Meet people from Sweden, where there are lots of immigrants from different places of the world would be great. Well, that is exactly what this project is about. First of all, they send us an email, with the name of our partner and the e-mail adress of him, and we got to exchange information about ourselves. And know, this blogger post is like the other ones, just that longer, and that in this case, we have to talk about our experience with our swedish partner.
Link with personal information.https://docs.google.com/a/goethemail.net/document/d/14j_qKiaC2CwHDfuQMupyggUNaq1ksqWCqDtEcsNjWVY/edit?usp=sharing
Today we are going to write about a project that is doing our school.
This project consists in having a Swedish-Partnership per International connections. Every one of us is assigned to a swedish counterpart from the International School of the Gothenburg Region. We have to get to know them through various forms of social media.
Some of us have two partners because there are a more students in the swedish class.
Every student here wrote their partners a mail to introduce themselves and their partners (hopefully) replied. We're supposed to talk to each other regularly, but our partners are on break often, so they can’t reply.
Our expectations were mostly fulfilled, but Mer’s partner replied only to just one mail. They talked through Snapchat once.
Loli’s partner sent her an email first and they talked through Snapchat for a few days. She didn’t accept her request to follow her on Instagram and now her partner doesn’t answer her on Snapchat anymore.
Alexia sent her an email first and they talk through Instagram now.
Julieta has two partners and they talk through Kik, Snapchat, Instagram and Gmail.
"Our expectations were mostly fulfilled, but Mer’s partnerreplied only to just one mail. They talked through Snapchat once."
In this last Post we are going to talk (well actually we are going to write) about this project we started and are currently continuing in class. Now we are going to explain, in steps, how this all started and continued going on.
We wrote our swedish contacts an email, introducing ourselves and starting to ask questions
Later on, our contact answered our emails (of course, some of these came pretty, pretty, pretty late, but after a while they all answered). Some of them wrote long emails, some of them short (some of the persons, who answered late finished their email with an apology, because of their delay answering…)
After this we had to continue our “writing” relationship and/or start communicating in some other social media (as in Direct message from Instagram, Skype, Whatsapp, etc.
We think that we all were very, very, very excited when we first got our answers, but a few were let down. Some of us really got their hopes up, and thought that our contacts were going to answer the next day, but of course it wasn’t like that. A lot of them answered three to four days even one week later. But after that barrier was overcome everyone enjoyed talking over another social media and getting to know their contact.
Now getting to our personal opinions:
We think that this was a very good idea, as it promotes the communication with people from all around the world. We believe that it helped us learn from other cultures, and the life in Sweden. We had fun and we got really excited when we first got an answer, however it was really frustrating when they came in late or at night, but it helped us exercise our patience. Some of us got along much better than others, but we are all working really hard to complete this project.
Advantages
Drawbacks
Learning about another culture, different to our own
This could affet our personal grade (if they don't respond)
Making new friends (them being from another country is just another plus)
They had vacations when we didn't and vice versa
We speak more english (with that we learn to write and speak the language more fluently)
It was difficult to contact them
Wordcloud for Post number 3
IMAGES:
Email we got from Melina with the email-adress from our contacts
We are doing an International collaborative exchange with the International school of Goteborg region. In this project every student in the class becomes an Exchange partner or maybe two. Everyone should communicate with his partner and establish a kind of relationship. We can use Snapchat, Instagram, E-mail, and other social networks to chat with our partner. The communication with our partner is private, which means that we can choose the topic we are talking about and where we are going to chat.
You can ask your partner questions like:
- where do you live?
- What’s your favourite meal?
- etc…
Images of screenshots of applications used for communicating with our abroad partner and school of Gotemborg
We know from other years that did the same projects, that some of them really enjoyed it and became very close to their partner but some didn't enjoy it.
Here are our opinions about the project:
Images of chats betweem us and our swedish contacts
Oli:
I’m very excited with this project. I think it’s a really good idea to communicate with other students who are not from Germany. Me and my partner chat every day with snapchat and we also use e-mail or instagram.
Solly:
I think this collaborative project is awesome. I like to do these sort of projects because one has the chance to get to know more people but not only more people also to know different people and from around the world. What I mean with different persons, is that they have a different culture, habits then we do. It's also good because one gets to know not only the person and their personality if not also the culture from their region.
I chat with my contact per E-mail and Instagram.
I follow her on Instagram and on Snapchat.
Sophie:
From my Point of view this project is a great idea because you can learn a lot about the life of other people and you may also make a friendship out of it, but I also understand those who don't support this project because their Swedish partner doesn't answer them neither is so excited about this project like the other person, so he/she doesn't answer them. In my case I chat with my swedish contact via Instagram and I love this project!
Sof:
I am really enjoying this project and chatting with my partner. I have two partners, with one of them I chat very often and the other one hasn’t replied yet. We communicate by e-mail, snapchatand we use instagram too.
We chat with our contact per E-mail, Sanapchat and Instagram.
We follow them on Instagram and on Snapchat.
Link Drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AP156oYLgmie8qAiSXM4FP-xpq0tKCPANp9uzwHD2w4/edit?usp=sharing
During the last weeks, in Informatics, our teachers talked to us about the whole abroad partnership project, giving us in the process a little advice about how to start with the contacts and when to write the emails, etc.
Later that day, they gave us an email address that belonged to the partner from Sweden, that we had to contact via email. This new project is about meeting new people, making friends and learning about different cultures or schools.
We sent an email to our partners introducing ourselves asking about their hobbies, appearance, families and of course which languages they speak.
After that, we waited for an answer. In doing so, we had to be patient, because of the different time lags,.. When we first got an answer, we were all very excited and wanted to know, how the partner of sweden was like.
Then, we started with our project.
"Some of the students didn´t get an answer until weeks later and that really delayed our work."
We also had to first ask the abroad partners about their other social medias and then communicate over these.
Social media over which we held the contact with them is:
Snapchat
Whatsapp
Instagram
Facebook
We used Instagram, Snapchat and Skype to communicate with them.
We personally think, this is a great idea, because we met other people from another country and thereby formed friendships. Also we learned about the partners´ friends and families and different school systems and in general we got to know the swedish culture.
This is Lea.
This is Hanna.
What was a little difficult, was the time lag. Sweden is four hours ahead of Argentina and if you want to ask your swedish contact something important, it could be, that you get an answer not before early in the morning. That was a little difficult, because you always had to think ahead, if you would get the answer early enough. This was a little annoying, because sometimes you wanted to work on the Post and you could not, because you needed that answer.
But all in all it was still excellent and fun and we are happy we could experience such a great thing.
