Grande Bastide’s library © MEDiakitab-CD
Since 2008, Grande Bastide secondary school in Marseille and St Marc school in Alexandria, meet to challenge each other on a common reading. Pupils from both countries gather at the same time to ask themselves questions about a book or a film. Reading challenges represent a nice way to promote reading desire and to demythologize writings. « Reading chalenges » reprensent a nice way to promote reading desire and to demythologize writings. They gather several groups around a book reading.
This activity is renewed in the Internet era. Participants like to play the game and to interact with other children. The digital meeting give the children the opportunity to help each other, to meet and to face the orher, in a relaxed atmosphere. The virtual meeting reinforce the mysterious aspect of meeting an other group. Familiar with Instant messaging, in the private space, children experiment the screen as an interface of public dialogue. Chat becomes « clavardage », the Quebec equivalent term, which become a symbol of this more « official » practice within the school space. As he becomes the representative of the group in front of the other group, the child change the use of the keyboard. It becomes more formal, the spelling, more rigorous, along with relaxed moments, during the videoconferencing.
St-Marc’s library © MEDiakitab-CD
Enriched by several years of practice, the educational file of the activity is now available and ready to be used in any contexts. Schools, libraries, or recreation center can take it and adapt to the cultural project they are running. The exhange material is posible to have diverse forms : documentary books, historical fictions, fairy tales, movies, web-sites… There are plenty of possibilities and some are related in the blogs « clavardage » and « défi lecture ».
