Looking for International Collaboration for a Pen-Pal Project for High School

[Roni Habib]

Dear Fellow Teacher,

Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your busy day to read about a potential opportunity to collaborate with a teacher across the world and to connect your students with students from the Bay Area, California. I teach at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California. One of the classes that I teach is 10th grade Contemporary World History in which most of the students are 16 years of age. Contemporary World covers the History of the World since 1945 yet it emphasizes current events and the geo-political reality of today. As a part of the class, I would like my students to be connected to other students across the world. When we study China for example, my vision is that every student in my class will be paired with a student in China for a period of approximately 1 month. They will communicate about specific topics via a blog and learn about each other's daily life. This will provide my students with a new perspective into the country that they are studying. My hope is that, if the Chinese students are studying the U.S., this could provide them with a new perspective as well. At the end of that period of time, my students will produce short movies about China and the Chinese culture as they understand it and will post these movies on a website such as youtube or another website that could be accessible to anyone across the world. The Chinese students will then get a chance to comment about these videos in the blog and tell them whether my students represented their country and culture accurately or not.


If you would like to learn more about the project please visit the website at: http://sites.google.com/site/merit0910roni/

My e-mail is [e-mail], please feel free to contact me at any time.

Ideally, I would like to start project in the beginning of October 2009, so please let me know if you are interested in working together on this project. This project will be very informative and a lot of fun for students.

I hope to hear from you!

Thanks,

Roni Habib
Henry M. Gunn High School
Social Science teacher

[Julie Lindsay]

Hi Roni

Thanks for posting this request on Flat Classrooms. I see you are interested in China. Seeing as I am now in Beijing I may be able to find you a partner classroom. Let me talk to the Humanities and English teachers.

Julie

[Roni Habib]

Hi Julie,

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your efforts! Feel free to check out the site: http://sites.google.com/site/merit0910roni/ or the wiki (it's not finished yet) https://mrhabib.wikispaces.com/World+Connection+Project
If you need to give teachers more information, they can feel free to e-mail me at: [e-mail]

Thanks again,

Roni