In this 5 minute clip pupils and staff from Martin J. Gottlieb Day School share their thoughts on Silvia Tolisano's awesome project Around the World in 80 schools and the learning opportunities they were able to engage in by Skyping over 300 different schools during lesson time.The outcomes are truly compelling!
Silvia has now also set up a dedicated Ning for the project to allow educators to collaborate with each other more easily and facilitate further connections of classrooms all over the globe! She talks in more detail about this and other edtech issues in the latest episode of the Women of the Web 3.0 podcast. A must-listen!
MFL teachers are also using Skype to videoconference with schools abroad or to invite 'experts' into their classroom to interact with their pupils and use language for a real purpose. Suzi Bewell for example uses Skype to connect with a Yr 6 class in France as part of her primary outreach work and the pupils love it apparently!
Pupils at Ednam Primary have also been Skyping with their peers across the channel and have posted pictures of their virtual lessons on the school blog. Florence Lyons recently blogged about her use of the free VoIP tool when she invited a native French speaker into her class so her pupils could hear her authentic accent and practise their French with her.
Esther Hardman wrote a post only yesterday about the 15 new webcams her department had purchased for one to one videoconferencing and how well their first experience with them had been. Esther is fortunate enough to have a dedicated videoconferencing kit at her disposal, but there is no reason why tools like Skype or Flashmeeting can't help language teachers break down the walls of their classrooms and forge international links. Unless they are blocked of course ;-)
Today was my first Skype experience in an elementary school classroom. I can now speak to the power of what Skype brings to communication and engagement.
The only problem came from our school's disappointing internet connection.
Posted by: Mrsenorhill | 08/04/2010 at 05:48
Hola Senor Hill,
Thanks for your comment. I know Suzi Bewell has been doing stirling work with Skype in her classroom to connect with a school in France. She blogged about it here on José Picardo's blog: http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=1653
Posted by: Joe Dale | 08/04/2010 at 11:03