What Are Travel Buddy Projects?
These are intercultural exchange projects where a stuffed animal is chosen by a classroom to be an ambassador or “foreign exchange student” for research in another school anywhere on the globe. Using postal mail, students ship the travel buddy in a box along with documents such as a travel diary or log to record the buddy’s experiences, gifts for the partner school, and the curriculum project requirements. Both classes provide periodic updates on the travel buddy’s visits via email, wikis, or blogs loaded with digital photographs. Upon completion of the visit, the travel buddy is mailed back home with souvenirs for his home classroom. American teachers are most familiar with an alternative travel buddy project, Flat Stanley, which regained popularity after the re-release of the children’s book, Flat Stanley in 2003. In the story, Stanley experiences a terrible fate when he is flattened by a bulletin board , but being in this flattened condition provides many physical advantages for him
