News
Students connect with peers overseas through Skype
Jan. 22, 2010
Mohonasen High School foreign language
teacher Lynne Macko is taking advantage of modern-day technology to
connect her French students at Mohonasen with her French students
overseas.
Mohonasen senior Eric Parks is currently spending this school year in France and Audrey Sabatini, who graduated last year, is spending a "gap year" in Belgium. This opportunity was made possible by the prestigious Rotary International Club Scholarship. Macko describes this as a "once-in-a-lifetime experience" for the students and was looking for new and exciting ways to expose her current students to the prospect of studying abroad.
That's when she found Skype -- a software that enables users to make free video and voice calls to users around the world. With nothing but a computer and a webcam, she has been able to connect her French students with both Eric and Audrey a few times already this school year. Each time they've connected, Macko said her students have been able to ask Eric and Audrey questions about things like food, social interactions, home life -- things that, as Macko put it, "matter to them."
Students have conducted these conversations in both English and French.
Macko said she has plans for her students to talk to both Eric and Audrey a few more times this school year. Because of the use of this technology, she said her students are seeing studying abroad in a new light and already some of them are asking questions about how they can have the same experience that Eric and Audrey are having.
"I remember when the only way to contact someone in another country was by writing a letter or maybe making a phone call," Macko, a Rotary scholar herself, said. "This technology is so easy and the opportunity for my students has been so valuable."
View the video below to see some of Audrey's conversation with Macko's junior French students.
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