Palmer Trinity School

Building a Global Classroom Written by D A N I E L M U T T E R , Communications Coordinator When you take a peek in to Raul Gonzalez's classroom, you might find students sitting on couches, engaging in discussions with other classes via video chat. You may be surprised to learn that these students are actually part of an international education program featuring six schools—three in the U.S. and three in Spain—that use film as a teaching tool in the classroom. In Mr. Gonzalez's Hispanic Cinema class, students learn about history, culture, film and language. Each school year, the students watch and discuss 50 films based on different Hispanic countries. Last year, Mr. Gonzalez teamed up with Palmer Trinity's sister school in Salamanca, Spain, to teach students about Hispanic film. IneveryCrea—an online creative educational community based in Spain—was so impressed by the success of the program that they approached Mr. Gonzalez about expanding it. "They loved the idea and said that if I could get three schools from the United States, they would get three from Spain to work around a film," said Gonzalez. All six classes watched Camarón; a film based on the famous Spanish Flamenco singer. Then, using the video chat program Google Hangout and educational social networking tool Edmodo, When you have students from two completely different countries look at the same movie, you get two very different perspectives. Both groups are brought up very differently, they interpret the movie in a unique way, and by collaborating they learn many things they wouldn't learn otherwise. — DANIEL PAZ '12 By using Tekboard—an interactive touch screen monitor with built-in webcam—students had the opportunity to host live film discussions with other classrooms in Spain and the U.S. students discussed the film together. Classes from the U.S. spoke in Spanish and classes from Spain spoke in English. "The interesting thing is that the students would correct each other in the language instead of teachers being involved, which I thought was very impressive," said Gonzalez. Each instructor used the film to teach a different curriculum based on their goals for the classroom. "My students were focused more on the film elements; some students were focused on the language and others were focused on music," said Gonzalez. "The beauty of a film is that you can use it to teach so many different disciplines." To conclude the program, students got a special opportunity to chat with Camarón's director Jaime Chávarri. Chávarri took questions about the film, answering in Spanish for American students and English for Spanish students. "This is a director who has directed many films and he is also a film professor at a university in Spain," said Gonzalez. "So for the students, it was a real wow moment." Mr. Gonzalez joined the World Languages Department at Palmer Trinity School in 1999. During his time at Palmer Trinity, Mr. Gonzalez has completed a master's degree in Spanish language and culture at the University of Salamanca in Spain. His thesis focused on using film as a teaching medium. IneveryCrea and Mr. Gonzalez plan to continue the cooperative teaching program in the future, adding more schools in different ways. "I think that we need to think outside the box. We need to take risks and we need to understand that our students are so versatile when it comes to technology," said Gonzalez. "There are no more borders in terms of connection when it comes to using the Internet and the children have so much to learn from each other." S U M M E R / F A L L 2 0 1 3 13

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