Skype Jobs for Students

April 11, 2010 - AWW80S, Collaboration, Curriculum 21, Digital Learning Farm, Modern Learning

To piggy back onto my last post about Alan November’s call to make students contributors to their own learning, I wanted to share the “Skype Jobs” of my students.

There is a sense of excitement in the room, when our students get ready to conduct a Skype call. I almost want to compare it to a “traditional” vision of a newsroom before a deadline. Everyone is buzzing, running here, running there to get ready for their job assignment. Don’t ask why, but I have the memory of a scene in the “Watergate”movie with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in my mind.
Skyping: Assigned Roles

(click on the image for a larger version):

  1. Calendar
    • Responsible for adding Date & Time of planned Skype connection to shard & embedded Google Calendar
  2. Greeter
    • Greets the partner school.
    • Makes initial introduction.Talks about Geographic location.
  3. Share
    • Shares something special about class, school, city, state or country.
    1. Could be song, dance, souvenir, project, sports team, etc.
  4. Q &A
    • Asks specific questions for data collection.
    • Responsible for keeping conversation fluid
  5. Photographer
    • Responsible for documenting connection with still images.
  6. Videographer
    • Responsible for documenting connection with video.
  7. Backchannel Writers
    • Documenting conversation, questions, answers and classroom happenings during the connection on a backchannel chat (Ex. Today’s Meet)
  8. Backchannel Cleanup
    • Responsible to save backchannel chat as a Word Document and cleaning up duplicate comments and mark questionable statements to be verified.
  9. Live Blogger
    • Blogs skype call live to classroom blog
  10. Blogger Word Problem
    • Creates a Math word problem from data, questions and answers collected during skype call
  11. Google Earth
    • Finds location of skype partner and measures distance in miles & kilometers.
  12. Google Map
    • Responsible for adding placemark of Skype partner’s location to embedded Google Map on classroom blog.
  13. Info Station
    • Responsible to search for any data question on the spot.
    • Verifies any questionable information as well.
  14. Data Entry
    • Responsible for adding data collected into embedded google form on classroom blog. Ex. distance miles/km, temperature in F/C.
  15. Elapsed time
    • Responsible for noting time Skype call started and ended as well as calculating elapsed time.