Bridging Language Barriers

Today Naomi who is in the second grade, wrote and drew her day in a life. This time she finished her morning affairs. she wrote, In the morning I get up at seven everyday. And I have breakfast with her parents and her younger sister. But she left alone then. Because her father goes to work, and her mother and her younger sister go to sisters nursery school. Then she clean her teeth. This is a picture in her morning life.

Images on this page are from Isamu and his students.

I'm very much glad to see your new pages.

Because now we-kidleader-japanese members are discussing the same theme, What is KIDLINK? Why we use real names? Why on kidlink mailing list?

Patti: Do you mean first and last names? Oh dear... is that how I want to say it? The order of names is not the same around the world. "First" and "last" have different meanings.

Isamu: Yes, we think the same thing. But many Japanese organizations run their oldest ways. Hi!!!!!! It could not do work as "world now" (I'd like to challenge using students real names on the list this school year more freely.)

Both are very difficult to join from Japan. It is difficult to make project from Japan.

Patti: Tell us why it is difficult... Maybe we can help.

Isamu: Yes, please help. When our domestic discussion is a little bit clear for talking about them this place.

Some of members are wanting to make their own project, but I said them those are not KIDLINK projects. KIDLINK is not only for searching their online partner but for communicating on the kidlink list. There are many uncertain, they said to me.

Patti: But they can develop their own project idea and we can help them run it on KIDPROJ. This is what a teacher in Hawaii did - Florine Nakasone, who moderated the "Multicultural Recipe Book." It was her idea and she wanted to do it within the KIDLINK community. We helped her and the project is here:

http://www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/Recipe

Isamu: AT this point, there are many difficult problem on language. "Language is still our barrier. Especially for Japanese.

But fortunately there will appear messages on kidcafe-japanese soon. I would like to continue our project using, both list, kidcafe-japanese and kidcafe-spanish It is really exciting project, I think. How we solve our language problem on the net?

Thanks for your help,
Isamu Shimazaki

Patti: Of course! This is a topic I forgot on our list - language barriers and how to overcome them. In some cases this is a bit easier because the characters can be read easily by our mail readers. Hebrew and Japanese characters present more difficulty.

David and Hannah.... how are you handling this?

Isamu and I have been using art to bridge language barriers with our young students for the past three years.

http://www.globalclassroom.org/youngart.html