The Conversation Begins...

August 29, 2008
Tyrone and I have e-mailed back and forth. His lab will be up and dedicated on Sept 8, so then we can start having classes together. We have agreed to start with just greetings. He wants to do blogs, so I told him to go to Gaggle.net where we do our class blogs. I also asked him to look at Taking It Global.

Received e-mail from Tyrone - How in the world are we going to cross the language barrier? I speak no Portuguese. We don't even know how to use the same programs. This could really be a problem. hmmm...critical thinking skills...maybe the kids can figure it out...

Tyrone writes:

"Another thing I'd like to discuss with you is about the subjects of our classes. You know, my students here have a very basic English or almost none! What can we do about that so that our classes could be not only interesting for your students but also for mine?

I thought of initial classes with greetings in English and Portuguese. Your students and mine would interect using both languages. What do you think? how long would we be online during such classes?

I've thought about the usage of blogs. Our students and yours could share information about their lives. Example:
name, age, photos, what they know about Brazil (in your case) and about the USA, in our case...With whom they live...how many brothers and sisters they have....Violence in their neighborhood...
Afterwards, we could work based on your previous and good suggestions. What do you think about that?"

And I thought it was complicated before...

August, 2008 - Dr. Parks is back from Brazil. Now she wants us all to incorporate something to do with Brazil into our plans for the year. As if we don't have enough to do already? And she has given me the name of a teacher to contact. I guess I will have to e-mail him.

And she wants us to do Capstone 2 -- even though we have a choice. I sure don't want to let this technology stuff whip me. I've got my pride, you know? Wonder if I can make this part of my Capstone project?