Building Cultural Connections - Indonesia

Building Cultural Connections - Indonesia

A NEW ZEALAND / INDONESIA COLLABORATION

After a really successful visit to Indonesia (see details here) I'm excited to implement the collaboration plan which Yenny  (7th grade teacher, Jakarta) and I designed for our students.

I confess to being a little disappointed that while in Jakarta I was unable to visit Yenny's school, Sekolah Dian Harapan, however we did work together to plan a collaboration for our students based on building relationships, sharing our cultures and reflecting on learning.

The first step was to initiate contact between our students. I kicked this off when I was in Jakarta by presenting Yenny with 29 NZ postcards written by my students to introduce themselves to an Indonesian 'buddy.' I also gave her a copy of our school magazine so that her students might be able to see a little of our school and a pen printed with our school name for each of her students.

Our collaboration plan consists of three main parts as follows:

1. To foster an email 'pen-pal' type relationship between partnered students.

2. To facilitate sharing of school cultural and other events through email and other on-line connections.

3. To participate (at the same time and connected through skype or google hangout) in a team problem-solving type challenge and then to discuss and reflect on team work skills.

On receiving the postcards Yenny carefully considered the partnering of the students and as much as possible matched like-minded Kiwi and Indonesian buddies. My class were delighted when they received their first emails. These were followed up with postcards sent from Indonesia. My students read the postcards from their Indonesian friend and then photographed themselves with it and replied by email with photo attached. The postcards along with a gift of batik fabrics from Yenny was then assembled into a wall display, photographed and shared with our friends in Jakarta.

Our Indonesian display is developing - who will make the title?

This is where our collaboration currently stands. I look forward to watching it grow. My Year 7 students are excited about their global connection. The roll is called in Bahasa Indonesian each morning and the email communication is mostly self motivated with some partners already having a number of contacts and beginning to form genuine long distance friendships.

An extra bonus of course is the strengthening of my own professional learning network as Yenny and I communicate regularly regarding our student collaboration.

Authentic learning with real global connections.