Technology Tuesday: Skyping with Maryland

So last week, I wrote about how one of my students skyped with a few students from Maine. (read here).  Today, after rescheduling from a Maryland snow day yesterday, a whole class was able to skype with another class in Maryland for World Read Aloud Day.

I first heard about World Read Aloud day on twitter.  I asked a few questions and a very nice librarian in Maryland named Mr. Winner answered my questions and volunteered to show me the ropes if I signed up on his schedule.

He sent me the link to the google doc and you notice he is on p. 65.  Yes, it goes on and on, teachers and librarians everywhere looking for schools to connect with for World Read Aloud Day (or Week). 

Mr. Winner and I  discussed via twitter which book we would like to read and  thought we were all set, until Mother Nature got in the way and cause a snow day in Maryland yesterday.  

Lucky for me, Mr. Winner had a cancellation for today and we were able to connect anyway.  He had a 2nd grade class and I had a 1st grade class.  After walking me though a camera glitch, we were finally connected!  One of his sweet 2nd graders introduced themselves and told us a little about their school and then we did the same.  We had decided that we would partner read Shh, We Have a Plan by Chris Haughton.  He read a page and then I read a page.  

    

Then his 2nd graders took turns each reading a page of Hug Machine  by Scott Campbell.  We still had a few minutes so one of his students asked us a question and then we asked them a question. 

We said our "good-byes" and "thank-yous" and disconnected.  

Afterwards, the kids were full of questions about Maryland.  I pulled a map up on the computer and showed them how far it was from Texas.  Earlier in the year, we had talked about communication in the Colonial Times.  That was a great thing to bring up again to talk about how that connecting like we did would not have been possible back then and that people had to wait weeks or months to exchange letters and news and here we did it instantly.  

I am so excited to connect some more and see how my teachers might take an interest in this.  I know I am late to the skyping bandwagon, but I love the possibilities of connecting kids to other kids to talk about geography, parts of the world, books, research... the list is endless.   

Technology Tuesday: Skyping

Another item checked off my professional bucket list!  Been scared to do it until now.

I finally connected with another class via skype!  Well, actually we tried skype and my sound settings were messed up so we switched real quick over to a google hangout video chat, because you always have a plan B for technology, right?

Back at the beginning of February, I saw a tweet about ConnectED Bingo by Brad Gustafson.  I loved the idea and since I don't have a class of my own, I sent an email out to all my teachers telling them about it.  I suggested they could do it whole class, send it home for kids that wanted to do it at home or have students do it during our whole school intervention time in the morning.  I even threw in $5 gift certificates for the book fair for students who completed a bingo and a $25 if a class completed a bingo.  I have loved watching the tweets of my teachers as they post the student completed squares.

One of the squares is to hold a book talk with another class to discuss a book or author using skype or google hangouts.  One of my 4th grade students wanted to discuss Rump by Liesl Shurtliff.  So through the power of twitter, Ms. Melissa Guerrette in Maine replied back to my tweet searching for some students who would like to talk Rump.

Yesterday, we connected Texas to Maine.  They laughed when we said we were having a cold front and it was 30 degrees.  My 4th grade student had a list of questions that Ms. Guerrette's students graciously answered as they talked about their favorite part or the book, which character they would like to be, what they would have done differently if they were Rump and so on.  We even found out their class had skyped with Liesl Shurtliff!  How cool is that!

It was such an awesome experience. I am not sure who was more excited me or my 4th grader.  I can really see the power of classrooms connecting and hope I can convince more of my teachers to try it.