Connect to the World with Skype

By Kris Walsh

A favorite tech tool of mine is Skype. (www.skype.com)  I have been learning about it quite a bit during the course of this year. This is a very versatile tool that can be used to connect your classroom with the rest of the world.

As time and budgets get tight, and it gets harder and harder to get away for more traditional field trips, Skype becomes a great alternative to let students see and experience something in a more active, hands on way than just viewing a video or reading a book. Students can use this as a way to see and experience new cultures, new ideas, or to hold classroom discussions with students in other classrooms.

This year I have been excited to be part of 3 unique Skype experiences and have some additional ideas that I would like to try with students in the future. I am going to share these experiences and my future ideas, but these are only the tip of the iceberg, there are many other experiences that can be had via Skype.

I am the coach of our elementary FIRST Lego League. In addition to building a robot using Lego Mindstorms, we have to research and create a project based around a theme. This year’s theme was Nature’s Fury, and we decided to focus on tornado safety. A visit to a television channel or weather service location would have meant an hour long drive, one-way. I talked to Mrs. Wright and found out that many of the area TV stations are willing to schedule and participate in Skype chats with student groups. She had a good experience with our area NBC station, WFIE 14, so I got in contact with their lead meteorologist, Jeff Lyons, and scheduled a time to do our chat. It was a great experience, he and I Skyped a couple of days ahead to check our connection and for me to explain what the objectives for the group were. During the session, he did a presentation, students were excited to talk to him about weather and ask questions. At the end of our time, he took his iPad and gave us a quick virtual tour of the news studio. The kids loved interacting with someone that they knew from TV and it was a great experience all the way around.

Mrs. Hubert’s 5th grade class does a video chat using FaceTime on iPads (also possible via Skype) She coordinates with Mr. Jarboe, a 5th grade teacher in Tell City.They worked together to plan and schedule their sessions. Both classes read the same book. Students were assigned to groups in their home school, and then paired up with a group in Tell City. Students read and meet with their partners from the other school.

More recently, Frau had an accident at home. She fell in the ice and broke her leg in 3 places! She is not allowed to put any weight on that leg and is confined to her bed at home. This didn’t stop her. Mr. Rohl has stepped into her spot, but does not have the knowledge in Spanish needed to assist the students in their studies. She worked with Seth and Jackie to set up a way to Skype into her classes and teach lessons. This is working out very well! She is able to see and interact with the students in her class and give them some instruction and answer any questions that the sub is not able to answer. The students are enjoying this and are getting a lot more out of this than just reading their textbooks.

In the future, I plan on working with Phil to link up his class with a class from a country or culture that they are studying. This will give both sets of students a chance to interact with students from another culture and to learn about each other and their similarities and differences.

I am also planning on recruiting an upper elementary class to try and do a Mystery Skype. This is a game where teachers link up 2 classrooms, but do not tell the students where the other school is located. Students have to then have a discussion and ask each other questions to try and figure out where the other class is located. There are variations of this games where students play 20 questions, or students can only answer yes/no questions.

As with anything you see on Techy Tuesday, if you would like any of us to assist you in doing this in your classroom, please let us know!

Happy Tuesday!

Resources

Skype in education- https://education.skype.com/ From this page you can go to pages dedicated to Mystery Skype and Field Trips.

Also, as I mentioned before, often local TV stations, museums, and other educational institutions are willing to Skype. All you need to do is visit a website and ask.

If you have an active Twitter presence, you can Tweet out to your followers to find willing collaborators.