Abstract:

The following article will briefly explain how English as a Second Language (ESL) brings the possibility to learners in primary schools from different parts of the world to have the opportunity to talk about their favourite topics through posting their videos in a blog and talking about them on several videoconferences. This collaborative project called 'kidscast' (http://kidscast.iearn.cat) provides a structured programme of student activities with the aim of improving the participants' communicative competence in a real online partnership between non-native English students.
The 'kidscast' is an adaptation of the 'youngcast' project (Roura, 2009), one of the projects developed by IEARN-Pangea (Catalonia) and iEARN-UK, aimed at synchronous exchanges between secondary students from UK learning Spanish and some Spanish students learning English and which has already been implemented in the last three years in some UK and Spanish schools. The pilot phase of the 'kidscast' will be implemented in January 2011 between some Spanish schools and some schools in Slovenia and Switzerland.

The Learning Circle structure and phases:
The cross-classroom online collaboration structure of the 'kidscast' project is based on some aspects of the Learning Circle structure (Riel, 1997), although an adaptation of the different activities has been necessary in order to deal with the complexity of doing oral activities and online synchronous communication. Learning Circles are an innovative way to engage in online learning through the creation of teams of teachers and their students who join in an online space. On the article, I will briefly introduce how the five different phases of the Learning Circle design has been adapted for the project:

.- Phase 0: Getting Ready.
.- Phase 1: Opening the Circle.
.- Phase 2: Planning the Learning Circle Projects
.- Phase 3: Exchanging Student Work
.- Phase 4: Organizing the Circle Publication
.- Phase 5: Closing the Circle

Keywords:

ESL, videoconferences, learning circles.