Skyline students speak 'en francais' with class in France

[originally published January 14, 2012 in nvdaily.com]

FRONT ROYAL -- Samantha Santmyers didn't realize for a while that France stopped using the franc years ago and replaced it with the euro as the national currency. Now she knows.

"Our textbooks are as old as dinosaurs," said Samantha, 14, "so we talk to French students and learn stuff that shows the textbook was wrong because things have changed."

Jordan Lurie, 14, didn't think she or the other students in Heidi Trude's French class at Skyline High School had much in common with French teenagers until she talked to them face to face without so much as setting foot outside her classroom. Now she knows.

"I think it's pretty cool," Jordan said, "They're just like American students or teenagers." For a while Friday, students in Trude's classroom could see France, or at least a very small part of it, a part inhabited by students like themselves in Givet, a small town near the border with Belgium.

Thanks to Skype, a video conferencing Internet program, Trude's second-year French students were able to see and talk with their counterparts without needing a passport, plane ticket and maybe an international student exchange program.

Students praised the lesson for providing them with an authentic experience while practicing their budding language skills.

"You can learn better French because you're speaking to people who are absolutely French speakers," Kelsey Downs, 15, said after the class.

Skype also allows Americans to return the favor by allowing French students to practice their English and learn about life in the United States. Muriel Biancalana, Trude's teaching counterpart in France, and her students appeared on the laptop screen on Trude's desk.

One by one, the students in France and Front Royal took turns seated in front of a video Web camera and asked each other questions, alternating between English and French.

The topics covered daily life in each other's countries and favorite films, TV shows and movies. Trude's class began at 8:30 a.m., when the clocks in France show 2:30 p.m., a time difference that complicates the scheduling of Skype sessions, especially for American students who are still in classes long after the school day is over in France.

Trude's students groaned when one of the French students mentioned "The Simpsons" as a favorite TV show, but greeted his choice of "House, M.D." with a chorus of cheers.

"Yes, we eat in school, and our cafeteria is very nasty," Samantha said, replying in English to one of the students in France.

Biancalana, speaking from her classroom in Givet, said face-to-face contact with Americans by video conferencing is also a welcome breakthrough for her students.

"They need to speak English in their everyday life," Biancalana said. "That's why Skype is great for us."

Friday's class was the second Trude has conducted using Skype after an initial session in December. She believes her class is the first in Warren County Public Schools to use the video conferencing technology for regular classroom instruction.

"Considering it's only the second time we used it, I felt it went very well," Trude said after class. "The students are very comfortable with the technology."

The adult guests in Friday's class included several officials from the school division's central office and Douglas P. Stanley, county administrator and president of the Warren County Educational Endowment.

The endowment is contributing $2,500 to pay for laptop computers used in the French classes at Skyline.

The laptops allow the students to continue their interactions with students in France using Gaggle, an email type software that enables teachers and school administrators to follow student communications.

Trude minces no words in describing one of the advantages of Gaggle: It discourages interactions among students that adults would consider undersirable or risky.

Trude said some of the students use Facebook and other social media to continue communicating with the students in France when they aren't in class.

"I have no control over what they do at home with Facebook," Trude said, "but with Gaggle I have complete control."

Trude said she hopes to eventually expand the use of Skype to at least once a week.

That would suit Scott Foor, 15, just fine. He praised Skype as a step forward from older forms of technology he has used in learning French.

"It's a lot better because they can respond to us, unlike using a CD recording," he said.