Mystery Skype

Students were able to mystery skype with another science classroom in Huron, Ohio.  The students did well at their task, speaking, locating the class and using social media to connect with students in another classroom.  This was the first mystery skype we have done this year and it was successful for the following reasons:

• Using Langwitches Blog for great assessment and planning information
• Assigning jobs to students: questioners, answerers, greeter, partners: edmodo and map teams
• Practicing with questions that would be given in the "real" skype
• Practicing finding mystery locations with our questions

Silvia Tolisano's website host great ideas for digital learning, but her Skype resources were really helpful for me to execute a plan for my students and make sure the call was meaningful to our digital learning.  After we assigned jobs, read over the class questions, it was time to practice!  This step was really helpful for the students to practice both answering questions, using the questions, and working with a partner to narrow down the location of the classroom.  Two teachers skyped in from down the hall and created a "mystery" location for the students to work on.  The students teamed up as partners, one person had the skitch app open to the U.S. map and used the annotation tool to cross of states that were not the mystery location based on the questions and answers.  We also practiced answering the questions the class would ask us the following day.  (Sending the questions between teachers before hand is extremely helpful!) The partners on edmodo were able to share what the team was doing on the class backchannel.  This teamwork allowed students to work together and also share ideas if another team was not on the right track via edmodo.

When we skyped with the class on the actual mystery skype, the plan and practice the day before paid off.  The students were able to work comfortably with the map and edmodo and also had practice at being "on screen" for the Skype call.  They were able to locate the state after all the questioned were asked and they felt successful in the task.  After the skype we used edmodo again to backchannel our learning and ideas.  These became the tweets we composed to share our mystery Skype with a larger audience.

We are looking forward to connecting with other classrooms around the country through Skype!