The Numbers Game

Once you have met your hardware and software needs and have found a partner, you run up against some notably non-technical issues. For example, what happens when you have thirty students and your partner program has forty?

The problem of unequal numbers has a simple solution, actually. Simply give the more reliable correspondents on the side with fewer people more than one partner. Even more important is to create small groups of partners, so that a student has someone other than the teacher to write should his or her partner "go silent." Part of the goal here is to keep everyone involved, and part is to minimize the complaints making their way into your own in-box.

In the example below, letters represent students in one country (Canada, we'll say) and numbers represent students in the partner country (Japan). For this project, there are ten students in Vancouver and eight in Nagasaki.

A - 1   F - 5
B - 2   G - 6

C - 3   H - 7
D - 4   I - 8
E /     J /

Students 4 and 8 in Nagasaki are particularly good about promptly responding to mail, so they each have two partners. There are also four groups of pairs, so that if A stops sending mail (becomes sick, is a flake, etc.), 1 can write to B and it's B's job either to get A to write or to explain to 1 the problem. If A is sick, then for the remainder of the project, B will be both 1's and 2's partner.

This concern about a disappearing partner is even more of an issue for you as your group's coordinator. If your partner teacher goes silent, it can be a real bummer for you and your students. For this reason, I don't do a project unless I have a second contact at the partner school. It is equally smart to work with a second person on your own side.

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