#virtualvalentine

Looking for the perfect spot for a Valentine's date? Second Life is brimming with romantic destinations that promise unforgettable moments with your special someone. From starlit gardens to beautiful ballrooms, visit these romantic spots and kindle the flames of love! 💖

On Wednesday, February 14th starting from 12:30pm PT, join Linden Lab employees and Second Life Residents on the Bellisseria Valentine's Love Train! This 30-minute ride ends with a teleporter that will take Residents directly to the Dunk & Hug a Linden or Mole Event! ❤️

Instead of just becoming frustrated with Valentine’s Day at our middle school this year (think hormones, candy, and students feeling left out...all rolled into one), I decided to try something new to motivate my students around this “holiday.” I found a project online called “Virtual Valentines” that talked about connecting with other classrooms for Valentine’s Day.  I was excited.

The Virtual Valentines Project was created by the EdTech Chat N’ Chew Podcast Team in order to connect classrooms globally.  Easy enough, I thought, but I wasn’t sure my speech classes were going to be game.  I had each class vote on whether they wanted to participate or not, and three out of the four classes were a definite yes.  So, I filled out a Google Form with our information, and a week later, I was paired with three other classrooms.  They were located in: Canada, Texas, and Florida, and all of them were in middle school.  The goal was to create a Virtual Valentine for your paired class and email it to them for Valentine’s Day. 

Of course, my students wanted to take it a step further and make valentines and mail them to the students also...yes, even the boys.

Each class also made a video in which the students introduced themselves and said what they liked about Colorado or what they liked to do in Colorado.  Since the students say their names in the video, I wanted to respect their privacy and not post it here.  It also helped me to learn more about my students this semester.  The video was fun because it pulled in the public speaking part of my class.

When one of my classes received their Valentines from their partners in Texas, they couldn’t wait to show them to each other. 

I would have to say that the highlight, though, was being able to Skype with our partner class in Ontario, Canada.  My thirty-six sixth graders were extremely excited for this opportunity.  They wrote down their questions ahead of time, just in case there was stage fright once we were live.  I didn’t need to worry, however.  Both classes were excited to learn about each other.  

We learned that their town in Ontario, Canada, with less than 1000 people, is two-thirds the size of our middle school with over 1500 people  My students also decided they were going to move to Canada since the students could wear hats to school.  We almost went into shock when they said their normal temperature in the winter was -70 to -30....that is until we discovered they meant Celsius. My students couldn’t believe that none of the Canadians went skiing for fun (hard to imagine when you grow up in Colorado), and their students talked about something called “Shanana” (or something like that).  We thought it was the newest dance move, but instead learned that, in the snow, they hold on to a car’s bumper and slide along with the car.  (I told my students that this wasn’t a good idea in Colorado.)  Of course, there was also the student that asked the Canadians if they would take back Justin Bieber, and I tried not to bust out laughing. You have to love middle schoolers.  For the most part, though, they learned that students in another country weren’t that different from them; they liked the same movies, music, and liked to hang out with their friends.

My goal is to set up many more global education opportunities for my students.  Last semester, our class did a Google Hangout with another class in Chicago to talk about their TED Talks that they were writing.  Admittedly, my students learned that they needed to rethink their topics for their speech after hearing the topics from the other class. However, this was much more meaningful and impactful than if I was to just tell them to think deeper about their topics.