Welcome to your Wikispace!

The main objective of this project will be to make students have direct contact with North-American culture. The teacher will provide students with Valle’s Class Blog in order to make them work with on-line supports (E-mails, RSS, Webquests, Wiki and Podcasts) through which students will collect and share information about the key topic of their project - the approach to the culture and traditions of USA – . So, students will be expected to create all together a travel guide in the wiki, containing every aspect they had worked with.

Students should obtain the information, which they will use for the making of their travel guide, from the activities proposed in the webquest, as well as from various additional on-line sources. They will put in common all the information they find and will work cooperatively with their mates by means of the wiki which will be their main support for their future travel guide. In addition, students could receive the latest pieces of news directly from the American newspaper ‘The New York Times’ into their PC (or any other journal to which they may subscribe) by means of the RSS system. They will practice their L2 - English – like a tool for communication with their Anglophone pen-friends with whom they will meet through the website proposed on the specific activity dealing with key-pals, and finally, they will also have at their disposal a series of podcasts to learn the fundamental aspects of American culture in a more interactive manner. Consequently, students will have to follow the next order to carry out the activities proposed:

1. Working with E-mails
2. Working with Webquests
3. Working with a Wiki
4. Working with RSS
5. Working with Podcasts and Films

For concluding, it is important to note that the second objective of this project will be to make students be able to use the wiki as a support where they will have to create their personal travel guide about USA in which they will have to include photos, comments, videos or whatever they consider interesting. However, students will use Valle’s Class Blog as the main platform where all students will comment and share their doubts with other students and the teacher. This travel guide will have to be necessarily composed of the following sessions: gastronomy, sports, music, lifestyle, touristic places, festivities, curiosities and press. Once the project had been over, this on-line travel guide will be available for all the members of their high school. Therefore, students will have to resort to their imagination in order to create their own poster through which they will announce their on-line magazine, which will be stuck around the high-school.

                                                      Randy Pausch  (The Last lecture)

With this video, students will be likely to promote their self-improvement, and to make them conscious of the importance of fighting for their dreams and aspirations at all costs. The video is subtitled in order to facilitate students the comprehension of the message of the lecture since the main aim of this sequence is to motivate students in whatever they had to face along their lifetime, and to show them that everything has a good side, nothing is bad at all.