• Gude to The Digital Learning Farm
• Guide to 21st Century Skills, Literacies & Fluency
• Guide to Blogging
• Guide to Globally Connected Learning
• Guide to Twitter in the K-8 Classroom
• iPad: Activities
• iPad: Collaborative Classroom eBook
• iPad: Guide to Creating your own eBook for the iPad

In another part of a series of Info-flyers, I have added the “Getting Started with Skype” flyer.

The guide encompasses step-by-step help from Skype projects, preparing your students for a Skype call, transforming a Skype call into a Learning call to student job responsibilities before, during and after the actual call.

Get Started With Skype

As a teacher, you know when your students are excited about learning. It is what you work for. Is is part of the passion that makes you a true educator.

I had the honor of witnessing such display of excitement and learning a couple of weeks ago, as I spent a day of learning with educators participating in the Edweek2011 in St. Jospeh, Missouri. Not only did I want to talk to teachers and administrators about the opportunities of using Skype in the classroom, I wanted to show them first hand. I wanted them to experience the potential it could bring into their own schools by connecting, communicating and collaborating with others around the world. But the connection could not only be about the connection via Skype itself. How can we make a connection to curriculum content and 21st century skills and literacies? How can we turn an ordinary connection via Skype into a LEARNING CALL?

Using the concept of  “The Digital Learning Farm: Students as Authentic Contributors”by Alan November, I had arranged a Skype call with Mrs. Yollis and her third grade students. Neither party knew the geographic location of each other. It was each groups’ goal to find their respective location by asking closed questions that could be answered with a “Yes” or a “No”. Mrs. Yollis had prepared her 3rd graders by distributing specific job responsibilities during a Skype call  in order to work together to figure out the location of their connection partner.

I hope you will be able to see, hear and feel the excitement of learning these students displayed by watching the edited video recording (for time purposes) of the call.

Make no mistake, simply by assigning these job responsibilities to (groups of or individual) students will not automatically create a learning call, nor will it welcome such an open display of learning excitement into your classroom. The credit goes to Mrs. Yollis for having prepared here students with her own enthusiasm and thirst for learning the entire school year up until this point.

The learning call was well framed by preparing students ahead of time. All of Mrs. Yollis’ students had had previous experiences with authentic contributions to their classroom learning community. Just take a closer look at Mrs. Yollis’ fabulous classroom blog documenting and describing their shared learning.

During the Skype call, Mrs Yollis continued to guide and focus students on the task at hand. It was obvious to us “on the other side of the screen”, that students knew their job responsibilities and worked well together.

Once the call was over, the learning continued by reflecting on the experience on their classroom blog. Mrs. Yollis posted  questions for her students to comment on. The class also received comments from teachers who had participated from Missouri as well as blog readers as far away as Australia.

image licensed under Creative Commons by Sean Nash

Image licensed under Creative Commons by Sean Nash

The Mystery Skype Call from langwitches on Vimeo.

Read more about Mystery Skype calls:

• Mystery call with Langwitches (by Mrs. Yollis)
• Mystery call with Mr. Avery (by Mrs. Yollis)
• Mystery call with Mrs. Yollis (by Mr. Avery)
• Mystery Skype call with Michigan (by langwitches)

As we are asking ourselves: “How do we upgrade a traditionally taught curriculum unit and bring it into the 21st century?”

… We need to test, probe and continuously experiment what works? How does it work? Is the upgrade transformative? Does it increase student motivation? Engagement? Learning?

Automating...

I observe carefully if an upgrade, with the use of technology, is just automating the way we have always taught or is it informating and transformative? Alan November explains what he means by automating and informating in an article titled Creating a New Culture of Teaching:

I have learned about two ways to think about technology: one is called automating, the other is called informating. One will give you incremental improvement; the other will give you big improvement. Unfortunately schools and technology planning tend to focus on automating. This means that you bolt technology on top of what you’re already doing. Most of the investment in education is automating. We have kids write a five-paragraph essay with a $2,000 pencil in a word processing lab. The best improvement you can hope for if you automate is incremental. For example, if we automate report cards, the result is we have prettier report cards, but we don’t improve learning.

You get very different results when you informate. The real revolution is information and communication, not technology. Let go of the word technology. If you focus on it, then you’ll just do what you’re already doing. The trick in planning as we move forward is to think about information systems, whole systems of the flow of information and communication.

As our fifth grade class at the Martin J Gottlieb Day School prepared to study the American Revolution, I am conscientious of the upgrades we are planning and implementing for the unit. Take a look at my previous post titled: The Official Scribe: It’s All About Learning Styles & Collaboration, where I share the transformative use of collaborative note taking (some with..some without technology involved) to address different learning styles.

Collaborative 5th Grade Bulletin Board

Another upgrade we are monitoring for results is bringing in “experts” into the classroom via Skype. I consider someone an”experts” who has a passion for a subject or topic, personal experience or can bring in another perspective.

As I started to mention on Twitter our planning to upgrade the American Revolution unit, Travis Bowman picked up on it. He is

a 6th generation descendant of Peter Francisco and has written an historical novel about Peter’s life entitled Hercules of the Revolution.

Travis agreed to skype into our 5th grade classroom to talk about his ancestor’s story and life. Students were able to ask questions, make connections to what they already had studied in the classroom and digg really deeper into their understanding and visualization of “what life was like” for a soldier during the American Revolutionary war. Take a look at a shorten summary of our Skype call. I hope you can get a feel of our students’ engagement of the topic as well as the quality and critical thinking skills that went into their questions. Ask yourself if questions like these would have been encouraged with the use of a textbook alone? As Travis was speaking with the students, their teacher was circulating her iPad among them to pull up images or other info Travis was mentioning.

A second opportunity presented itself, when Richard Byrne, a History teacher from Main, and famous author of the FreeTechnology4Teachers site, accepted our Skype invitation to the classroom in Florida. Mrs. Z., the 5th grade classroom teacher, asked Richard to talk to her students about the battles of the American Revolution. Richard, instantly, was able to create a connection to our students through the screen. Students (ten & eleven year olds) who usually would be fidgeting when asked to sit and listen for 45 minutes to a lecture where engaged and interested. They were absorbing, questioning…making connections…

I also want to point you to a guest post from Heather Durnin, she wrote about HER students experience during a Holocaust unit, when I had been asked to skype in as “the expert” and share my family’s history.

Is technology being used to transform teaching and learning by bringing in experts? Are students experiencing that learning and information does not only come from the pages of a textbook or a teacher lecturing in front of the class? Are students starting to make connections about the value of a network and being able to contact people from all around the world to learn from them? What are your experiences from bringing in experts into the classroom? Is technology, like video conferencing, truly transformative? Can examples, as the ones described above, help other teachers get tools, like Skype, unblocked in their schools and districts for the sake of new forms of teaching and learning? Are we on the right track?

I just finished two great days participating in the ECIS (European Council of International Schools) IT conference in Frankfurt, Germany.

Besides attending very interesting sessions by  David Warlick, Jamie McKenzie, Warren Apel (International School of Amsterdam) and Maggie Hos-McGrane (International School of Zug and Luzern)

I also had the privilege of sharing two presentation with the other attendees. Below you can find my slides from each of the presentation. For further resources and links mentioned during the presentation, please visit my wiki.

• Get Connected: Around the World with Skype
• Ready to start Blogging in the Classroom

Third graders had the opportunity to be called upon being experts. They were asked to skype into an educational conference presentation being given by Kelly Hines from North Carolina and share their experience of using Skype at school.  Students were excited and prepared well by being assigned different job responsibilities during the Skype call.

Here were their job descriptions:

• Answer and Hang Up Skype call
• Greeter (Introduce ourselves)
• Q&A
• Photographer
• Videographer
• Live Blogger
• Note-Taker- laptop
• Note-Taker- paper & pencil
• Note-Taker- Doodler – iPad

Distribution of Job Responsibilities

Mrs Hines sent us three questions ahead of time. As a class, we collaboratively brainstormed how we could best answer these questions.

Question: Preparation & Brainstorming

Skype Prep

Skype Prep

Here is the post from our Blogger:

Today we are skyping with about 50 teachers learning to skype. We are telling stories about our skyping. We are teaching teachers. We had three people to answer questions. We are telling stories of why it’s good to skype.

Here are the notes they took on the laptop about our Skype call:

* Skyping with North Carolina
* Teaching teachers
* About 50 teachers learning
* Answering questions
* Telling stories
* Never skyped
* Showing our teacher
* Asking to check out our blog
* Learning how to skype with other teachers

Here are the images taken by the student photographer (remember third grader!)

Note-Takers

Note Taker- Pencil & Paper

Videographer & Q&A

Doodler/ Illustrator

Here is the screenshot of our “doodler/illustrator” from the iPad.

iPad "Doodler/Illustrator"

Here is an excerpt of the video taken by one of the third graders to document the connection.

It was a fantastic opportunity for the students to practice their oral presentation skills, learn about specific audiences (in this case teachers learning about using Skype in their classrooms) and documentation skills (paper & pencil, video, images, illustrations and blogging).

Alan November’s article Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm has inspired me in my professional life beyond words and guided many of my research and actions in the classroom and professional development since then.

We have come full circle as globalization quickly becomes the norm, and it may now be essential for our students to compete with peers from around the world. Today, we can restore the dignity and integrity of the child as a contributor. Across the country, pioneering teachers are providing students with new roles that have students making contributions to their learning communities. We have powerful, easy-to-use tools such as screencasting and podcasting that give students opportunities to contribute content to the class. At the same time we can also provide them with rigorous and more motivating assignments and better prepare them to become more productive in our new global economy.

You can read the following posts on this blog where I shared thoughts and examples of students as contributors:

• Tutorial Designers- Empowered Learners- Contributors
• Unpack, Upgrade and Bring your Lesson into the 21st Century
• Students as Meaningful Contributors

I wanted to share yet another example of The Digital Learning Farm in action with you.

Mystery Call

Fourth graders had a blast with a “Mystery Skype”. Two classes connected without knowing WHERE each one was geographically located. The idea was, by asking targeted questions, to find out the city we each lived in.

This mystery-type-call was a lot of fun and reinforced critical thinking skills as well as collaboration, communication and geography skills!

We stated the rules at the beginning of the call:

1. One class starts asking a question to determine the geographic location of the other class.
2. Questions can only be answered with “Yes” or “No”.
3. If the class who asked receives a “Yes” answer, they continue to ask another question until they receive a “No”. It will be the other class’s turn then to ask a question.

On our end, we gave students different jobs to help figure the location out.

Questions & Answers

• Q & A: students were in the “hot seat” asking and answering questions in front of the webcam

Scribe

• Scribe: Student who wrote the clues we received on the board to keep track of positive and negative responses

Researchers

Researchers

Researchers

• Researchers: Students were ready and waiting with Google Maps open on their computer or with an atlas to take the clues received and narrow the search down and to feed information to the Q&A speakers.

We had a blast trying to figure each other’s location out and learned that we need to learn to ask good questions that will narrow possible answers down. We also learned that we all need to work together (Q&A, researchers and scribe) and communicate in order to solve the mystery of our Skype connection’s location. Here are some of the clues we figured out: Our skype mystery connection lives:

• in the USA
• where it is cold right now
• in the North of the USA
• does not live in North Dakota
• in Michigan
• about an hour from Detroit
• close to a lake
• in a small town

We needed some help to continue finding their exact location: We received the following clues:

• they are close to the border with Ohio
• the first part of their city’s name is a “baby sheep”

Our mystery class was from Lambertville, Michigan!

No lesson, no event and no learning should stand alone. We connect what we learn with our experiences of the past and store newly acquired skills, facts and experience to be retrieved in the future. Previously, I wrote about framing a field trip with Google Earth. I try to make the case of the importance to allowing students to learn to make connections, to not just expose them to a learning experience without pre-knowledge activation and reflection “to put things in perspective” to follow.

In Assessment of Learning via Skype, I shared the following image

A Skype call should never be done in isolation. We should not treat a video conference any different than a field trip. The actual experience should be framed by pre-activities that activate prior knowledge and post-activites that give students the opportunity to reflect, create and connect these new experiences.

Credit for middle image experience by tombodor

I want to share with you a fourth grade learning experience. Last month I mentioned in the post “What do you have to lose?” how our fourth grade teacher took the time to upload her students’ book trailer videos to her classroom blog. One of the authors of these books, Babara O’Connor, received a Google Alert of her name and book title which led her to the classroom blog. We were able to set up a Skype conference with her.

I set up a test call with Mrs. O’Connor ahead of the actual Skype call with students  to make sure that both of our video and audio settings were set up correctly. In the classroom students started brainstorming questions they would ask during the Skype call.  We talked about questions that could only receive a “yes” or “no” answer and formulated questions that would solicit a more in depth answer. The entire class contributed in the brainstorming session. In the end the questions were narrowed down to 10.

1. What do you like to write about?

2. Where do you get your ideas to write your books?

3. When you write your books what inspires you and why?

4. What was your favorite book as a child and why?

5. How long does it take to write a book and why does the process take that long?

6. What is your favorite part of writing and why?

7.Do you believe you have to be a good reader in order to be a good writer?

8. Where did you go to school, and were you inspired in school to become a writer?

9. What is your favorite kind of genre and why?

10. If you had to turn one of your books into a movie which one would it be and why?

Students were assigned different jobs before the Skype call, such as greeter, introductions, videographer, photographer and individual questions. Student then “practiced” speaking their part ahead of time using PhotoBooth. They recorded themselves speaking slowly, clearly and looking into the camera. Their classroom teacher confirmed that this exercise made a big difference in their confidence level. Everyone was very excited when the Skype call actually took place.

Welcome Mrs. O'Connor to our Classroom

Recording our Skype Visit

Mrs. O'Connor shares books that inspired her to becone a writer

Take a look at the video below that shows a few snipets of the call.

In order to frame the Skype call as a learning call, the experience could not end when we hung up with Mrs. O’Connor. For students it would include blogging about it afterward to reflect on their experience and think about what they had learned from it. Students also got inspired to read more by Mrs. O’Connor after the Skype call.

What did we observe as teachers? How can we take this experience to the next level? Although students were confident demonstrating speaking skills during the Skype call, it was a “back and forth”- “question and answer” session. We would like students to go beyond the ping pong method of “conversing”, but truly be part of a conversation. Not only did we need to go beyond asking questions that inspire more than yes/no answers, we will also need to practice responses that will go beyond: “Thank you” or “That is interesting”.

Students were asked to reflect on their “learning experience” during the Skype call by commenting on the classroom blog.

Student Comments

We had a good lesson on how to write more reflective and reminded them of the commenting etiquette they had drafted for their class previously.

As we were going through the comments in moderation, we noticed that they most students followed the etiquette beautifully for the the most part. We noticed that the week parts in the comments were:

• Proper spelling
• Check before you click
• High level of vocabulary

We also noticed that an important component was missing in our commenting etiquette:

• Add something…go more into details…explain yourself
• Remember your worldwide audience (Not everyone who will read your comments, will have been in the classroom with us when the learning event had occurred)

We pulled up a few suggestions for comment starters and highlighted words to integrate in our comments.

Comment Starters

Here are two examples how students re-wrote their original comment. (Click image to enlarge)

If you want to read more about teaching commenting, take a look at a previous post “Blogging Lessons on Commenting” here on Langwitches.

Skyping with students is great! They are learning…There is no doubt in my mind…!

Skyping Hub- Learning Hub

• I know…I see motivation in their eyes… I feel excitement in the air…I hear them say: “How cool”, “That was awesome” or “When are we skyping again?”.
• I  know… all about the different skills students are exposed to and are practicing while skyping.
• I know… that I am helping them learn differently than from a textbook.
• I know… that I am preparing them for a work environment where they are expected to collaborate with colleagues and teams who do not live in the same country, nor continent and operate in a different time zone.
• I know… that I am exposing them to a world, people and cultures beyond their horizon.
• I know… that I am broadening their perspectives, tolerance and  for someone who is different

…but… what about formal assessment and documentation of this kind of learning.

I enjoy helping other teachers get excited and comfortable using Skype as a tool to connect with other classrooms or experts around the world. I want to make it explicit, once again, that it is NOT about the tool, but about the skills and the learning.

In order to streamline the process of converting a Skype Call into a Learning Call and to make it more visual, I created the following images and handouts. Please feel free to use them in your own classroom.

You can download all of them as a pdf file here.

Credit for middle image “experience” by tombodor

A Skype call should never be done in isolation. We should not treat a video conference any different than a field trip. The actual experience should be framed by pre-activities that activate prior knowledge and post-activites that give students the opportunity to reflect, create and connect these new experiences.

Pre-Activities include:

• Familiarize with geographic location, language, culture, age group, etc.
• KWL Chart
• Information Literacy (locate)
• Google Earth (distance)
• Google Maps (Street view)
• Formulate questions
• Distribute job responsibilities for actual video conference experience

Pre-Activities Job Description:

Have students prepare for a call by filling out the handout below. You can easily ask them to formulate and share questions on your classroom blog as well.

Depending on the geographic location, have students “orientate” themselves to WHERE they will be connecting to by answering the following questions.

During the Call Activities include:

• Interview
• Q & A
• Image & Video recording
• Blog (summarize)
• Backchannel
• Data Collection
• Present
• Share

During Skype Call Job Description:

I have written several times about engaging students during a Skype call by given them specific jobs and responsibilities. You can listen to my 5th graders explaining each job a little more.

Once the Skype call has ended, it is important to help your students debrief and reflect on their experience. As their teacher you will want to assess in one shape or form the learning that occurred. Is skyping making a difference in their learning? Have they learned something that could not have been taught via a textbook? What was the engagement and motivational level of your students?

Here are some ideas on how to help your students reflect on their Skype experience and help you assess their learning. Give students choices on how to debrief by offering or alternating using different media.

Post-Call Activities include:

• Informal assessment: debrief right after the Skype call. Have students talk about what just happened. Read the backchannel log out loud and collaboratively add anything that was not documented.
• Information Literacy (evaluate, analyze, categorize data collected)
• Create documentary (video clip) from video clips taken during the Skype call
• Create Photo Slideshow of images taken during the Skype call
• Write reflective blog posts
• (Paper & Pencil) Journal entries: Give students prompts
• Create a Video recording from your debriefing session
• Audio podcasting
• Embed images and video into blog post
• Share with parents (informal at home) or host a parent presentation session at school
• Present to larger audience (entire school, community, conference)

Post-Activities Job Description:

Take a  peek into a debriefing session after a Skype Call from a third grade class.

What are some of the activities you do to frame a video conference experience for your students? How do you document and assess the learning taking place with video conferencing?

IMPORTANT!

It is important that we start documenting and assessing student learning (formally and informally) from 21st Century tools.  Most assessments are not designed to take new forms of learning into consideration. The more data and documentation we have, the more we can move towards a new kind of “testing and assessing“.

Please contribute by asking your students to take the following survey about their learning via Skype. Once you have had your students take the survey, please e-mail me , so I can share the results with you.

Please disseminate the link to the survey in your own PLN by blogging or tweeting about it.

English ~ Español ~ Deutsch

Heather Durning who blogs on Mrs. D’s Flight Plan has graciously allowed me to cross post her latest post here on Langwitches.

I believe her blog post is invaluable as it fulfills the need to document, summarize and assess learning outcomes when leading your students with new forms of teaching and learning. The blog post titled “Holocaust Education via @Langwitches and Group Skype” is such a post. We need to start sharing new forms of schools, classrooms, teaching and learning.

As Kevin Jarett tweeted:

If you dig further in Heather’s blog, which carries the tagline: “Teaching with technology in a Gr. 7/8 classroom means sometimes you fly by the seat of your pants“, you can read more about the collaboration between her class in Ontario and Clarence Fisher’s class in Manitoba, Canada.  I was honored when she contacted me to be part of that collaboration. During the Skype call I realized that I was part of a NEW FORM of teaching and really a new form a school and learning. I got goose bumps reading the students’ comments Heather shared with me after their reflection of the Skype experience. I can start seeing that new form of what learning can be/is crystallize itself in the fog ahead.

Read Heather’s description and her students’ comments below, then head over to her blog to follow along her journey of creating new forms of learning and teaching opportunities.

Skype Call Perspective from my End

Holocaust Education via @langwitches and Group Skype

This week, the Idea Hive experienced a significant “first”:  a shared read aloud of The Book Thief using Skype, backchannel chat, and Linoit, a virtual bulletin board.   In previous posts, Clarence shared the beauty of this story, and the pre-reading activities leading up to the book, designed to develop students’ knowledge of Germany in WW II.  In the Hive Thinking classroom, students collaborated to produce research summaries of various topics including Hitler Youth, Jesse Owens, Hitler, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust.

Following this step, students viewed a video created by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, Kristallnacht- Night of the Broken Glass.  While viewing images, including many of her Jewish grandparents in Germany, Silvia narrates her family’s story surrounding that horrific night on November 9, 1938, when Hitler showed the world his plans for the Jewish community. Please take the 9 min. needed to view her story.  I assure you it will be worth it.

The next day, the Idea Hive students met via Skype to share questions they planned to ask Silvia in a follow-up group video call, a new Skype feature.  During that group video call, it was incredible to watch students in Ontario and Manitoba listen and interact with Silvia as she spoke to us all from Florida.  This call allowed our students to experience together, the emotions shared by Silvia, as she answered their questions.  Silvia helped students learn how similar behaviours are mirrored today in social media sites such as Facebook.  Students connected, as they learned together in an authentic environment.  One of my student’s parents shared the impact this experience had on her daughter.  “When she came home, she talked and talked about the Holocaust.  She cried.”

After the call, I asked my students to share their thoughts on how Skype affects their learning.

When we Skyped with Silvia, what happens years ago, makes more sense. She told us way more than I’d read in a textbook. She made me put myself in Germany during the night of broken glass.

When you’re talking to someone on a Skype call, with people around the world telling their story, you realize how really brave they are, like Silvia. They inspire us to share more of our experiences.  Brad P.

Skyping helps us learn. When our class Skyped with Silvia Rosenthal, she told us more information about the holocaust and WWII than a textbook would have told us. This makes it exciting for us because we can see her expressions and it makes it more real.  We can feel her emotion.

In order for this to work, there must be preparation involved so you have a reason to Skype. Preparing for a Skype call is just as important as studying for a test or practicing a speech for your History project. We prepare because it helps us present the information the way we want it to sound. We also prepare so there is a serious conversation, and so we don’t stumble over words as we are speaking to our audience. Ethan J.

During the Skype call, the students are very quiet and involved.  We are very interested with the call because we are not just reading a boring old textbook.  We are hearing somebody’s story. When we had a Skype call with Silvia on Monday, we got into it, asking questions that we’d previously planned.  And we all know you cannot ask a textbook questions!  If you have access to this technology, why not use it?!  Alyssa H.

The group Skype feature enables our students to share powerful, emotional learning experiences together.  It’s another step in our year-long goal of creating a community of learners in the Idea Hive.