I am interested in the nature of global connections. That should not come as a shock if you know me.
Yesterday, my daughter came home interested in Australia. It turns out her teacher’s mother came in to talk about Australia. Evidently she has traveled there.
Being an American (and overly US-centric I admit) I had no answers to her questions. I suppose I had to options.
1. Find the answers myself and give them to her.
2. Let her ask someone who would know.
I reached out to Jason Hando, who lives in Sydney, Australia. Jason and I met a few years ago online as we were exploring the educational uses of Second Life. Jason ended up being a critical part of the building of Life Round Here.
Jason happened to be available so we Skyped. I recorded the interview and sent it to my daughter’s teacher. She was floored and plans to show it to her class and perhaps beyond. Here is the interview if you care to watch. It’s about 8 minutes.
Chris, what a great example of how connections between countries and cultures are so easy and powerful with the tools we have today – tools *WE* (the edugeek set) take for granted but that are still, largely, foreign (oooh, bad pun) to so many of our colleagues.
Imagine what classrooms will be like when EVERY teacher not only has the ABILITY but the KNOWLEDGE and DESIRE to respond to situations like these on their own, almost instantaneously (and, of course, have had all the proper approvals…) They will be because they’ve built their personal learning network and have Skype installed. Epic win! Congrats!
-kj-