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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Skype in the Classroom: 21st Century Virtual Fieldtrips

Skype is a free video conferencing tool that allows people to connect via the internet. My first graders have been using Skype to connect with other classes from across the United States. We have kept track of our progress on Skype R' Us. This is a website that I created to share the connections we have made, what we have learned, as well as provide a resource for any templates we have utilized to make this technology a great addition to our current curriculum.

Who: We have been able to make a great number of connections across the United States. I have a spreadsheet on the Skype R' US website. In addition, Skype in the Classroom makes it very simple to post a project to get participants. Cherrie McInnes, a third grade teacher from Brewer, Maine has a great spreadsheet of contacts as well at Chatting Across the USA. I have also utilized Global School Net and ePals to post projects for Skype.

Where: The great thing about Skype is that you can contact any place in the world. We have had the privilege of connecting with many classes from the East Coast, Midwest and West Coast.

When: While time zones need to be taken into consideration, as long as the two classrooms can come up with a common meeting time, the virtual field trip can really happen anytime during the school day.

Why: I implemented this lesson into my classroom to provide a more meaningful exploration of communities in my social studies curriculum. We explore the similarities and differences in our current curriculum but in the 21st Century, I knew Skype could expose my first graders to even more similarities and differences that are present in the United States but not so much in our current curriculum.

What: While there are hundreds of projects posted on Skype in the Classroom, we focused this exploration on schools, communities and states. We wanted to find out how we were so much alike yet so different. We have had the chance to chat with schools that had uniforms, classes that had under 10 students and even some schools that didn't even have a 2nd grade due to a lack of students.

While Skype has been a main tool for us to explore schools, communities and states, we have also used it to connect with authors. This helped my first graders gain a better understanding of an authors life. We were also able to see the writing process and how much time/effort is put into making fun and engaging picture books.

Lastly, we have been able to connect with our state's governor. We were able to find out how he helps our community as well as how important our jobs our in the classroom. He opened our eyes to our role in helping not only our community but our state as well.