Thank you so much for your comments and for the YouTube link… which is about to figure prominently on the front of this blog!! Ugh indeed!

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE

Thank you for your comment.

I think I should probably clarify that while it may appear that student-centric activities such as Skype exchanges with a language partner are merely free for all free-exchanges, they are actually anything but. But they are also not heavily monitored either.

On the other side of the exchange is a fellow language teacher. That teacher also has a curriculum to follow and also wants to make the exchange as beneficial as possible to his or her students. There is a great deal of planning that has to happen to set things up. That being said, we do not and will not control what happens once the conversations begin. We start the ball rolling with some structured questions like “Describe your school day,” “Describe higher education in your country,” “Describe an event that is in your newspaper today and why it is significant in your town/city/country.” We all start in the same place. Where we end up depends upon them.

Lest you think otherwise, we never entered into these exchanges with the hopes of uncovering something titillating or scandalous about the other person. That was never the point. We talk about being respectful and how to show that respect with your words.

Please rest assured both sides of the conversation walked away with new knowledge about the other group, knowledge that they (like us) would not have been able to achieve through more traditional means.

With regard to the Arabic-speaking women, while we did not find out about any of their pop stars, their teacher told me that it was extraordinary for the women to meet a group with such diverse reasons for learning Arabic. Some of our students were learning Arabic of academic reasons, others had deeply personal reasons. For example, some of our students had converted to Islam. The women were amazed that our students could recite the Holy Qur’an but did not understand what the words meant. The women were fascinated by the diversity of our students (African Americans, Asians and one woman who announced that she was a Jew) as well as the different reasons they were in the class. Oh and let’s not forget this fact: the women had to get signed permission from their fathers to speak with our class because we have male students. They would not have been able to participate unless we had those signatures. So, something we take for granted daily was a major moment for our language partners.

Rob, I agree, we should be careful about not promoting one culture over another. I also agree that much care should be taken in shaping and implementing these exchanges. But I also believe we shouldn’t monitor every word nor create a series of checks and balances. When students (on both sides) are given the freedom to discover and explore within a respectful and collaborative environment that they have created with their partner, over time, the amount of cultural artifacts and knowledge shared, I believe, do balance out.

My goal is not to have all of that learning accomplished only in the class. My goal is to have my students leave my class with a desire to learn more about the other country, culture, language (vs the ill-founded belief that they know it all). As one of my students once said “the purpose of education is not to have all of the answers, rather, It is to be able to [go out into the world and] ask really good questions”

Here here.