Mar 19th, 2011
Waiting for the Dalai Lama
This week’s module could not have come at a better time! My students are in the middle of their World Religions project and as part of that they have to interview someone who practices the religion they chose to study. Finding people for them to interview hasn’t been too bad so far. Here’s what I have:
Islam – a student from my adult ESOL class who is from Egypt and is Muslim will Skype into my class.
Hinduism – I found a nice person on Twitter who lives in England who is willing to Skype into my class next week! Thank you, @KhandBapa! @KhandBapa has a great blog too! We also have a fifth grader who is Hindu and we are going to talk to him. I think it is important for our students to know that we have people in our own backyard who practice these religions.
Shinto – I have asked on Twitter and will do so again, but we are rather leery of this. With everything going on in Japan, my students and I talked about being respectful of everything that they are going through. We decided to ask one more time, but will just go with the flow if no one offers. I have a friend who lived in Japan for a few years and we may talk to him.
Buddhism – I didn’t get any responses to my request on Twitter except for some really funny jokes from @woodenmask. I also follow the Dalai Lama on Twitter so I asked him if anyone could talk to my students, but I haven’t heard back yet. :)
Judaism – Students will interview a 7th grade student in our school who is Jewish. She has done presentations to our school before about special holidays and was thrilled to be interviewed by my 6th graders.
The interviews are happening next week so I’ll keep you posted on how they turn out! My students last year interviewed Jabiz Raisdana, @intrepidteacher, about living in Doha, Qatar and it was a wonderful experience. I’m hoping these will be the same! My students will be writing their interview questions on Monday!
For my own PLE about wine, I was kind of nervous about interviewing a wine expert. I don’t feel like I’ve learned enough yet to even come up with intelligent questions to ask. That is horrible! I think putting myself in that same discomfort that my students certainly feel, is a powerful thing, though.
I have been chatting with the Symbaloo person on Twitter and Buffy Hamilton and I are going to Skype with him (could be her…I have no idea) next week about some great ways to use Symbaloo! I am really looking forward to that. I have enjoyed using Symbaloo and having an expert from their company at my beck and call is quite helpful. Buffy and I have been chatting about it and it will be great to get to talk to a Symbaloo SME. The teachers in my group are using Symbaloo too and really loving it. We’ll have fun talking to the Symbaloo person!