of this slaughter and not lose the memory that something like this happens again in the country. It's not just a day to not work as some people see.
I hope this activity will be funny and interesting to all the students and that they enjoy learning others cultures.
a-JuliaM (Argentina).
D. How to structure a Kidlink Project - Guidelines Go here