Vicki Davis uses digital medias to help her students 'learn to learn'. Saying that by knowing her students' strenghts and interests, she can customize the projects they have to do. That way, students feel more like participating and developing programs with their peers. Since every person has different strenghts, Vicki Davis asks them to go in front of the class and act as a teacher to show his colleagues how to do certain things. If these projects were only done with sheets of paper and a pen, she would lose their attention very quickly. That way of teaching develops the cooperative skills of students.
Helping each other in order to attain a specific goal can be perceive as empowerment. When every student of the class works cooperatively to achieve a common task, it can be done very easily, quickly and well done. When the project is finished and posted on the web, students can see the final presentation of their work and can only be eager to accomplish a new project. Empowerment can easily be done at school by doing any project needing digital medias. Even if it can be a little harder at home, it is possible if parents let their child showing them how tyo do things on the computer. As Vicki Davis says:'' You don't have to master a subject to be able to teach it''.
I think it is important for kids to collaborate with others around the world since they become a lot more open-minded and discover other cultures and ways of seeing and doing things. In fact, it is one of the funniest ways to learn a language, just as e-tandems. It is very favorable to them because it develops their interactive and social skills and they can feel like they're becoming a part of the society.
As an ESL teacher, agood way to promote collaboration between my students and others around the world is to assign projects between my school and an English-speaking school from Canada. That way, each party will have the opportunity to learn a new language while discovering how to use digital medias. There are also e-tandems which are a good way to promote collaboration between students from here and foreign ones.
http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-teachers-vicki-davis-video
I also think that it is important for kids to do some collaborative work with other students from all around the world because, like you said, it can bring them to learn more about another culture and it can be done in a fun way. Doing collaborative work with students always with the same classmates becomes boring to a certain point. With international collaboration, students will be more willing to learn about their partners and getting involve because they will not only do their project, but they will encounter culture from it.
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