Video conference to bring together students from mid-Michigan, Algeria

Contact: Rhonda Egidio, College of Education: (517) 432-3623, egidio@msu.edu; or Tom Oswald, University Relations: (517) 432-0920, oswald@msu.edu  

May 24, 2007

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A group of students and teachers from a mid-Michigan high school will soon have the opportunity to chat with a group of their counterparts from a school in Algeria.

The students and teachers from Ovid-Elsie High School in Michigan and Cheikh Bouamama High School in Algiers, Algeria, will link for a one-hour video conference chat and culture exchange at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, May 29, at the mid-Michigan school.

The event is part of a U.S. State Department-funded Middle East Partnership Initiative project with Michigan State University’s College of Education’s Partnership Schools Program, which is designed to facilitate technology and culture sharing for schools.

Students in Algiers will be joined by the U.S. Ambassador to Algeria Robert Stephen Ford and Algerian education officials.

Students at Ovid-Elsie High School will be joined by U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers and education officials from MSU.

Ovid-Elsie is one of four schools in the area to participate in this MSU school linkage program – Durand, Pinckney and DeWitt are the others. Other Michigan schools that have participated are in Portage, Grand Rapids and Rockford.

The program, called E3Link (Education, English, Electronically Linked) pairs a U.S. school with a partner school in Algeria so each may better understand culture, diversity and the communities in which they live. It is designed to meet the needs of each country to learn about a global society and will serve as a model for use of online technology to meet education and curriculum goals.

Students in each school create PowerPoint presentations that utilize digital photos, videos and audio recordings to share with each other. The program is designed to improve Algerian students’ English proficiency and U.S. students’ writing skills and to improve technology skills of teachers and students in Algeria as well as in the United States.

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