Digital Pen Pals

Pen pals, in the traditional sense of writing a letter, have become few and far between. Very few people take the time to write a letter, place it in an envelope, and drop it off in a mailbox, and then wait several days, or even weeks for their pen pal to receive it. To keep up with the times, one teacher in rural Vermont has employed a digital pen pal system, with the help of Intercultural Virtual Exchange of Classroom Activities (IVECA), a non-profit organization that helps classrooms all over the world connect digitally.

Kay Lee, a 3rd grade teacher has paired up her class with one in South Korea, and in December of 2015, the two finally met. IVECA and Lee use a social studies curriculum to teach the students in South Korea about the cultural differences in Vermont. Lee’s class set up a presentation about Vermont’s alternative energy sources, and their South Korean “pen pals” taught them about Sejong City’s “shift to solar and wind power.” On weeks where there is no presentation, students talk to each other through emails, audio messages, and photos. It comes as a big surprise to the students when they find similarities in their lives, from a small town in Vermont of 5,000 people to a bustling city of 230,000.

Through these communications, the children learn not only about cultural matters but about real people their own age. By getting to know them on a personal level, the children are able to see that despite the distance, the difference in who they are is not that big. Michelle Phelps, a mother of one of the Vermont students, stated that “It was amazing for our kids to have that experience. We don’t have a lot of diversity here, so it’s nice for them to see how other kids live…I think they got a lot out of it.”

Amanda De Moraes

Boston Tutoring Services