While mine might not be as trumpeted as others (just kidding) my kids are working on a cool project that speaks to the flat world concept! We are in contact with an American school in Lima Peru. My kids have been working on a wiki to prepare for a live Skype videoconference with that school on December 4, 2006.
My kids spent time in class researching common topic of their creation about Peruvian culture. They researched topics such as food, sports, and others. Have a look at our wiki to see for yourself!
I emailed my contact at the school about a dry run, which we scheduled for today. I waited until lunch time, and then switched my Skype status from invisible to online. I waited patiently for her to come online. I hooked up the Sony Digicam (basic low level mini DV camera) via mini USB to an older Dell laptop and tested the video out. As usual, I made a test call to echo123 to test the sound. All was working fine, although there was an echo since I have my laptop hooked up through a stereo system so my kids could hear. No problem, echo is acceptable.
When she came online, we connected immediately, but no video. She could see me, I couldn’t see her. We disconnected and connected and pressed on. I bemoaned it, thinking it was due to a firewall issue. Maybe the ports are blocked for incoming video? Who knows.
Miraculously (and keeping in tune with some noted inconsistencies with Skype) it began to work! My kids were well into class watching me mess with this, and I let them watch. It was a great side trip, a la Warlick.
When the video flipped on the class went wild. They quickly settled down and we chatted with a teacher down there. My kids were nervous but thrilled! They stepped up to the mic (figuratively and literally) and did a great job muddling through basic Spanish. The teacher there spoke perfect English, and she was gracious about it.
Then the cool stuff happened. Her room started to fill up with kids.
Then my kids got to talk to their kids.
That was cool to watch.
The coolest part was seeing the multiple races. We met a young man originally from Korea who was living there and spoke great Spanish, too.
The best part was seeing a young blonde boy. Turned out he was from…ready for it…
North Carolina.
My kids were in awe that a kid from North Carolina was in Lima, Peru attending school.
Since we’re in South Carolina, the Carolina connection was made. Priceless.
We are scheduled for our live video conference (what I call it to the kids) on 12.04.06 in the middle of the day. I am going to video tape it and if I get permission, I am going to make a gently nudging video for the foreign language teachers that I am going to present to in February at the SCFLTA conference. It will be sort of a here’s-what-we-did-today-in-my-class, what-did-your-kids-do type presentation, not intended to offend, rather to stimulate.
Sorry for the cross posting, but this was too good to not share in as many venues as possible. If you decide to link to this, please do so from the new blog, since this isn’t really open source related!
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes! Watch for more updates on the other blog! Have you subscribed yet?
Chris, I really enjoyed browsing through your wiki and reading your experiences with your classroom collaboration in this blog posting. You are doing such a great job and creating an exciting learning adventure for your students. It is a strange world how we all can connect now to each other but I am pleased that I found your project today. I am going to show it to my students who are now part of the ‘trumpeted’ Flat Classroom Project this week as a best practice use of a wiki space. We have considered a Skypecast to culminate the project but with our respective time differences this is a little problematic as one class would need to be available late or early…it’s not impossible of course. Thanks for sharing your work!