Students in Bethel Park, Honduras compare notes live
Harry Funk / Staff A projection on a classroom screen also connected Bethel Park High School students with those in El Merandon, Honduras.
Harry Funk / Staff Cody Shetter shares scientific information with students in Honduras.
Students from different countries used to communicate with one another as pen pals. Today’s technology allows them to connect practically face-to-face.
“The Ground on Which We Stand,” a cooperative project between Bethel Park High School and its counterpart in El Merendón, Honduras, has brought classrooms full of students together by videoconference.
“Five years ago, this would have been virtually impossible,” Charles Youngs, Bethel Park instructional technology coach, explained. “Skype was around, but it wasn’t clear enough. And you wouldn’t have had the Internet coverage in Honduras.”
The project involves students from each school – Escuela Agricola Virgen de Suyapa is the one in Central America – testing soil samples from their respective areas and comparing the results, which they did via Skype on April 19.
“The translation barrier was, honestly, something,” Bethel Park senior Cody Shetter said. “But it was fun to be able to hear what theirs are compared with ours because you don’t know much about outside of your own world. Being able to hear from somebody in a different part of the planet is nice.”
Students in Jason Mickey’s honors environmental science classes did the gathering and analysis, learning that soil around the Honduran school shows the effects of it being used for agricultural purposes, especially growing coffee. Many of the Bethel Park samples, meanwhile, contain what might be expected from the fill that was placed when the new high school was built not too long ago.
Also participating in the project are Bethel Park students in advanced placement Spanish, taught by Alyssa D’Allessandro, who served as translator for the most recent Skype session. She said the Honduran dialect is something that her students should be able to understand.
But they’re not used to being speakers,” she added. “If we would have started this in September, this would be phenomenal right now, because the more they hear native speakers and speak with native speakers, the better accustomed they are.”
Senior Amelia Heastings, who has been studying Spanish since kindergarten, said she enjoyed hearing from her Honduran counterparts.
“Most of it made a lot of sense. As long as the audio came through pretty clearly, we could get the gist, for sure,” she said. “It’s always interesting to get to connect with a different culture and see people from another culture. And it’s cool that we have this thing in common, even though we’re thousands of miles apart.”
The first Skype session took place about two weeks ago, after the Bethel Park and El Merendón students had exchanged introductory videos.
“The students were very shy at the beginning,” Youngs said. “They were kind of stiff. And then about 10 minutes into it, our Spanish students tried a few lines. And then they got a response back in Spanish, and they understood it.”
A lively exchange followed.
“They were talking about what they like to do, what their schools are like, that sort of thing,” Youngs explained. “Today was a little bit more of a business meeting, going through their data, and some of the Spanish students didn’t feel comfortable talking about all the scientific terms.”
When he wrapped up the science portion and encouraged social interaction, though, the students were eager to share information. The Spanish students are planning another Skype session for May.
“Realizing that they can communicate and they do have common ground,” Young said, “that’s what really propels us to follow this kind of curriculum.”