Setting up a virtual exchange

The recent lockdowns have really pushed teachers to reinvent the T&L wheel and has forced us to upskill ourselves in many different ways. Unfortunately, one of the big frustrations of this year's restrictions, has been the impossibility to carry out educational visits, especially, abroad, such as exchanges. 

I love exchanges! Although, not vital for the language learning journey of students, per se, they open an invaluable door to the target language culture which can be very difficult to replicate in the classroom, especially given the limited curriculum time that languages generally have in UK schools. 

I have run many successful exchanges over the last 20 years and I can assure you that they have shaped the relationship of my students with languages. 

If you need to find a partner, try to use the application Flipgrid. In there, you have Gridpals, which allows you to find partners around the world, thank you Adeline Mostona nd Jimena Licitra for tío! 

What makes a great exchange? Revamping traditional exchanges!

The most successful exchanges were those where there was a project attach to them.  Students would work collaboratively, before travelling, on a mini project, allowing them to forge friendships and start contact with their partners, thanks to social media, well before they met face to face. In the past, eTwinning was the platform I used for such projects, as they gave us a secure platform to work on and display our work, as well as national and international recognition. Sadly, we cannot use eTwinning anymore... Our eTwinning project would lead itself to an exchange, both ways. During the exchange, we would carry on working on our project, collaboratively, giving a purpose and rational to the whole trip and encouraging partners to work together on a common goal, now face to face, while complementing such work with local outings, excursions and cultural visits.  

Sadly, this year, such exchange format could not take place, as we were forced to scrap the physical visit and eTwinning was not more! 

As we had always worked on a project virtually before travelling, this year we revamped that previous project into a virtual exchange using Google Meet (Zoom and Teams would have worked equally well, here).  We are lucky as we are currently working on an Erasmus project "The Village" so we had a very clear programme disseminated among 6 different Mobilities (Erasmus jargon for exchange), to be carried out in two years, so we decided to do the first two mobilities virtually, instead of travelling to Spain and La Réunion. It was a great success!

10 Steps to set up a virtual exchange

1. Think of a project to carry out as part of your exchange, so that you have a goal to work towards, do not set up an exchange, for the sake of it: there must be a purpose and final outcome. In our case, it is to create a virtual village where the UN Development Goals would have been tackled. Our first virtual exchange focussed on creating, collaboratively, the inhabitants of the this city and exploring a Circular Economy versus a Linear one as the driving force in the Village. The second virtual exchange to La Réunion, focussed on working on Human Rights and how our Village will tackle these. Take this opportunity to establish cross curricular links with other departments and raise the profile of MFL in the school. 

2. Create a simple but collaborative programme of activities to be carried among two or three mornings. We took the students out of lessons as they would have been for a real exchange, so they could work, in block, on the planned activities. Click here for our Spain virtual exchange programme. Click here for our La Reunion virtual exchange programme. 

3. When planning your activities, always plan some simple activities, we call them preliminary activities, to be done, independently by each school, before meeting live. For us, a preliminary activity was to learn, the concept of the development goals and create some videos where students would introduce themselves and talk about what their ideal world would be like in 30 years if such goals were achieved worldwide. We used a Padlet to share the videos and it was a great way to listen to real target language!  We also used Padlet to exchange Xmas greetings!

Similarly, before meeting virtually, we carried a competition to decide the logo of our project, where students designed different logos and voted, via Google Forms for their favourite one, the winning log, became the logo of our whole project/exchange. This is our logo, designed by a boy in La Réunion. 

4. Decide the platform you will use to carry out your virtual exchange: Google Meet/ Zoom/ Teams? and get familiar with the Breakout Rooms in those platforms, as students will need to work with their partners in small groups collaboratively.

5. In order to work collaboratively, and for any activity, use either Google or MS documents which you can share with students via a link and make them editable, so students can write on them in real time. For our first virtual exchange, after watching a video on Circular/Linear economies, not via Google Meet, students came back online and created posters, using a PPT (We gave them a template), collaboratively. 

Each group in a breakout room, created a poster in their designated slides in the PPT. Click here for the original PPT template, taken from Slidesmania.  This is the final document with the posters finished after the activity, all done in Breakout Rooms. 

6. When deciding your programme of activities, always include ice-break tasks to be carried out in small groups virtually, before embarking on the meaty ones! For that, we always suggest a little questionnaire to carry out to partners in the TL or guessing games. 

7. Include at least an activity where students have the opportunity to show their city and local landmarks to their partners. For that, Google Earth is brilliant! For both of our Virtual exchanges, partners showed their cities and famous local landmarks, via Google Earth, in real time, by sharing their screen within our Google Meet sessions. 

8. On the days of the activities, have technical support nearby! Also, make sure all students bring headphones so that you do not get feedback from many students talking at the same time in the same room.

9. Not all activities in the virtual exchange need to be on Google Meet/Teams/Zoom, as this can be very tiring!  Some activities can be carried out independently in each school off line, and then come back online for a  follow-up activity. In our second virtual exchange to La Reunion, students, in each country, created a physical tree where the leaves were the different Human Rights we had previously explored. This took two hours to create. Students then came back online and explained in the TL the rationale of their trees and disposition of the leaves.

10. Start small!  The virtual activities I am sharing on this post, are part of an Erasmus, so the programme is very specific and each virtual exchange related to the next one. However, you can create a very simple standalone virtual exchange programme, as long as it has a specific purpose.  

Although not the same as travelling to the target country, virtual exchanges are great opportunities for international collaboration and they are inclusive, as they are free! It broadens horizons, puts communication skills to the test and forges friendships. 

To have a look at our a previous Erasmus project, United in Diversity, which involved travelling to Spain and La Reunion as part of the project, have a look at this link.

I disagree with the recent Ofsted Report for languages, which stated that language exchanges could be detrimental, as students compare their linguistic ability to those of their partners and the experience may be off-putting. I have not encountered that in my 20 years of teaching experience. The key is to prepare students, linguistically, before travelling physically or virtually, and being realistic about what they can achieve, given the amount of years and time spent learning the target language. If anything, my students always learn lots of vocabulary, albeit swearing words! and their listening skills and fluency generally improve.  Most importantly, they have the opportunity to work with students of a similar age, collaboratively in the TL so nothing but a winning experience!

For me it is like playing the real football match!!! Everyone remembers their big match, but very few people will remember the training sessions. Exchanges is the big match in languages!  What will make memories!