Sage Advice question: Technology and foreign language/culture study

I have been exchanging postcards at www.postcrossing.com and I saw a teacher who used this site in her 2nd grade class. The sent and collected postcards through out the year and the students presented what they learned about the countries from where the postcards came.

I really enjoy going to Livemocha. It's a website for learning languages. A lot of their services are free and the format is very collaborative. The idea is that people who are native to a language can help others who are learning it. So for example I want to learn Turkish, I will do the exercises and submit what I did to the Turkish Speakers. They will then provide feedback comments in text or audio. Members earn teacher and student points and award ribbons depending on the frequency of comments and submissions.

I hope this helps.

www.livemocha.com

My suggestion would be to look at the museums that illustrate what your class is studying: for example: the Institute of Texan Cultures focuses on the cultures of Texas, but many of them are found throughout the U.S. Examples would be: Native Americans, the Poles, Hispanics, etc... - they have multimedia texts, books, and lesson plans available for teachers. Other museums which focus on specific cultures are: National Museum of the American Indian, Arab American National Museum, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and Houston, Texas. Hope this helps!

When my class can't visit a place in real life, we look at the websites of the places instead. Many German castles have virtual tours that you can take. I use my SMARTboard for that and it is almost as if you were there. I also use a lot of children's websites in my class for some first hand language experience. Finally the German embassy has websites that are designed for kids and teenagers that learn German or learn about German culture.

I used Livemocha earlier this year but since I started student teaching I stopped. Some of my friends are also using it but not as much as I did. Mostly I just helped English learners by reviewing their submissions. I was amazed with how many English language learners there are. Sometimes I would get 10 submissions per day to comment on.

As for postcrossing, here is a nice blog about a teacher who used it in the classroom: http://www.postcrossing.com/blog/2009/05/21/postcrossing-as-a-school-pro...

A small school in Finland also used the site to collect postcards but instead they solicited it through the forum so that they can get as many variations of cards. I sent them a map of California and one of their 6th graders sent me a handmade postcard.

You can also contact the founder of Postcrossing, Paulo Magalhaes: http://mentalstring.net/about/ I am sure he can provide you with more information.

I hope this helps.

I teach Digital Music (that's music in a computer lab) to 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Our Practical Arts Team (Art, Music, Technology & Computers) are infusing world cultures into our lessons this year. Our 6th graders will be participating in our own World's Fair later in January. The Art classes will be making 3 dimensional displays of a country. Technology students will be making games with a theme relating to their country. Computer students will be making a video commercial for their country. Digital Music students will be selecting a folk song from their country to enter into the computer and create an accompaniment for their song before we record the class singing the song. This project will culminate with a 'World's Fair' type display in late January. You can email me for more info at jmaletsky@plps.org

In my Digital Music class my 7th graders are studying world instruments. They are using the internet to research world instruments and then using Garage Band to create a podcast about their instrument - complete with the sounds of the instrument.