Penpal++? ClustrMaps are not your mother's penpal

When I was in school we used to have penpals.  Our class signed up with a class from elsewhere in the US or elsewhere in the world and the students were put into pairs.  We wrote to our penpals and they wrote to us.  You felt "connected" to some remote location that you could only read about in books or in this manner.

Recently, I opened my email to find a message from the flower girl in my wedding.  Her grandma was teaching her about using the internet and together they searched for my name and sent off an email.  Sure enough, I was at my computer to email back.  I thought this was such a great revolution to sending penpal letters.  She was SO excited to hear back from me in just a few minutes.

What would I do in a classroom to teach about the internet and have a penpal like experience?  I'd create a class blog.   When you blog you can see comments from anyone around the world reading your blog.  Additionally, you can see where in the world your visitors are coming from by using ClustrMaps.  I just added a ClustrMap to my blog in the lefthand panel to see where people tune in from.