I was reflecting on my drive to work this morning just what kind of opportunities for contact our students have.  I remember the first time that I told my father (a now retired teacher) several years back that I believed that my kids will undoubtably have the opportunity to travel to space.  He scoffed at the idea.  He might not have the same feelings now.

Earlier this week I was working with a teacher on a French language class collaborative project we are developing with St. Martin’s Episcopal School in New Orleans.  I met a number of SMES staff at the Laptop Institute in Memphis.  We have been nurturing these contacts since then and this project will be the first of what we hope will be many class to class collaborative projects.

Back to the kids – when I was in school it was unheard of that students from different classes would work together, let alone students in different countries.  The ideas and information they have to share is amazing, and they are so excited.  I happened to be showing our teacher Skype and I dialed the teacher in New Orleans to demonstrate (she wasn’t showing online).  She suprised us by promptly answering in the middle of her class.  Up on the screen she put our identity…the kids went nuts on her end! They were beginning to understand just how they were going to work with students from another country. WOW!

We are looking at many web 2.0 tools and interfaces like Interwise to communicate, but I’m hoping to let the kids pretty much decide what works for them.