Today, we experienced an amazing session. It was Friday 13th, in the school library with a combined year 9/10 info class and the grade 3/4s (as it was too wet to play sport outside). Our principal had just left on a plane for the US, but we beat her there as we had an appointment at 10 am with a school from New England in the USA, at 8pm Thursday 12th.
Skype allowed us to videoconference with exceptional clarity. The audio did not falter on our end and the video was quite clear. A web cam and desktop mic were our means of communication. After 8 weeks or so of connections via shared blog posts and live blogging, our finale was this videoconference of ’show and tell’. A live bird, a New Guinea eclectus parrot, and three baby birds started the show off, followed by vegemite, a meat pie with sauce, a footy, Essendon footy jumper, a netball, webkinz, toy koala, banksia flowers etc.
Collaborationnation showed us their dunkin’donuts/drink, baseball cap, basketball top, district flag, Disneyworld souveneir. They explained the origins of their national anthem and sang it to us with gusto. The girls demonstrated cheer leading and jazz ballet steps and chanted mugzy to taste test vegemite from a teaspoon to prove it was a food. We responded with a demonstration of netball and the singing of our national anthem.
The responses from students has been resounding in that they wish to continue on with this style of learning and both countries’ students have begged their teachers for more. However, the US students finish their school year next week and we change semesters. It is certainly to be hoped that we can continue to collaborate next semester with a new group. Below is a brief presentation outlining some of the ’shows’.
Read these student posts to see what students feel about our current schooling and the online collaboration in comparison:-
The fabulous part about all this collaboration, is that it triggers further research from the initiative of students. Paul Bogush has forwarded on this finding on our infamous vegemite from his students after yesterday’s videoconference. We had promised to send them a tube of vegemite, but now we will have to abstain. However, I have been since informed it was a hoax.
(A New Brunswick student asking me a question via skype.)
Time of lesson: New Brunswick 8:45am, Australia 9:45pm
Teachers involved:Jeff Whipple, Chad Ball and other interested Canadian staff; and me, Anne Mirtschin (Australia)
Venue:
Nashwaaksis Middle School / Devon Middle School School District 18 Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada and
the study, my home, Hawkesdale, Australia
Prior learning:
existing wiki, with resources set up by Chad Ball, the teacher in New Brunswick
questions posed by the students in reply to the message by Chad, posted on the facebook bulletin board.If any of you have a good question for our Australian webguest, please post it here. Add your name, write your question down and bring it tomorrow morning. You may have the chance to ask.See the questions.
lots of digital images of Australia put into 4 powerpoint presentations
wiki setup with MS Powerpoint presentations, using slideshare to embed them into the wiki.
internet access
nerves of steel!!
Lesson Plan:
Introduction: introduce myself and my country with a map of Australia.
Lesson: Walk through the slideshares on the wiki, indicating ‘next’ so Chad and his students can be viewing the same slide as me, as I talk to these students about our culture, country, town, school and farm, stopping for questions along the way.
Conclusion: Question time for staff and students.
Evaluation:
Self: There were many questions which is always a good indication. My voice broke up somewhat but overall skype and the line were okay. We dropped out once but were soon back online again. Such a powerful learning experience that textbooks can never give.
Jeff: kids loved it…isn’t skype wonderful kids couldn’t stop gabbing about presentation all day…so excited…you are so right about textbooks…primary sources are as close as our connections to the world…current, authentic. thanks sooo soooo much…the kids haven’t stopped talking about you, the learning, and your “funny” accent…
Chad: As it was still pretty early when we came online, the students were all pretty sleepy, but that didn’t stop them from talking about you all day! I would really like to see this communication continue, if you are interested. How many students have you got? Maybe we could do some type of e-penpal idea or something of that nature. I would love to have the kids share some of their teenage lives with each other.
Part of our ‘de-brief’ when we were done was to review some of the pics and video from your website. I also had the kids write a few quick notes to you.
It was incredible,
Its just so different from what is normal here. I probably would of never found any of that out if it wasn’t for that presentation!
That was soo cool! it was real awesome of the cool things i (and everyone) learned, I think i’m gonna do some research on more later…
i really liked the fact that we were actually talking to her. not just in email. i thought all the pictures she showed were pretty sweet. also, i thought it was cool how we are used to different surroundings and habbits.. yes, we dont say put your bookbag in the boot… i still find it awsome, though. i love australia so much! (not to mention thier accents!)
I thought that was so cool, for anyone who missed that, I wish that they could have seen it!
that was an EXCELENT, presentation. I LOVED IT.
it was very interesting, and i think that getting to learn chinese
is a very diffrent thing then what we learn here.
THANK-YOU SO MUCH. :
i dont really understand why they learn chinese… i dont really think that makes much sense
Hi Mrs. Mirtshin
We were just watching you video and we wanted to know what bubble taps were.
I really enjoyed seeing and listening to her.
I learned a lot of new things
i loved her accent. when she said RIGHT-O ! hahaha !
Hello again..
I jsut wanted to say thanks again for taking the time to talk to us abotu Australia. It was really interesting and i learned a lot!.
it was swet
her accent was cool, but the conection kept breaking up
but it was till sweet
thanks allot for sharing some of the intersting facts about were your from and for taking the time out of your day!!
I thought that it was great! And I love her accent. Plus, we got out of Math!!! It was really fun and I hope we can do it again.
Mrs.Mirtschin,
Thank you very much for taking your time to teach us about where you live. I thought i was really interesting to learn about how different it is from here.
thanks again !!
Awesome presentation and pics. I’m gonna look up some more stuff on Australia… We should have a field trip there lol it would be fun…
Yeah we thoguht the presentation was cool, and the web-cam thing was a really good idea. We both learned lot’s of new things about Austrailia.
thank you Mrs. Mirtschin, that was really cool… and i hope that someday i will come to australia, and now that i know a little bit about australia i will be able to understand things there even more.
for anyone who missed it, it was a very awsome presentation.
you should have been there.
Thank you for teachiing me lots of things that i didnt know about Australia.
P.S. I LOVE YOUR ACCENT!
Thank-you for teaching us stuff… PS. Kangaroos are cute!
Thank you for teaching me so much about your home, Australia. I learned a lot of really cool stuff, and I hope that some day I can go there to explore for myself.
jsut wanted to say thanks for talking with us today and taking the time to teach us more about australia. hope you have a grate day MATE, or nignt i dont know
I that it was to cool that we got to talk to you this morning
Thank you lots
hey mrs. mirtschin
thanks for teaching us about australia it was fun thanks again
Thank you Mrs. Mirtschin for teaching us alot about Australia and what it is like to go to school there and about the farms and the sheep and everything. I enjoyed listening to you talk and asking you questions thank you for your knowledge that you shared with us.
thank you i learned stuff that i dident know about befor
i really liked the presentation you gave!!! thanks bunches
good stuff, cool last name
That was really interesting! It was pretty wicked awesome in my words. -lh
i thought that was a really interesting presentation. i can’t believe you can EAT kangaroo! gross.— emma.
P.S- her accent is AWESOME.
Lucas: thanks for doing your awesome presentation! ps: i would like to try kangaroo
Stephen: thank you for taking your time to do that it was great!
Thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed listening to your presentation. I thought it was very interesting and very well done !
Thank you so much for staying up late to talk to us. I thougth it was really fun and nice of you. Hopefuly we can do it again sometime!
Thank-you so much for staying up late and talking to us about Australia.! I learnt a lot just from that presentation. : ) . It made me want to take a trip to Australia! That would be pretty sweet .! Anyway, THANKS SO MUCHH! : )
Thank you for the grate moring here.
Thank you for geting ous out of the frst 2 class of the day!
Thank you!
I learned a bit from the presentation this mornig!
I wish I could visit Australia sometime!
Periods 3 and 3, my year 7 and 8 IT students filled in a simple online survey form re entertainment gadgets in their home. The teacher who had set it watched the results come in.
The extroadinary part of this statement is that my students are in SE Victoria in Australia and the teacher watching the details being entered immediately was in Florida. Alison instantly placed a comment on the google spreadsheet to say she could see it all as they completed it, even before half my students had hit submit. So, my students watching the output via a datashow could also be amazed at this immediate activity and watch their results appear on our shared google sheet.
Last year, I worked with Alison Saylor, on google spreadsheets. Prior to this we set up a “Guess where I am from” where students from each school, had to work out in 20 questions or less, using only a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, where each school was.
This year, we will work together again, as both our IT classes are currently learning spreadsheets. Google has introduced this wonderful survey form, which can be set up and attached to a spreadsheet. The link to the form is given to potential respondents who fill them in and then submit the form. Hey presto!!! The answers are immediately added to the original spreadsheet.
So, using skype this morning Alison and I worked through the forms trying to determine an efficient and effective method of getting student responses form 4 or more possible schools in Florida, Hawkesdale, Palestine and England.
Alison set it up and as I had my classes almost immediately after offered to trial it. The link to the form was saved on a word document and saved on a public drive on our school network. My students then logged on and copied the url into their webpage. The form appeared and students had to ensure they filled in the Hawkesdale sections. They were asked how many TV sets, radios, cell phones (mobile phones), dedicated game stations, digital cameras etc exist in their households.
When all results are in, we will work with the figures, average them out and write up reports, summaries, comparisons and evaluations on their blogs. We think it will be interesting to compare across the globe.
Who do you think will have the highest household average for each item?
Today the students were going to have a guest teacher, Mr Jeff Whipple, outlining the nature of a wiki and explaining the nature of the 1001 flat tales global project. Grades 4 and 5 will work on the elementary wiki with China, Thailand, US, Canada etc whilst grade 6 will be involved in the middle school one. Jeff would use his laptop to demonstrate the wiki.
However this was no ordinary classroom as Jeff lives in Canada (read his blog for his version). He is the technology educational specialist for his school and is setting up the wiki for the project. With the help of our library  interactive white board, 50 odd students and half a dozen interested teachers watched with amazement, Jeff talk to us from his home, show us his pet cat, outline the project and then with the help of the SMART Technologies Bridgit tool on the IWB allowed us to view his laptop screen and walk through the wiki. His time was 10pm, ours was 12:00 midday. The weather was sunny and 25 deg C where we live, with students about to go to the pool for swimming classes. 15cm snow and -16deg C was the weather pattern where Jeff lives. Students are now fully motivated to start the project. Atlases came out and we found the city where Jeff lives. A great deal of geography was learned in 30 mins.!! Jeff was kind enough to come back to us 40 mins later to do a photo shoot for our local newspaper “The Warrnambool Standard”. The photographer and reporter had to make a 30 minute drive to our school.
How, did we get to know Jeff, you may well ask? Well, I was trying to sort out our “From Me to You” envelopes in the computer pod last week. My year 11 students were quietly and diligently completing accounting exs when I noticed my laptop flashing. Having forgotten that I was still logged into skype, I found someone was chatting to me.  My curiousity got the better of me. It was Jeff, introducing himself as he was setting up the wiki for the project. As we chatted, he offered to demo the wiki via skype to our classes. We took him up on that offer. My twitter network through Kim Cofino, from Bangkok, had alerted me to the existence of the project.
The second interesting event of the day, occurred prior to our skype session. I had spent several hours the night before working out a cyber safety lesson. Again, my twitter network came to the rescue with lots of interesting links, url’s, wikis and online videos. I had my year9/10s for a double class first thing this morning, but to my utter dismay, found the internet was down and all my lesson plans with it. Students started writing a post for their blogs whilst the principal and I tried to sort out the internet. Some time later, it was back on. Students quickly checked out their blogs and found they had comments on them, some from our staff, students but others from Holland and the US. Well………..that was it!!! My lesson plans never went into action. Instead, the students initiated their own learning. They wanted to email back the people who commented, some of whom were similar age students in the US. Then, they checked out those student blogs. Students who are often reluctant readers and writers were fully engaged reading the various posts. The boys even found a post on cricket by one of the US students. That encouraged them to wrote a post about the local cricket team they play for.
Next, they wanted to add a clustrmap to their blogs etc. The double was finished all too quickly. An authentic audience makes such powerful learning!!!
….and to top our day,our first two cards from the US schools in the “From me to you” project arrived. Excited students will open them tomorrow morning.
I was walking down the corridor, when I passed a year nine boy carrying a box with straw in. When I looked to see what he had, it was a blue tongued lizard. So, I suggested he see if he could be dismissed from his usual class for 10 mins or so, as we were about to skype with Korea Uijeongbu Science HS again.
As we logged on, Nat came in with the lizard. So we were able to show our friends in Korea, the lizard which is an Australian animal by placing him up to our small web cam. The Korean students could actually see the little blue tongue poking in and out.
Next, our students asked what the weather was today, and the reply was that it was snowing. To our amazement, they took their camera to the window and we could see a school yard of beautiful snow falls complete with a Korean sweeping the snow with his stick type broom. It was simply amazing!!! We do not get snow at Hawkesdale.
So to continue on, another question posed to us was “do we play cricket”. Cricket!!!! What a question! Of course we play cricket. One of the girls tried to describe the game but it was difficult, so without asking a male student was off, collected a cricket ball, stumps and bat and demonstrated a game of cricket in the library. The questions soon came about the ball - was it soft or heavy? etc. Students lost their nervousness with each other and the self activated education flowed.
Of course, we then had to get a meat pie - one of our favourite foods and show it to the camera. It is also difficult to describe verbally but is reasonably obvious visiually (at least looks, shape etc, is). “Is it sweet?”, one student asked? Vegemite was next on the list. The staffroom provided a jar of vegemite, the lid was opened and its contents exposed to the camera.
Korean students then were able to show us their mobile phones. These are used on the trains etc to watch TV and have usb attachments for use with computers. Next they lined up with their uniforms, which were beautifully tailored and we showed then our summer uniforms via the camera.
In no time at all our bells rang, and it was time to go. So much to learn and so little time. Such powerful learning!! It is such a shame that Gail is returning to Australia and that our school year is nearly ended.
Today, we continued to enjoy sharing our cultures, languages and new found friendships with Korea. Two sessions were scheduled but as I had two primary classes, the Korean students talked to these students. We continue to learn more about each other.
Our students said pizza or roast meat was their favourite food cf Korea where kimchi is some of the students’ food. We eat sandwiches for lunch, the have a hot buffet style lunch. Koreans were astounded and silence set in for 30 secs or more when they found out that Hawkesdale does not have fast food outlets. We are such a small rural town. However, they were suitably impressed to know that we only live about 30 mins from the sea.
We enjoyed watching the videos that Gail has made and posted on her blog site. One video shows their lunchtime and the other outlined the school building, interior and one of the dormitories where all students must sleep whilst they attend school during the week. See it at http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=97161Â
As Gail said, “this is powerful learning”. Then in the middle of it all Evan from Las Vegas tried to message me but I was not game to try a 3 way conference. Perhaps we can arrange that.
(A New Brunswick student asking me a question via skype.)
