Chapter 7 Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is especially important for my foreign language class. The students must be able to communicate successfully in order to pass the class.

In this chapter I was most interested in the Keypals. I have worked with a company in the past that connects school children to each other via snail mail. I don't count it as a class assignment, I just ask who's interested and set them up with an account with the company. Several of my students have actually kept a bit of a correspondence with their pen pals. But how much easier an e-pal! I did look on the epals.com site. There were some projects listed already or I could collaborate with another teacher to make our own project. I will have to decide how many and which of my students I would like to have participate. Maybe this year I'll have my first period class do this. Once I get the hang of it then I'll add more. Or maybe even have a first semester group of students and then a different set of second semester students do it. There is a project that my students do on Publisher - they make a tri-fold brochure of their city. So, my students could use their city brochure or make one about their school and use that as a way of introducing themselves to the other students. I am most excited about this use of technology in my classroom.

I also was thinking about the students using the internet to consult experts about my subject. As is turns out Real Academia Espanola has a web site you can use to ask them questions. This is great, the next time one of my students has a question about why or how about something in the Spanish language I will send them to this website.

And speaking of sending the students to a certain website, I do think I will be using a shared bookmarking link. I have four student computers so it wouldn't be that big of a deal to bookmark the same site on each computer, but with a shared bookmarking site the students can add their own bookmarks. In the past I have had to move a student off a computer because it was the one the other student was working on the day before and all of his work is still on it. Many of my students don't realize how often they have the need to re-visit old work and they don't seem to save their work. But this way it's more like they're sharing a good website that they found - they're showing others their good research skills. I think they will be inclined to use this too.