Live in the Classroom!

This year, my classroom and the grade eight class at St. Elisabeth school in Van Nuys California are continuing our collaboration. Called Thinwalls, the idea is that this is a year long collaboration going far beyond the normal concept of a project that lasts a few weeks.

This week we went live between our two classes for the first time this year. We used both audio and video Skype to introduce the two classes a bit to each other as well as free online screensharing software called Dimdim. Using this, we had a tour of RSS, discussed what it is and how it works. I then showed the iGoogle tab we've constructed for the students that has five different blogs on it that are focused on global issues and innovation. This will become the textbook for this one part of our collaboration.

A short twenty minutes later, the emails were sent out sharing the tab with the students in both classes and opening the discussions around global living and innovation.

Then today, we opened another live collaboration. This time, David Jakes in Chicago skyped into both my classroom in Snow Lake and Lucy Martin's at St. Elisabeth to talk to both our classes at once about digital storytelling. A planned event, David sent us several videos he wanted to use as examples in advance, and when he reached that point in his discussion, we simply held the call and the students in each classroom took several minutes to watch the videos.

David was a master as he talked to the students about weaving together the elements of video, still pictures, audio files (speech) and music files into a coherent whole. We heard about the importance of planning and writing at length in advance so that when it actually comes time to use the simple yet powerful Photostory software, the students will have concrete, indepth ideas to work with. After forty minutes, we all had new ideas bubbling over. A few pictures on flickr of the notes we took on the whiteboard as a class as David talked can be found here.

This work with David this week is leading us into our first major project of the year between the two classes, a photostory from each side of the border capturing the students' impressions of what it means to be a Canadian or an American. We felt this was a valuable place to start. We wanted the students to dig into stereotypes and misunderstandings immediately and get some ideas of the power of digital communication and storytelling.

It's been a good week for Canada - U.S. relations!

Tags: davidjakes, st. elisabeth school, skype, experts, classroom, digital storytelling, dimdim

Comments

[Julie Carney]

It is so great to see teachers embrace online tools to help their students learn! I came across your blog today and am really enjoying reading about your teachings and also your visit to Shanghai!

Julie
http://youngentrepreneurfoundation.wordpress.com