Project draft

My Collaborative Project

Project Scheme

Name: Postcrossing Challenge

Abstract:  

My proposal is to use a webpage called Postcrossing (www.postcrossing.com) to encourage students in their writing and in their appreciation of the use of English as a "live" language and not just something they study in class.

Goals: 

The goal of this project is that using the webpage the participating students will write and receive more than 25 postcards from all parts of the world and then start a correspondance with students in their partner schools.

-              They will improve their abilities in written English and reading comprehension.

-              Gain sufficient confidence to be able to write short messages unaided. 

-              Learn that English is a working language that is used by millions of people, native and non-native speakers, around the world.

-              Learn about people from other countries and cultures.

-              Learn about where countries are and how far away they really are.

-              Learn about how to post a card or letter with an address and a stamp.

-              Learn the realities of how long it takes to send things around the globe.

-              Learn how to start and maintain a correspondance with someone of their own age.    

Work Process:

-              Student will initially register with www.postcrossing.com and then learn about how the page works.

-              They they will learn about postcards, addresses and stamps and how to write a postcard to an unknown recipient.

-              Finally they will start the process of sending postcards to the recipients that the webpage will give them. 

-              Once they start receiving postcards from other users they will have to learn to read and understand them and then how to write a suitable e-mail reply.

-              A blog will be created on which the students will write short biographies of themselves and also be able to record the cards they receive.

-              As they receive cards from around the world they will all be scanned and uploaded the blog.

-              Students will participate in the Voicethread Collaborative Project that is set out below this introduction as a way of generating contact amongst the different partner schools.

-              Cards received can also be exhibited in schools in a permanent exhibition.

-              A "prize" will be chosen for the students who reach the challenge total of 25 postcards sent or received.

-              After the first half of the project students will choose (with teachers' help) a partner from the other partner schools and they will send them a postcard directly.

-              Slowly they will move from postcards to written letters to e-mails and then, if there is sufficient time, to face to face Skype conversations with their partners.

 

Expected Results:

The expected results for this project are various and will depend on the students themselves and also the webpage itself.

-              Students will learn about "snail mail" and everything associated with it.

-              They will learn how to write short messages that convey a specific idea and how to introduce and close those messages correctly.

-              They will learn about different countries in the world and how different and yet how familiar they can be.

-              They will learn that language both seperates and unites us all.  English, as a common language, offers them the chance of speaking around the world.  A world that speaks thousands of different languages.

-              Students will, hopefully, make friends from among the partner countries and come to appreciate how corresponding with them can build a friendship.

-              They will also lose their fear of writing in English and this will help them in their normal schoolwork where English composition is often so complicated.

Students:  2n ESO - students with ages between 13-14

Work:  Work will take place both in English lessons as part of normal curricular activities (reading and writings) and also in the Reading Club that is run at breaktime one day a week.  Cards received would be exhibited in a permanent exhibition in a designated area of school.

Partners:  The number of partner schools could be from two to five.

Languages:  The language used for the project would be English.  Though many Postcrossers leave small messages in their native languages so students would come across other languages as well as English.

Inspiration:  My inspiration for this is the webpage Postcrossing (www.postcrossing.com) itself and also other projects I have run where I have tried to involve students in pen-friend activities.  I hope that a combination of both will prove more successful.

Partner Communication:  Communication amongst the partners would happen on two levels, that of the students and then of the teachers.  Communication for the students would be directed by the teachers and consist of postcards, letters and then e-mail and/or skype.  Teachers would communicate via Facebook, Skype, e-mail or Whatsapp.  It would be an excellent idea to find times when students groups could meet each other via Skype live and compare postcards, if that is possible.
Avaluation:  This is not a project that seeks to produce a solid final result.  All results, except from the actual poscards received, will be intagible and so have to be measured by the teachers.  It would be possible to assess students abilities in written English before and after the project as indeed we could give them a questionnaire to assess their confidence in the language but both of these are not definitive ways of assessing the success of the project.  I would be happy if they start to like reading and writing.

Postcrossing Collaborative Project

Peer Assessment Activity (P2P)  

Introduction:

This is a program called Voicethread and it allows you to upload images and then work on them collaboratively within groups.  When you have the images uploaded you can comment on them using audio, video, text and even uploading prepared texts.  When you are recording audio and video you can also use a pencil to draw on the image and indicate what you are talking about. 

The projects you create can then be shared either publically (as my example is) or with a specific group of people.  When these people then look at your work they can add their own comments, reply to yours and generally participate in any way they want. 

I think that this is a good way for my students to work collaboratively with students from the partner countries in small groups.

The use of ICT tools is a basic part of the design of my project.  Students will be expected to use the internet to register themselves on the webpage Postcrossing and then also to be able to create their own biographies on their own blogs, links to which will be published on the general group blog.  All students will be put into trans-national groups and then asked to "greet" each other via their blogs by leaving comments on what they have written about themselves.  This is a typical actvitity in which they have to find things they have in common and also differences.

Once the students begin to receive postcards from Postcrossing members then they will be able to begin this specific activity.

Abstract
When the students receive their first postcards they will be asked to scan them and then upload an image of the postcard received to Voicethread.  In Voicethread they will then have to explain what they have liked about the image, comment on the message they have received and explain something about the place where the postcard has come from. 

This means they will have to do some preparation before commenting the image and discover things about each card before posting it.  When they have finished they embed the image of the card into a new entry on their blog.

Once uploaded their companion in their group will be able to click on the image and listen, watch or read their comments on the postcard they have received.  They will also be able to add their own comments as well.  This will, hopefully, generate an exchange of comments uploaded in different media formats that will encourage interraction between the students. 

Goals
The goals of this activity are various:
-   Introduce the students to a new online tool, Voicethread, and help them to become familiar with its usage.
-   Encourage the students to do some research about the cities or areas of origin of the postcards they receive so that they learn more about the world that is out there beyond what is already familiar to them.
-   Give the students practise in producing short comments in English, written or oral, and help them gain confidence in their use of English by recording themselves or writing more often.
-   Help the students to get to know each other by commenting the postcards that they upload and through seeing and hearing each other in the oral comments.  This will also help create a sense of belonging to their group because they will see and hear the same people again and again. 

Work Process
-   The students will need to learn how to scan or photograph the postcards they receive.
-   The students will need to register with the webpage www.voicethread.com.
-   When the students are registered and have received their first postacard they can then upload it and start to prepare the comments they are going to make about it.
-   They will have to do some minimal research about the image, the place where the postcard comes from and what they have understood in the message.
-   When they have their comments prepared they have to write or record them (either in audio or video) and then upload them into the image.
-   When the students have a little more experience in recording they can then also use the pencil in the recording phase to indicate the parts of the image they are referring to.
-   Once the image has been commented it can then be shared with their group and they can embed it into their blog so that their partners can see it.
-   Students will be expected to add comments to the images that the members or their groups post, these again can be either written or oral comments with audio or video.  (You can also do this on the Vociethread posted below).



                 



-   Commented postcards can be shown to the other students involved in the project in project meetings and also shown in their normal English classes to give the project a wider projection at the school level.
-   Voicethread projects can also be given publicity (to accompany the exhibition of postcards received) with the use of links via QR tags.  These are easy to create and could be stuck alongside the postcards in the exhibition.  (You can try scanning this tag if you like)

Expected Results

Again the results that I expect from this activity are various and also depend greatly upon the active collaboration of the students involved.  As often happens in this type of activity if the students don't become enthusiastic about it and just see it as "work" then the activity will never become as engaging as it potentially could be.  The results I would hope for would be:

-   An increased level of ICT competence in the various areas related to the activity.  Scanning, using blogs and Voicethread, recording live to camera, audio recording etc.
-   An increased level of world knowledge due to the research carried out by the students on each card received.  This would also, hopefully, create an increased level of curiosity that will make this part of the project exciting for them.
-  An increase in their capacity to investigate independently both online and in physical resources.
-  Increased competence in their use of Enlish as a communication tool.  I would not recommend a high level of teacher interference in the preparation of comments, I think it would be better if the students can work among themselves to prepare the comments and then deal with the consequences if someone tells them they can't understand them.
-  Because of the use of audio and especially video recording I woule expect an increase in the confidence of the students both in their English and also in speaking in "public".  Speaking to camera is a skill that is difficult to attain and this project would do much to help them in this.
-   At the end of the projects students will have another element of their final product.  A complete voicethread of commented postcards that they could then make public on Voicethread and also in their schools or via school magazines where other students or people outside schools could see the work they have done.  


                 


Avaluation
Avaluating this project activity would not be hard.  The result of the activity is an easy to avaluate voicethread that has a complete history of the postcards received and the work done on them.  Teachers would also be able to access the blogs and voicethreads of the partner students involved in each group so as to be able to see the level of activity of their own students in commenting.

Additionally because the activity is a gradual one, students post and comment the postcards as they arrive, it would be easy for teachers to continually assess (and advise on) their students activity over the course of the year.

In this way the level and quality of the comments made on the postcards can be monitored and the teachers involved can also demand more from the students involved as the year goes on.

Dissemination
As I have already mentioned this activity would run over the course of the year and would work in cooperation with other activities of the project.  As the students receive postcards they would be both uploaded here and also exhibited in their schools.  The postcards in the exhibitions could be linked to the Voicethreads created via QR tags so linking one activity to another.  This would work just as effectively if the postcard exhibition were taken to other schools or to a local library etc.

This would also be the same in other dissemination activities such as articles on local webpages or newspapers or magazines.  Via the publication of links or QR tags people outside the area of the school could see the work carried out and even participate in it by commenting the postcards in the same way as the students should they wish to.

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