Exchange activities In this section, we list some of the types of activity that you can get involved in with your partner schools.  We look at the potential benefits for your students and the organisational issues involved.  We would love to hear from you if you have tried any of these activities at your school.  Please send us an e-mail.
	Individual exchanges
	Pen pals Some teachers in e-link schools encourage their students to exchange letters with a student from the partner school in their free time.  The teachers in the two schools work together to pair up the students but after that students are left to their own devices. Having a pen pal in another part of the world can help children gain a better understanding of other cultures and improve language skills.  It can also lead to lasting friendships.  Obviously, some people are better at replying to letters than others and it would be unrealistic to think that pen pal relationships will be long  lasting in every case.  Some teachers at e-link schools in Japan have reported that while they were hoping to get students to write letters together in class every week the teacher in the partner school had envisaged an individual pen pal exchange.  The mismatch in expectations led to some disappointment when the class found that their letters were not getting replies.  This underlines the importance of clearly specifying your intentions and discussing the details of an exchange in advance.    Key pals Key pals are similar to pen pals except communication takes place via e-mail. Students enjoy being able to get replies to the letters quickly and the opportunity to use computers in class can be motivating in the short term.  However, e-mail can be less personal than traditional letters and the ease of sending messages can in itself lead to students writing in a less considered style.  Many teachers are also rightly concerned about issues of privacy and Internet safety. There are a many resources on the web for finding key pals.  A good place to start might be Dave's ESL cafe: http://www.eslcafe.com/ KS connection's class box:  Classes looking for key pals can leave messages on this website http://www.ks-connection.org/
	Class projects
	The rationale for doing class projects is based on ideas of experiential learning.  Students learn through the process of producing something with their peers rather than just listening to their teacher.  The projects on these pages all have an end product, whether it is a poster, web page or a multimedia presentation.  We have made a rough division between exchange projects and collaborative projects. Exchange projects In an exchange project, responsibility for completing a piece of work lies mainly with the home school.  Students in the partner school act as an audience for the work that is produced.  This type of project is particularly popular among language teachers.  The only audience that children usually have for their work is a teacher.  The knowledge that written work will be seen by native speakers adds an extra dimension to classroom activities and can be very motivating for students.  The mini-projects and class questionnaire are examples of exchange projects. Collaborative projects Students in both the home school and the partner school work together to produce the same final product in a collaborative project.  Collaborative projects are generally more demanding on a teacher's time and require a greater amount of coordination.  For language learners, the potential benefits are greater as communication is integral to the successful completion of the project.  For example, in manga relay students must go through a process of negotiation over the plot of the story they are producing together.
	Tandem learning
	Tandem learning refers to arrangements whereby classes in different countries cooperate to learn each other's languages.  There are around 300 secondary schools in Britain that offer Japanese as part of their curriculum and the number is increasing.  A number of specialist language colleges also teach Japanese.  Provided that a fair arrangement can be agreed upon, this type of 'language exchange' can be very valuable. Many of the projects on this website can be used in Japanese and English language classrooms.  For example, the 'The Way We Are' photography project may be of particular interest to teachers of Japanese in the UK. The Nihongo Centre in London has a site where you can find out more about the teaching of Japanese in Britain.   http://www.nihongocentre.org.uk/index.html The Japanese Language Institute Urawa site also has links to a number of resources for teaching Japanese http://www.jpf.go.jp/e/urawa/index.html Tandem learning This site doesn't contain any specific references to exchanges between schools in Japan and Britain but it has some general information on setting up tandem learning projects http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/email/
	Computer mediated communication
	e-mail groups Schools with access to the Internet are able to communicate with each other in a number of different ways.  In addition to e-mails sent individually, teachers might consider setting up a a group mailing list.  For example, Yahoo offers a free service where members of the group can send messages to everybody else in the group.  See http://groups.yahoo.com/ for details.   Bulletin boards You could also try to set up your own bulletin board system (BBS).  These allow individuals to publish messages on a web site.  The messages can then be searched and read by other users.  Issues that you will probably have to consider is who has access to the bulletin board and whether or not it should be moderated by a teacher. Why not get your students to use an existing bulletin board system such as the ones provided on the Japan UK Live web site? Voice messages If you get fed up with typing you can always send a recorded voice message.  This seems to be fairly easy provided you have the right recording equipment. http://www.10-best-voice-mail.com/  offers information on free voice mail services.  Simultaneous written communication The time difference between the UK and Japan is 9 hours.  So if students in Japan stay at school a little later they can exchange text-based messages with their partners in the UK who have just turned up for school.  Yahooligans offers a various messenger services at http://www.yahooligans.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Chat/  Video conferencing Successful use of video conferencing technology also requires careful coordination between teachers over timing and equipment to be used.  As with the other modes of communication mentioned in this section, whether students get any real benefit from using the technology depends very much on the tasks they are set by their teacher. An information sheet on video conferencing for schools is available from BECTA: http://www.becta.org.uk/technology/infosheets/index.html    Teachers Online : How video conferencing can be integrated into the curriculum.http://teachersonline.ngfl.gov.uk/featureweek20.php3?d=0&f=0   Global Leap: International directory of schools interested in video conferencing.http://www.global-leap.com/enter.htm