B. Miranda Whitmore, a VHS teacher shares her experience. How have her face-to-face classes changed due to work at the VHS?

Страна изучаемого языка в международном контексте

A. Read Martin Luther King’s quotation. Do you agree with it?

“Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated.”

B. Read a teacher’s comment on this quotation. What is his message?

When I first read these words, I immediately started wondering: Our kids aren’t separated in the same way anymore. Our students are clearly ‘growing up global’ in a connected world. Back in the day with the telegraph it could take weeks to hear from someone. Now all you need is a text or an update from an app to find out something huge. The evolution of the way that we are able to communicate is also one of the most advanced parts of society today. It seems that everyone has a Smartphone with twitter, texting, facebook, and so many other things. It can be argued that it’s become too much but I believe the reality of it is we can’t stop now. Now you can be friends with someone from Pakistan on Facebook and chat online to find out the daily happenings in their world. When I think about the expansion that has happened I am truly amazed with what we were able to learn. I do believe that technology can be excessive at times but in terms of communication and broadening our level of knowledge I think we should be grateful. So will our globally connected students be able to reduce human conflicts and overcome such hate and fear? Will students who regularly communicate and form relationships with students of different cultures and lifestyles become any more tolerant and understanding than those who don’t?

C. Match the modal verbs in bold with their function.

_ ability in the past

_ ability in the present

_ ability in the future

D. Read the sentences below and work out the difference.

_ Thirty years ago people could / were able tocommunicate

via mail, telephone or telegraph. They couldn’t / weren’t

able to use the Internet.

_ Yesterday our class was able toSkype with our friends

in Australia but we couldn’t / weren’t able toSkype with

the students in Nepal because of their problems with the Internet

connection.

What verbs do we use:

_ for repeated actions in negations and questions?

_ for repeated actions in statements?

_ for single actions in negations and questions?

_ for repeated actions in statements?

A. Read about the VHS – Virtual High School. What opportunities does it offer to teachers and students?

The world is your classroom with VHS. We unite teachers and students from a variety of social, economic, and geographic backgrounds to study and collaborate with one another in a virtual learning environment.

For example, a student in North America partners with a classmate in Asia to complete a project and logs on to look over the assignment that their teacher in another time zone posted earlier in the day.

A global classroom can provide diverse interpretations, worldly perceptions, fervent debate, enthusiastic ideas, and international points of view. Global learning can offer regional, political, and cultural insights that provide the basis for thought provoking discussions and an education that reaches far beyond a student’s hometown. It better prepares students to communicate effectively and productively in an international economy.

b. Miranda Whitmore, a VHS teacher shares her experience. How have her face-to-face classes changed due to work at the VHS?

I work in a small, high-income school district where the students have it all. They have parents with the resources to be involved in their children’s education. These kids would seem to have everything and yet they are plagued by one deficiency; they don’t know anything different. They live in a safe, comfortable, homogeneous world. No matter how much we describe other human conditions, show movies or read books about them, we can’t give our students the direct experiences with diversity that they need in order to become thoughtful, compassionate world citizens. One of my constant struggles has been searching for a medium that would meaningfully connect my students to people with different worldviews than their own. Little did I know that opportunity lay right at my finger tips in my VHS class!

It was as much a surprise to me as it was to my students when my casual mention of a comment from one of my VHS students kicked off a conversation in my face-to-face class that changed everything. One day my sophomores came in grumbling, the way teenagers often do. I don’t remember what the issue was, but it was one of the usual complaints (there aren’t enough lunch options, we don’t have fast enough computers).

A comment about school culture from Chinara, one of my online students was on my mind, so I decided the moment was apt1 to share it. The student had honestly described the poor physical conditions in her tiny school. She had written, “We finally got doorknobs a year ago, and we are a bit under-developed. Also, there are frequent problems with electricity and water. These are minor problems, however, that do not really affect the learning experience, and therefore, I do not really view them as problems. Plus, we cannot really do anything about the electricity.”

I shared the comments with my face-to-face students. I just wanted them to feel guilty about their complaining, but they were absolutely fascinated with this young woman and wanted to hear more about her and her school. Upon hearing that

I taught students from all over the world, they wanted me to log on and show them my class along with other posts. They wondered excitedly about what she must experience daily and how it compared to their own experiences. The bottom line is that for once they cared. They asked me a million questions about that girl from a poor school system in a foreign country rather than staring at me like zombies as I read from an anthology of world literature. And thus, I had finally found the medium I had been looking for to expose my students to diversity. Whether it was simply because it involved a computer or because they were hearing from a real person their own age, they were excited.

Now I’m trying to develop ways for my classroom class and online class to connect formally and regularly because I’ve realized that my students can teach one another far better than I ever could alone.