Across the World - a Russian Connection Лист1

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It is 12 months ago, that Ekaterina Zhdanova and I used skype to connect our classrooms from Soglasie School in Ekaterinburg, Eastern Russia and Hawkesdale P12 College from South Eastern Australia. This amazing connection put students from our remote rural school in Australia, on to the Russian television news. This television broadcast depicted our star feature – a  blue tongue lizard and demonstrated students spreading vegemite on toast, our Australian paper curency etc. The Russian students treated us with traditional dancing, their babushka dolls, heritage artwork etc.

Communication slowed as Australian schools went on their 5 week summer break. Then at the beginning of term 4 this year, we skyped again with our classes. The Russian students were learning about Australia and had quite a few questions to ask us. Unfortunately, with timezone difficulties there was only a 10-15 minute cross over time for synchronous connections.

However, the two schools are now working  together on a wiki, Acrosstheworld, discussing the differences and similarities between the two schools/communities and countries. Several google sheets have been set up – one on Let’s Compare our Environments. Vokis have been used by students and embedded in a table, to introduce themselves.

These links have also been added to the wiki, so please take a look as we are proud of what we are doing and achieving:-

1. Skype linkups for 2008 and for 2009.
2. School life
3. My class
4. Extracurricula activities
5. School lunch
6. Foreign language lessons
7. Sports lessons
8. Special spaces - using wallwisher - sticky notes on a graffiti type board.
9. Our countries – Australia
10. Russia

The software used to share asynchronously has been the wiki, wallwisher and google docs. animoto, picasa have been used to create the slideshows and image presentations.

Personal highlights

• Great to work with a dedicated teacher who is  keen and experienced in using interactive technology with her classes and who teaches secondary classes.
• Amazing to learn about the differences and similarities between the two schools on an almost daily basis
• It is inspiring and highly motivating to be able to share digital skills, share  ideas and collaborate.
• Further cements the relationship formed through the videocoferencing and adds richness to our virtual connectedness.

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