School Begins.....But Not Here

Grade eight.

Day one.

Van Nuys California.

I video skyped into Lucy Martin's grade eight class yesterday morning and met the kids that my class will be working with this year. We are trying to send a powerful message to the kids in both classes by jumping in right away. This was their very first day of school and I spent about 30 minutes with them, introducing myself and my tiny little community. I could hear the sucking in of breath when I said that Snow Lake has only about 800 people living here. I could here it again when I tried to explain where we actually are on a map compared to them. I could imagine the dinner conversations happening in a few houses when they returned home form their first day of school.

My class starts school next Wednesday, and on Thursday we are setting up a call between the two classes. By Friday the kids in both classes will have their own blogs set up, the links here will be live and they will have an introductory post written. From there we are moving into using Voice Thread to have the students get to know each other and their communities a bit more. We are searching for literature around the theme of power that we will be using after that. We are hoping to host common assignments between the two classes and have our discussions live.

We want these kids to quickly get used to working across the continent. We want this to be business as usual. We have a common time period built into our schedule (11:15 - 12:15 L.A. time / 1:15 - 2:15 Snow Lake time) where our two classes will have the opportunity to work together live each and every day. We will be exploring how to open a window between the classes during this hour. I'm looking forward to trying to teach a lesson to junior high kids across the continent using Skype (I'm trying to find a wireless headset I can use with Skype on my Mac so that I can be teaching my kids here in Snow Lake, wander around my classroom and be teaching Lucy's kids as well).

We are creating a thin walled classroom and team teaching without walls.

Let the fun begin.

technorati tags:team, teaching, thin, walls, network, learning, st., elisabeth

Comments

[Joe Miller]

This is a really project. Can't wait to see the progress.

[Michal]

Hmmm, if only the class is open to ALL on the internet (around the world) to join, then is should be really fun !!

[Donna DesRoches]

This is amazing and exciting venture! I look forward to following the adventures of your class over the course of the year.

[Clarence Fisher]

Thanks for all of your comments and encuoragments as we try something new and different.

Michael;

Just wanted to let you know that we are starting out small on purpose. A lot of classrooms have been learning to teach internationally and collaboatively over the past several school years, but the level of collaboration that we want to bring to this is daily and that is something new. So we are starting small with hopes of expanding out once we solidly have our feet and a better grasp on what we are doing.

[joanna]

I am so looking forward to reading about how this all goes throughout the school year. I'm fascinated with the degree of technology you all are using.

[Martin Crimmens]

Note: This is not so much an opinion blog as it is one full of questions to which I do not know the answers.
While I’m certainly not going to deny that there are a plethora of excellent applications to technology like blogging, I do have questions about potential risks associated with them. However, these risks lie with the teachers, not the students. If a teacher instructs his or her students to set up a blog, what liabilities does the teacher assume if a student decides to post that he or she is going to kill his or herself and then he or she does before there is time to react? How responsible is a teacher in stopping a fight if one is threatened on a student’s blog? Undoubtedly, a teacher is going to react as soon as it is known that something like this has been posted; however, what if they don’t find out in time or their actions are not effective? How much responsibility does the teacher assume, are lawsuits in order, etc.? While no one wishes anything like that to happen, how can we ask millions of people to put their livelihoods on the line in order to try a new way of teaching?