Students write!

Students have already begun to write in our virtual village, Viva.

You can link directly to the "Forum Europa" where the students are writing with this direct link.

There you can see the initial messages from some of Jackie's students in Ireland, writing in German and English, from some of Gosia's students in Poland, writing in English and Polish, and from some of my students, writing in English and French. Another group of Jackie's students has written in Irish and English.

Some of my students will begin writing responses to Gosia's students tomorrow (Thursday 29 Sept), and Elisabeth, our German teacher here at Lycée Astier, will have her students write in German to Jackie's students early next week. I'm hoping we can all get more classes involved, and get more international exchange going. Feel free to use any of the other buildings if a theme is appropriate to them. In the near future, I'm planning on having students write about renewable energy and climate change in the "Science Lab", and another class will soon be writing short mystery stories in the "Haunted House". Please email me if you still have doubts or questions about using the Viva virtual village. I will still be sending emails of my students' work to all participants, hopefully later today - if I can find the time!

Also, don't hesitate to post messages for the entire group here, or post some ideas to the "Teachers Room" in Viva.

On a practicl note, it's always best to have students write as a "reponse" to an ititial teacher message. That helps keep our forums organized, and as we continue it will be a big help in seeing who is responding to whom.

Cheers, --- Phil

Back to School!

Our students here at the Lycée Astier began classes yesterday, 5 September, and Bruno and I are looking forward to communicating regularly with all of you. We've got tentative agreements on participation from several other colleagues, and really hope we can make this multi-national project into something special.
As usual, we have a few technical issues to overcome, but our computer room should be operational by the first of next week, and in theory at least we have a grant to buy some simple videoconferencing tools that should allow our students to see and talk to each other more easily. I think it best to take this on a step-by-step basis, as I'm sure the resources we each have available to us are different. And I want to remind you that you don't necessarily need to work through me personally. If, for example, Gosia in Poland wants to exchange something with Jacqueline in Ireland then go ahead and just do it! All I ask is that all teacher-to-teacher communications be copied to the rest of our partners, so that anyone interested can jump in and help. Here is my plan to get started:

1)Within a week I plan to get 2-4 classes started writing on the "living spaces" theme: describing their homes, and later their school, classrooms, town and region. I'll have groups of 4-5 students work on each sub-section, submit their work for correction, and prepare it to be sent to all partners, both in English and in French. I suggest you do the same, in both English and your individual native languages. Or for teachers like Jackie who teach another target language (German) use the solution that works best for you.

2) I have already started working on the theme of "disaster", with BBC articles about the aftermath of the hurricane in the southern US. I plan to follow this theme in two directions, first with a WebQuest about climate change (using the BBC site on Climate Change and perhaps the following articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ) and then with an activity about living conditions and overcrowding, working from the recent tenement fires in Paris towards activites about living conditions around the 1880s - 1900s in New York and London. Both topics, climate change and living conditions, should be good motors for student participation, and allow for extensive exchanges of ideas with distant partners. I'd like to get your reactions to these.

I've had a few personal problems this summer, and am currently without an internet connection, except through my school. But I should nevertheless be able to share my documents with all of you within a few days. Lastly, I'm going to make a final effort to contact the other schools who said they were interested last year; at the very least, we've got Poland, Ireland, Italy and my school here in France. That should be enough for a super dynamic project, if we can all get into it and participate.

Cheers, --- Phil