Prompt 3 Authentic Communication

I agree with the Cummins chapter on how it becomes impossible to teach students in poor schools how to think for themselves, when the high stakes standards testing has principals practically forcing teacher to teach to the test. Principles don't want students doing hands-on experiments, they want them working on on paper-pencil test over and over again until they are able to master multiple choice test.
It is a great idea to bump up learning in the classroom with authentic texts. I like the idea of the French MGM school and the Italian CEM schools. I was surprised to learned that they have used the technique of school collaboration since the 1920s. As I read about it, while I don't really have an opportunity to communicate with other classrooms, I can certainly make students talk to each other and share written ideas with each other on a weekly basis. Of course implementation kinks would have to worked out.
I have not used the different web sites for ESL students, but I agree that students will be able able to listen and to try to comprehend authentic English dialogue, the portion of the equation that is missing is feedback if they were to try to imitate. However, there were programs that mentioned that students could have real time communication with a native English speaker, this would be great practice for authentic communication and feedback.
This past weekend I heard on CNN that for Japan watching t.v. shows on their cell phones was old news. As the technology becomes available, pretty soon, people will be able to video conference with their cell phones. This would be a great resource for a classroom to have as they implement authentic English instruction with ELL.