Cultures
How Teachers Connect
Often without leaving their language classrooms, teachers are
using technologies such as Skype, wikis, and asynchronous
conversation tools to foster bilingual conversations and
dissolve cultural barriers. As a journalist observing teachers’
practices, I have seen some inspiring examples of cultural
exchange.
When Leslie Davison, a Spanish teacher at Dillon Valley
Elementary School in Colorado, wants to teach her students
where Chile is, she is just as likely to use Skype to call a friend
in Chile as she is to pull out a globe and point. In fact, she may
do both.
Skype, a software that enables users to make free international telephone calls over the Internet, can, with the addition of an inexpensive webcam, enable callers to see one
another in real time during the conversation.
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“One student was talking to my friend Claudio,” Davison
recalls, “and as he was there on the screen before her, she was
moving her finger on the globe to ask where he is in Chile. He
was responding ‘arriba, abajo, arriba’ [higher, lower, higher] as
she searched to find the right spot.” Such moments of human
contact make geography, culture, and language real for
students.
In teaching Spanish to students in kindergarten through
5th grade, Davison uses Skype to help students interact in the
target language with native speakers, as well as to create a
sense of global community. She places calls from the classroom, often on the spur of the moment because of questions
her learners raise. As the conversations spin out, aspects of
daily life in other countries emerge. For example, when
Davison’s 1st graders wanted to know what the tooth fairy
does in other countries, she had the students ask Claudio, who
explained that in Chile, the tooth fairy is a mouse. Claudio
went on to remind students “You need to brush your teeth”—
in Spanish, of course—which led to learning new vocabulary
words.
As they talk through Skype, students can see the surroundings of the person they’re chatting with onscreen; the camera
can be turned to look out the window and show geographical
features or into the room to give a glimpse of the speaker’s
house or classroom.
To work around time differences, Davison also uses asynchronous communication methods. When some of her
students traveled to Mexico, she set up a blog they could post
to, to tell their classmates back home about what they experienced and observed in that culture. “We put the blog up on a
