When I was growing up, there were several ambitious teachers in elementary and high school who attempted to increase students’ “global awareness” by matching us up with pen-pals in foreign countries. I’m not sure how they found these other kids, or why they were chosen, but I distinctly remember working very hard composing letters to one foreign friend in particular (she lived in Israel) and waiting anxiously for her reply. And wait I did, because international snail mail being what it was, it seemed like it took forever before I got that coveted reply in the mail. Such a gap in time between messages made any real connection or closeness difficult, and our letters ended up being of the cursory “So what’s your favorite food?” variety that petered out by the end of the school year.

My, how times have changed. An article in the Washington Post paints a pretty clear picture of what today’s pen pals look like. And there’s definitely no  snail mail involved.

Thanks to the internet, email, teleconferences, and social networking sites, kids today really can quickly and easily connect with their age-mates around the world. And how much they learn in the process is pretty amazing.

For instance, two high school students in D.C. are partnering with two teens in Singapore to do a joint research project on maggots. They communicate easily via Facebook, and will meet in Singapore in August to jointly present their findings. Another class in the District talked about cyber-bullying with students in Romania, which led to further discussions about democracy, freedom of speech, and suicide. And when a group of third-graders started learning about volcanoes, they spoke to a student living in Guatemala who described the actual volcano he often visits near his home. (Talk about bringing geography to life!)

These global classroom connections are often forged and facilitated by non-profit companies like the International Education and Resource Network, which links students in 125 countries through projects about social issues, and ePals, which has already been joined by over 500,000 educators in 200 countries.

As I was reading the article, I couldn’t help but wonder what percentage of children from low income families across the country are afforded these types of enriched learning opportunities in their public school classrooms.

Speaking of access and affordability, there’s an incredible program/movement called One Laptop per Child whose mission is to provide low income children around the world with their own XO laptops. (But that’s subject for a whole other post.)

(Photo: ToastyKen’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons)