Reflection 6: What is a telecollaborative lesson?

Among all of the activities a teacher can give to her students, Telecollaborative learning is a very useful activity. Telecollaborative learning is a technique used for students working alongside other students, in groups. The trick is that it’s not the typical group work inside the same classroom or even school; it is group work with students from another state or country. Telecollaborative learning has become a popular technique and is used during many different school subjects and for different reasons. Let’s say you are a teacher of a French class and you want your students to not only practice with each other but also practice with other students of the same age that really know how to speak French. A great activity for this would be pen- pals with actual French students. Just as we have foreign language in schools in America, there are also foreign language classes being taught in other parts of the world such as France. With today’s technology you can surf the web and find a teacher in France that may want her students to have pen pals as well with Americas so they can speak to them in English. This is a perfect way for not only the students to practice with someone that is an expert in their language, but it also helps the student gain knowledge from other country’s through someone’s perspective that actually lives there instead of from the media. Telecollaborative learning also helps students gain communication skills with students who might not be just like them and helps them expand their minds and helps them appreciate what they have. It is always important for the student to feel safe in their environment and telecollaborative learning does just that- it makes the students appreciate how safe they are and how much worse things can be if comparing them to others. It allows students to not take for granted what they have- and this goes for all students from every part of the world. This is an especially good activity for students that are in middle school because middle school students are usually closed off and like to hide their unhappiness. Middle school is the time that students really start figuring out who they are and what type of person they want to be, so exposing them to this activity would help them open their eyes to the outside world beyond their walls and expand their minds.