Project Sketch: Penpal or Digipal?

Last semester, French INTRO students learned how to describe the physical and personality traits of people (themselves and later others). In class, students created posters (cover for their journal) using basic information about themselves. As they are starting to speak French, I wanted them to have a chance to record their voice and listen to themselves. Wanting to make it more relevant for the students, I created a classroom account on voicethread.com where I posted a picture of each of my students. Students presented themselves in French, recording their voice comment on their picture. Later in the semester, as they learned how to describe others, we went back to the pictures on voicethread. This time, instead of describing themselves, students picked a classmate's picture and recorded a voice comment about them.

Ideally, I had hoped to connect my class digitally with another French class, using their journals and this project. However, I did not make any successful contact with any other school, so the project remained pending. Talking to Gaby about her idea for this course, she inspired me to revisit the voicethread project with my French intro students.
During an IB conference in Paris, I had a chance to make contact with several French teachers around the world. I tried to actively establish a line of contact with those schools, hoping that one of them would be interested in starting an exchange with our middle school French classes. It's a work in process, but I am hopeful that my 6th graders will connect with French students in Europe, Middle East or China before the end of this school year.

NET Standards:
1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Collaborate
3. Digital Citizen ship
4. Technology Operations and Concepts

Some ideas:
-Apart from describing themselves and others, students will be able exchange and present their daily routine as middle school students, their school, their culture, their world.
Some questions:
-One question I will need to address quickly will be regarding the safety of using digital tools like voicethread. Will I be able to continue to use the students' pictures on a private voicethread account or should I consider using other images?