Friday, December 19, 2014

Reflection: Connected Classroom using Mystery Skype




Sixth grade students at the William Davies Middle School, in Mrs. Green's STEM class had the opportunity to connect with a Ms. Theresa Allen's, Twitter @tdallen5, 5th grade class at Catherdral of St. Raymond in Joliet, Illinois.  For our connection, we used Google Hangouts.

The day before our connection, students were introduced to the concepts of a Mystery Skype, demonstrate proper etiquette, and job responsibilities.  Here is a link to the presentation about proper etiquette during a video call.

In addition, each student was assigned a job.  Here is a link to the presentation about job responsibilities during the video call.  The jobs were as follows:

  • Greeter - welcomes and introduces the class
  • Communicator - asks the questions to the class
  • Question Keepers - keeps track of the questions and answers from each class
  • Geographers - keeps track of the location of the school using a map
  • Photographer - takes pictures during the session
  • Videographer - takes a video during the session
  • Bloggers - summarizes the events during the session
  • Sharers -  shares state facts
  • Closer -  concludes the session
Some jobs were required the students to use their Google Apps for Education account and share a Google document to record the information.



A Google map was displayed on a laptop to help the geographers narrow down the location of the school.  They used an outline map of the United States to keep track of their location.  



Each class asked a series of Yes/No questions to each other to try to guess the locations.  After the students guessed each location, they shared state facts with us.

We learned that:
  • Chicago is the biggest city in Illinois.
  • Illinois is located near lakes, and in the middle of the country
  • Illinois has a different time zone.  They are 1 hour behind the EST
Check out Ms. Theresa Allen's blog about our connection and experience!

Here is a short Animoto video from our session.  Enjoy!



Classroom Connection using Mystery Skype