Patricia Jimenez
SLM 521 – elective #11
Keypals 
Encouraging learning in the classroom through the use of e-mail and keypals helps to connect the learning to real life experience. Connecting keypals from other parts of the country and/or world promotes the cultural exchange of understandings and ideas. James Lerman suggests in his article, You’ve Got Mail, that this global means of learning may one day set a “world-class” standard.
This prospect of educational learning and sharing with other classrooms from around the world excites me. Following is a list of some ways I might use keypals/e-pals in my secondary level music classroom:
% Create a world travel brochure for musical theaters. The class representing the country or area of each theater destination would develop the brochure entry for another area.
% Create a music history treasure hunt. This project would take collaborative efforts on the part of the teachers, but would provide a means of learning more about contemporary history as well as era history.
% Feature student music compositions on a web site. Students might share why a poem was chosen as the lyric base or why a certain genre of music offers more meaning to the words. Perhaps students could collaborate on developing variations on a theme, offering counterpoint, or writing descants and ostinatos.
% Develop and compose a collaborative extended music work, perhaps a mini opera.
% Compare regulations and steps in music publishing, copyrighting, and subject limitations. Research the costs of these processes.
% Post a music research/poll question to a bulletin board. This would allow students to collect opinion data and create result charts and graphs.
% Exchange folk-songs and/or dance performances which represent their locale. Entries should include native instruments and venues.
% Survey favorite pop artists and styles of music. Have the students try to find connections between choices and environmental or political influences.
Two sites that I particularly found useful in locating project ideas are:
Kidlink -
http://www.kidlink.org/english/general/abstract.html
This site is exciting just to read: it is colorful, easy to navigate, offers
many resources and links, and offers activities and life skills training
activities. It is translatable from
English to Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Norsk, and Portuguese. There are
teacher workshop links for topics such as new motivation strategies and how to
manage the submission of responses to a project. You can quickly search curriculum areas and
ideas already established. You can just
as easily contribute your own curriculum ideas.
This site is worth investigating if you want to help your classroom
establish a keypal project.
International Keypals - http://www.schoolworld.asn.au/keypals.html
This site is a collaborative project between SchoolWorld and ePals. This project offers free educational ideas, educational resources, and interactive tools. Registration is free and easy to accomplish. The format is easy to navigate and colorfully motivational. I particularly like the Tek Teachers Program where you can get technical advice, how-to answers, and shared experience anecdotes from selected SchoolWorld member teachers. Although the website format itself was last updated in 2002, activities and projects are monitored and added on an ongoing basis. This website is fresh and useful!
Reference:
Lerman, James. (March
1998). You’ve Got Mail. Electronic School. Retrieved