Youth to Youth
Learning a language used to mean classroom lessons and trips to the language lab. For students in Mexico and the United States classroom learning is about to change. The “new” language lab is the computer lab. So after logging on, adjusting their web cams and some pre-performance jitters, these students will start practicing what they learned with students, just like them, thousands of miles away and across the border.
This is more than just practicing language skills. It’s about using technology to tear down the classroom walls – and opening it up to the world. It’s about bundle learning with understanding: Cross-cultural awareness, knowledge and language all in one.
The four US schools participating in this pilot project are:
- Seacoast Charter School in Kingston, New Hampshire
- Marshfield High School in Marshfield, Massachusetts. This school also has an afterschool club that helps WCE by refurbishing computers that they get donated by their town. They use the WCE refurbishment form and load the same WCE content in each computer.
- Charlevoix High School in Charlevoix, Michigan
- Plymouth Elementary River School, in Hingham, Massachusetts
There are fifteen schools in Piedras Negras, Mexico that have received computers from WCE. After the computers are installed, four schools will be selected to participate in this exchange. The schools are: Daniel Hernández Isais, Daniel Péres Sartillo, Jesús Siller Flores, Jose Ma. Morelos, Francisco P. Estrada, Armando Treviño, Rafael Castro Flores, Juan Antonio de la Fuente, Vicente Guerrero, Andrés Cárdenas Amaro, Sec. Gral. No. 5, Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio, Juan Manuel Maldonado, and José R. Mijares.
Once the four schools in Piedras Negras are selected, the schools in the US will mail a webcam to their counterpart teacher in Mexico and start exchanging emails to begin planning the exchange.
