Making Online Connections

Before and after the holidays, many parents subscribed to and commented on this new blog - thank you SO MUCH for the connections. I hope to be able to give you a window into our learning and growing so we all really appreciate your interest and support.

Over the holidays, I had the chance to connect with educators all over the world through Facebook, Edublogs and other platforms. I invited their students to connect with students from our school. Having students connect with audiences at home and around the world is a powerful motivator for real-world writing, and it allows our students to access multiple perspectives. Furthermore, it ties in perfectly with our current focus of society, as our students can learn about how other societies are structured and how they experience the world.

Last week, students from MJDS in the US commented on our students' blogs (which you can see to the right of this post). Today, we returned the favour. Before looking at their blogs, we spent some time using the geography tools of Google Maps and Google Earth. Pairing these with the school's website allowed students to get a really good idea of the landscape the school is situated in. They were also able to learn more about the school experience by reading the information and watching the videos on their school site.

As students left comments on MJSD blogs, they were putting into practice many skills including:

• writing for a particular audience (teens)
• genre requirements such as a greeting, connection to the blog post and signing off appropriately
• checking spelling, punctuation, and grammar as representatives of ISKL
• curiosity, as they asked questions to build relationships

Over the coming weeks, we hope to build our new relationships and learn more about teens on the other side of the planet.

Remember, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them below. You can ‘Subscribe’ to this blog by clicking on the button top right, which will enable you to receive notifications for new posts. Whatever you do – happy learning!