Spanish Students Skype with Bogota, Colombia
For photos click here.
On April 28th, 2010, Trinity’s Spanish IB IV students (the most advanced Spanish group) held a joint class with IB students from the Buckingham Bilingual School in Bogata, Colombia using Skype and Smartboards to power the class. This was an exciting experience for all the students. Before Spring Break IB Spanish teacher, Sra. Tamariz Irlanda sent several emails to IB schools in Latin America inviting them to participate in a cultural exchange via Skype. Mr. Saúl Soler from Bogota, Colombia answered her request and planning began.
Mr. Soler shared with Sra. Irlanda five literary texts (two short stories and three poems) because his Spanish class is ‘A1’ which is literature focused, while our students are option ‘B’ which is language based so they received the texts in both, Spanish and English and prepared comments about them. “As much as my students wanted to listen to their Spanish, the Colombian students also wanted to practice their English” said Sra. Irlanda. Thus the collaboration would be beneficial for all. The students had to wait for the connection from Colombia, but once the video call came through they screamed with happiness. They were super excited to see their new Colombian friends face to face on the Smart Board.
Mr. Soler's class had a mixed (boys and girls) group of 9 students, and there were 14 Trinity students. The exchange started with a greeting from Mr. Soler, and a thankful message from Sra. Irlanda, from then on the students took over with their comments about the literature texts. They also asked questions about the Colombian culture, hobbies, music, IB classes, plans for the future, etc. At one point the Colombian students asked the Trinity students to sing to them in Spanish, and they did. Then, they sang for the Trinity girls. “I could hardly contain my tears to see these two worlds coming together with such respect and excitement” said Sra. Irlanda. It was sad for the students to say goodbye, but both teachers promised to share student's emails for further conversations. In the end, the students came even closer to the camera to say thanks and bye individually.
Trinity can use these technologies to offer foreign language students encounters with native speakers in their native countries. It is awesome for them to listen to all different accents, and be even more aware of how youth of all countries have so much in common.
The student participants were: Jacqueline Marciel, Rosario Gutiérrez, Vivian Castellanos, Vivian Lozano, Katherine Hoffmeister, Samantha Gay, Amanda Lamacki, Andreja Siliunas, Katryna Ciurlionis, Bianca Medina, Byanca Avitia, Alicia Zyburt, Tiffany Negrón, and Paige Stewart.
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