The ability to collaborate, communicate and recreate through these new technologies simply amazes me. Even as I use them, I find myself not only in awe, but having those "a-ha!" moments that we look for when we are teaching our own students. I have been researching interactive virtual sites and social networking for one of my thesis topics involving pre-and post sojourn activities for students traveling and learning internationally. We travel with a group of students each year to Europe called ArtTrek, choosing a country the year before, students raise money to travel. But the main focus is to learn about the culture, art, architecture, cuisine, etc. of the area where we are traveling. We have used an educational tour company that coordinates everything; everything, that is except the "learning and experience" part. Thankfully this is where those of us that travel with these students come in. We prepare them for their experience, what they will see, questions they might have, educate them about the culture, art, music, food, etc. Now we are looking for a way to make contact and communicate with other students before we travel so that the students can have a more meaningful learning experience and have the chance to continue their interactions with those they meet upon return. So I am working on many ways of "cyber-pen-paling", creating an interactive social site, etc. to allow for better information sharing, question asking, and observation making. I am sharing a couple of the sites that have helped me with my research and hope that they are interesting for some of my classmates in ETC or for those of you who like to travel, just like me!
E pals,http://www.epals.com/ and Kid Space Connection,http://www.ks-connection.org/ These are a couple of sources for making connections and setting up pen-pals. Another site I investigated was Euroland, that was created through Active Worlds http://www.activeworlds.com/edu/index.asp which looks to be another good source for using or even creating your own virtual environment. I think this site is very timely considering our own "sojourns" into Second Life for this class.
So, Ciao everyone!
