Partners

How to make partners "real".
We're all familiar with introducing a new student into a class. But how do you introduce students from far away so that your students will feel comfortable with them?

//Images: [www.virtualclassroom.org]//

Here are a few suggestions, please add more:


 * [[image:http://www.virtualclassroom.org/images/clocks.jpg width="150" height="56" align="right" caption="clocks"]]Make your new friends real. Mount two more clocks on the wall to display the local time in your GVC partner schools. Mark your partner schools’ and your own locations on a world map.
 * Get personal. Let your students choose e-mail pen pals from the other schools.
 * Be a collector. Make a GVC scrapbook to keep all the letters, photos and other things you receive from your partner schools.
 * [[image:http://www.virtualclassroom.org/images/profiles.jpg width="150" height="121" align="right" caption="Posted Profiles"]]Print and post. Post the students’ self-introductions on the bulletin board. Print out messages from the on-line forums and post them. Print out pages from your website and post them or hand them out to your students to take home.
 * Get in touch. Write a class letter and send it to your partner classes through the mail. Or, send them a video tape or audio tape of the class working on the website or introducing themselves.*
 * [[image:http://www.virtualclassroom.org/images/vidconf.jpg width="150" height="116" align="right" caption="video conference"]]Make the most of multimedia. Use chat, instant messaging or video conferencing to allow your students to communicate in real time with their virtual classmates.
 * [[image:http://www.virtualclassroom.org/images/vidconf.jpg width="150" height="116" align="right" caption="video conference"]]Make the most of multimedia. Use chat, instant messaging or video conferencing to allow your students to communicate in real time with their virtual classmates.