FOR the first time ever, students from Ormiston Park Academy scheduled a live video conference to take place this week with their pen pals in South Africa, in the run-up to the World-cup.
As part of a special project following on from a major project that the Year Seven’s began (studying each country competing in the World-cup), students had the opportunity to write letters to students from a school in Durban and Ghana, South Africa. This letter exchange began in May and the project had a great response from the students.
Last Month, the BBC learned about the letter exchange when it conducted a Google search for local schools and staff members there then contacted Ormiston Park Academy to discuss the possibility of a video conference between the 2 schools, in celebration of the World Cup.
During the video conference, Year 7 students will share their projects with the other students at the school in South Africa, performing a ritual in celebration of each country’s traditions and religion, to make the video conference entertaining, as well as informative.
The presentation by both schools will take the form of a question and answer period. Students from South Africa will ask a number of questions first, and then Ormiston Park Academy students will answer, then visa versa. The objective being, to learn from one another.
When this pen pal idea was created to form a partnership with a South African school, in the run-up to the World Cup in South Africa, the students became very excited with the fact that their school would be concentrating on a major project based around the World Cup and were eager to form their pen pal friendships.
Between now and the end of June 2010, each class from both schools would find out about the culture, history, traditions, food and language of their adopted country and then exchange work. The objective being to observe the differences in the way in which a school from the Western world and a poor school from a poor neighbourhood in Durban, South Africa would approach the various scheduled tasks, using very different resources to one another.
