Today, my students in Korea had the wonderful opportunity to Skype with Springer School in Los Altos, California for our Trans-Pacific Book Club. It was such a thrill to see the faces of my students light up as they spoke face-to-face with their book club members. Technology like Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangout, make it possible to share experiences with people across oceans.
I think the biggest hurdle with video chat using any provider is the technical difficulties. Having tested Google Hangout yesterday, I knew that I needed one student in each group to install the video/chat plug-in or else it would not work. However, even though we tested each student with my own Google Hangout, we did not test with Los Altos. The other teacher and I came to the conclusion that the Google Apps for Education in Los Altos might be blocking that feature. Name of the game, make sure you test prior to and always have a back up plan.
We went to our back up plan with only about 15 min left to chat. Rather than having each novel study group video chat with each other, we went with a whole class chat using Skype. It worked great and the kids were none the less excited to meet each other virtually for the first time.
We’ve scheduled two other video chat sessions where the students will be discussing their novels in more depth. Julie and I will be testing prior to that using Google Hangout.
Having minimally used video chat in the classroom, I’ve been looking into how to use it for other educational purposes. See below for some ideas I’ve pondered on using video chat in classrooms:
- Simple article on how to set up a video chat (link)
- Interview experts in a field for science or social studies
- Author visits for novels
- Pen pals
- Office hours with students who need extra help
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