A Skype Odyssey

Odyssey- A Spiritual Quest

image licensed under CC by Let Ideas Compete

An Odyssey is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as:

1 : a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune
2 : an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest

I can’t help but make the association with the above definition of “wandering” ,”changes of fortune” and “quest” with my Around the World with 80 Schools project.

The Quest

It has been over a year, since I have embarked on making connections with and for my teachers and students around the world. The journey has been nothing short of eye opening and wondrous.

Broaden your Horizon

When I first thought of using Skype in the classroom, I wanted to broaden my students’ (and other teachers’) horizon. I wanted them to say “We talked to someone in Argentina today” or “The kids in Thailand are just like us” or “Teachers in New Zealand are preparing similar lessons than I do”. I wanted to bring the geography and global awareness of other countries and cultures into everyday vocabulary.

Wow!

I wanted them (students & teachers)  to be “awed” at the possibilities that technology can open up to us. I wanted them to be shocked at how easy and economical it was to make the world part of their classroom.

Change in Fortune

The “Awwws” ,”Wows” and “That is incredible” did come, but also did the “I don’t have the time to prepare my students for skype calls with other classes”, “It takes too much time away from curriculum content” and other variations of “It’s nice, but…”.

Wes Fryer says It takes leadership to get creative in schools and support the use of Skype. Wes addresses  the technology (bandwidth and security) part of that equation in his post. I am venturing out to say that leadership at schools also need to be creative and understand the pedagogical value and curriculum connections that video conferencing has in terms of learning.

Leadership needs to support “pioneering” educators. They need to be allowed to go through a process of experimenting, evaluating, reflecting to see the effects of regular video conferencing on cross-curricula integration, student learning, motivation and engagement. We also need to get creative in involving and educating parents. With many of them unfamiliar with the technology (which appears to include such a strikingly different method than they remember from their own school days), they might not understand the educational use for such a tool in the classroom.

Wandering

Wandering

There had to be something more to merely using a webcam and calling another class in another city and country. There had to be subject area integration, there had to be ways to support (20th AND) 21st century skills and literacies, there had to be something more than an initial “Wow”.

The wandering paid off. There IS something more than the tool:

It is NOT about the tools...

The Understanding

The understanding that it never was about the tool (Skype or the webcam) started settling in. As students (and teachers) started to be part of regular Skype calls, it crystallized itself that it was all about the connections, the authentic experiences and knowledge we were able to bring to our students in addition to the communication opportunities. More and more students took their experiences home and asked their parents to install Skype in order for them to talk to far away grandparents or friends who had moved away.

It became apparent...

Experiences such as learning about whales from kids in Canada or becoming the experts for other students from Michigan or interviewing Jews from around the world as part of a research project were just the beginning to help us understand that it is about an awareness for teachers and students.

An awareness:

• which takes learning off the pages of textbooks
• that gives students the tools to make connections with experts and eyewitnesses
• that can lead them to authentic information”just in time” [personalized] for them
• that our classrooms can be as big as the world

An Odyssey transforms the traveler. I believe that we are catching a glimpse of how Skype, the tool, is transforming learning and teaching. It is making a real impact on how information is accessed, who we are communicating with and how we are connecting to the world around us.

Here are some journal entries from second graders about their thoughts of Skype:

If I could talk to anyone on Skype, I would choose my Au Pair, Magdalena, because I haven’t seen her in a while.

Skyping is learning new things to me.

I learned how to talk to different people from different countries.

I have learned to make friends.

I would Skype with my Tante Heni, she is my aunt.

I learned about the Olympics skyping.

I would like to skype with Houston, because I would like to talk about football.

Skype is like Facebook, but better.

I would like to skype with the president.

Skype is a way to meet new people who speak different languages.

A window to the world...

Our students are learning and understanding that there are more available resources to them than printed material. Our teachers are starting to include potential Skype connections in their planning in order to extend learning. There is a buzz around school that has is shifting from “Where are we skyping to…” to “We are studying… and skyping to learn about…”

The following video is from clips, I have been recording over the last few months. Nothing was scripted, many times just recorded when passing by in the hallway. I am hoping to continue recording students to see if a shift in their answers will also become apparent.

Around the World with 80 Schools Impressions from langwitches on Vimeo.

Skype in the News

I was recently contacted by Shanthi Venkataraman, a student from Columbia University, Graudate School of Journalism.

Columbia News Service is staffed by master’s candidates at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Articles are written by the students, then edited and vetted by professional journalists and professors. All articles are transmitted to New York Times News Service clients, but are also available for republication by any professional media outlet at no charge. Photos may also be downloaded from this site; multimedia links are also provided

Shanti was interested in hearing how Skype was used in Schools. We had a great interview, yes, you guessed it via Skype. She just informed me that her article Skype Gives Students Window on the World was published.

My friend, Chrissy Hellyer,  TeachingSagittarian, and Wes Fryer, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, were also interviewed.

Becoming the Experts

I received a tweet from Michael Kaechele, Technology Teacher at Valleywood Middle School.

What an opportunity!

Michael and I set the Skype calls up for the following week. I had a meeting with our Judaica teachers to get them involved and Brian, the Social Studies teacher from Michigan, shared a Google Doc with the questions his students were interested in asking.

Our students were very excited in being seen as “experts” and talked with their teachers about the questions and how to articulate their answers.

Since there were three sections of Social Studies classes from Michigan, we involved our 6th, 7th and 8th grade classes to take over one section each.

After our Skype calls, I received the following email from Michael:

Just wanted to say thanks for the calls yesterday. It was a great experience for our students to learn from yours. The social studies teacher liked it and wants to try again. Quote from student “They are just like us”

That says it all for me-breaking down walls of stereotypes that they might have just because we do not have a large Jewish community here.

I could not agree more with Michael. Opportunities like these, facilitated by technology tools (such as video conferencing) and Twitter (to make the initial connection), are taking learning off the pages of a book for our students (social studies book in this case). They give young people the opportunity to articulate what they have learned and share it. It brings in a kind of authentic learning that ordinarily the students in Michigan might not have had (meeting and talking to other Jewish kids their age).

Is that what “transforming” learning is about? Not doing the same assignments… the same content…simply with a different tool…?

Is it being able to do something that was simply not possible before…?

Tom Barrett on his blog EdTe.ch wrote:

transformative learning is what I am looking for, because replication offers no benefit to a teacher – all it produces is ostensibly a better presented piece of work and more of a headache to setup. The technology has to offer a whole new level of interaction [...] that cannot be gained from the traditional method explained above.

The learning activity has to be transformed into something that provides a greater depth of learning and interaction. There has to be a pedagogical shift.

I am thinking that the above mentioned learning example could not have been possible “before”.

• … before Twitter… most likely @concretekax and I would not have connected
  
• … before Skype … we would not have been able to bring our students together. Video conferencing is the closest we have to a face to face meeting. A phone call would not have produced the same results of the feeling to be in “one” classroom.
• … before…  our students would not have been called upon to be teachers to their peers across the country.
• … before… students from Michigan would have learned about Judaism from their teacher, from the pages of their social studies book and quite likely would not know or meet anyone Jewish in their community.