About 5 minutes ago I Skyped Garth during a workshop...I should note he is sitting right next to me.  As we were talking about ways to use Skype and GoggleVoice together, I discovered a button that has been sitting right in front of me that I had never "clicked"; but I finally did click-it and it opens a whole new, dynamic way to use Skype. 

When you are in a Skype call, there is a button labeled "share".  By clicking this button you can send a live image of your desktop, or a portion of your desktop, to the person with which you are conversing.  This allows you to share anything that may be open on your screen: show cool websites, share documents, give a tutorial to someone, share digital photos, etc. 

Garth and I are currently sitting here discussing/playing with this new feature in Skype.  We are thinking that this may bypass the need for GoogleDocs, since you can talk to someone and have one person do the typing.  In my building I have several students who use Skype to talk to family members around the world, now they can share digital pictures of events in their lives without the need to email or file share in other formats.  This is very exciting stuff.  If you have used this feature, please leave us a comment on how we may incorporate this in our classrooms.

-Mike

Garth and I recently allowed our students to collaborate in creating an online textbook.  The differences in technology between our two classrooms created an interesting problem: How do we allow students to collaborate?  This is how we solved that problem...

Garth's students create a GoogleDoc that was broken into all of the different "big idea" topics that were studied throughout the school year.  These topics were based on the standards: Agricultural Revolution, Ancient Greece, Middle Ages, etc.  Students in Garth's classes filled in this GoogleDoc with the most important key words, phrases, ideas that they could think of for each topic.  At the same time, in my classes, I used butcher paper to create the same type of list.  Then, I projected Garth's GoogleDoc on my front board.  My students were able to watch, in real-time, as Garth's students added to their list.  I had my students write information on index cards that Garth's students did not have on their list.  Then, we Skyped Garth's students and told them we had been watching them work.  My students would come up to the computer, one-at-a-time, and tell Garth's students concepts that we had thought of that they did not have on their list.

Our classes used these lists to help them decide what they wanted to research to add to the online textbook.  As students were creating digital content in Garth's classroom, my students were in the computer lab doing the same thing.  The result was that our students participated in a year-end review of our World History course together, via GoogleDocs and Skype, and were able to create web pages, PowerPoints, images, cartoons, podcasts, etc.

-Mike

This morning several of my classes Skyped with Garth's students.  Garth and I both spent time immediately after our Skypes talking about the positives and negatives of what just happen.  While the Power Points my students presented were good, there was one tech issue and we also discussed student behavior.

Tech Issues:
I uploaded my students' Power Points to GoogleDocs last night so that Garth could open and project the student's work while they Skyped.  Of course, the one Power Point I wanted to use would not upload.  After discovering it was a corrupt file, I quickly uploaded a different group's PowerPoint and we pressed on.  Technology is not perfect!  While Garth and I both saw this as a problem, it was a great learning experience.  Problems arise in the classroom all the time, and it is how you deal with those issues that determines the effectiveness of the lesson.  Our tech issue was inconvenient, but it did not ruin the lesson.

The Giant Eagle Standard:
Last week one of my students, normally very passive, came into class very excited about something that happened to her the night before.  She was at Giant Eagle with her mom and saw one of Garth's students in one of the isles.  She walked up to this student and engaged her in conversation.  I called Garth from the classroom and shared this story with him.  Shortly after, the his student came into the room and shared the same story.  These are two students from very different backgrounds, that would never have met if not for our Skype session, met each other outside of the classroom.  Garth called it the Giant Eagle Standard. As teachers we need to create well rounded students that can collaborate and communicate with a variety of people.  We inadvertently brought these two students together, as friends that felt comfortable enough to talk to each other in a setting outside of school!

I taped one session with iShowU so that I could watch it later.  We both were concerned about student's body language.  On my end, I prepared my students for our Skype session by talking about the fact that a room full of adults and students at a different school are going to be able to see and hear your behavior.  We had a discussion about representing our school well and how Skype is almost like having a guest speaker in the room.  With all the discussion and prep, the minute the camera turned on, and Garth's class appeared on the screen; my students turned into 12 year old kids.  Kids rushed to get on camera, sat on desks and made signs for each other.  While this definitely took away from the content that Garth and I want the students to share; it also turned school into something more.  These students let their guard down, they did not sit in perfect rows with hands folded, listening to another presentation.  They interacted, they should excitement about the lesson and they acted like they would outside of the classroom.  Often we talk about changing the learning environment to better reflect our students' lives, Our Skype session accomplished this goal.  Students wanted to engage with each other.  They wanted to be seen and heard.  They were creative; three students made a sign for one of Mr. Holman's students that we have talked to several times and has become somewhat of a celebrity in my building.  These students are creating social networks with other students.  They are interacting the way middle school children interact.  I want to reflect on this with my students on Monday.  I want to discuss how to leave a positive digital footprint.  Meaning, how can we take the social networking skills they have learned from using sites like MySpace and FaceBook and translate it to the classroom.  Most of these students do not understand the consequences of their actions via the internet because the majority of schools and parents do not discuss it.  Students need direction in learning anything, whether it be world history, studying skills, or the internet.

The newness and social qualities of Skype are a lot for students to handle, but at the end of the day it is a positive experience.  Several students commented that they would much rather listen to other students teach them, rather then always listening to me.  An adult in my district that witnessed a Skype session commented that he enjoyed watching students interact not only with curriculum, but with each other.  He went on to say that too often school becomes some separate thing and students do not attach it with their lives.  During the Skype session students internalized school and it became part of them.  Our students created synergy.

-Mike

This is a short clip of a 35 minute virtual presentation by Garth's students to my students in April 2010. The screen capturing software is called "IshowU" for a mac only.   The clip lasts about 9 minutes.  See Mike's blog on "Two become one" for more details.

Mike sent me a text two days ago at 7:50am. A student of his had just ran into the classroom to tell him something important.   The story goes something like this.  When I went to Giant Eagle with my mom, I saw "Sara" from the skype lesson with Beachwood .  I went into the hall and found "Sara"  She had a story as well.  "When I walked to Giant Eagle with my family, this girl ran up and said I know you.  You taught us the lesson on the Reformation using skype today."  The story goes on...the families talked and the kids explained how much they liked the lesson.  "Sara's" dad, according to Sara had a hard time understanding what was going on. What a small world

Giant Eagle may not be in our standards, but the opportunity to collaborate with each other allowed these two students, whom would have probably never met, to create a connection in the classroom and carry it into the "real world".  The walls of the traditional classroom are truly being broken down.

Friday some of Garth's students introduced the Renaissance and Reformation to my students via Skype.  Garth's students created two short PowerPoint on Google Docs and walked my students through the "big picture" of these two moments in history.  I was able to project the students' PowerPoint while projecting their images via Skype.  All students enjoyed the experience AND they had the unique opportunity to teach each other, instead of listening to me.  I digitally recorded the Skype session using a program called iShowU, and showed it to the rest of my classes throughout the day.  

In a week, week and-a-half, my students will Skype back to Garth's students and discuss what they learned about specific parts of the Renaissance and Reformation.  Students will work in small groups and explore unique topics; such as art & architecture, science & technology and early Protestant religions.  Garth and I want to get to the point where we can let our students chat once week.

The biggest obstacle in all of this, our bell schedules do not line up.  In the long run it will work out, because we figure students will only need ten or fifteen minutes to summarize things we have done in class throughout the week.  My superintendent and communications director both came down to watch the Skype session and offer their full support of my technology endeavors.  It was great, as a classroom teacher, to see my district leadership take a strong proactive role in something I am doing.  The students are very excited by this new method of teaching/learning and were "glued" to the screen as Garth's students students presented what they knew.

The next step is to find other teachers and students that want to interact via Skype.  The possibilities are endless.  My students can teach lessons to younger students, high school students can go more in depth on subjects I do not have time to cover, college professors and museum curators can show my students artifacts or talk from dig sites all over the world.  These are the voyages of a 21st century teacher, "to boldly go where no classroom has gone before!"

-Mike

This week, I used Skype and Google Docs to pull off a very exciting lesson.  Jacob Francis, a student from Cleveland State University, who is observing in my classroom wrote a lengthy journal on the experience.  I thought his observations and comments would be an outsiders perspective on this set of lessons.    His introduction is below:    
       In an era of rapidly expanding technological interconnectedness, it is only logical that the use of technology and communication should be integrated into the educational experience. Beachwood Middle School has fully embraced this philosophy by fully integrating technology into everyday classroom use. This past week in Mr. Holman’s class, I have had the opportunity to witness a variety of uses of technology, all harnessed to provide students with experiences that are not just technology rich, but are also interactive and collaborative. Through these experiences, students were able to learn from an expert in Renaissance art, collaborate on group projects, and for some, develop an interactive lesson that will eventually be taught to students at another school. All of these experiences were the culmination of several weeks of lessons about the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation This week began with the students learning about Renaissance art from David Church, an art professor in Syracuse, NY. The students were taught by Mr. Church through Skype, a free Internet video conferencing program. During the Skype videoconference, the students followed along with a PowerPoint containing Renaissance art images, as well as provided feedback and questions to Mr. Church regarding the presentation through a Google Document. Through the combination of Skype and Google Documents, students can learn, ask questions, provide feedback, and receive responses to their questions in real time. This was not only an excellent way for these students to learn about Renaissance Art, but it was a way that everyone involved found enjoyable and highly informative. Additionally, the use of free programs (Skype and Google Documents) allowed for collaborative instruction with an expert who was hundreds of miles away at a bare minimum of expense.

The teleconference with Mr. Church was just the beginning of 2 different types of culminating projects that would be completed by students over the course of this week. The majority of Mr. Holman’s classes would be working on group projects involving finding images of Renaissance art, and then building a podcast or movie that would be sent to Mr. Church to show them what they had learned. In a more ambitious project, Mr. Holman’s 3rd period class (which consists of only 6 students) is collaborating on a presentation covering both the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, which will eventually be presented via videoconference over Skype to the entire 7th grade class at Chardon Middle School. I will discuss these projects and my impressions in further detail below. While my explanation may be a bit longwinded, I do not feel that it does these experiences justice to simply gloss over them in a succinct manner.   Read more from the PDF below. 

I will comment more on this lesson at a later date.