Halloween - from a Virtual Student's Point of View!

Learning about Halloween virtually

Fridays continue to be ‘treat’ days for my year 9/10 ICT class. This one was no exception – the four students who had not gone on a class excursion were treated to a presentation by a young student from Boston, Jim, telling them about Halloween. This included how he, his family and friends celebrate Halloween. (Halloween is not big in Australia, and is virtually non-existent in our rural area).

Our last linkup with Lorraine Leo, had suffered from voice delays, and video lag. To see if the problem could be overcome, the video frame was made smaller and any images uploaded for the presentation, resized to a very small size. It was decided to connect again with discoverE and that Lorraine would talk to my students about Halloween. To our delight one of her  grade 6 students was our presenter. Jim spoke like a professional presenter, competently sharing images and telling us about:-

• the origins and events of Halloween
• how he celebrates Halloween
• the role of pumpkins and how to carve them
• the games that are played
• some of the costumes etc
• the tricks and treats (lots of candy, although we call them lollies!)

My students were able to ask him questions in the chat and he capably answered them as soon as they appeared. He used the video camera effectively to show us the implements used to carve the pumpkins, showed us some of the toys and props used for Halloween. He showed us his head costume and put it on etc What better way to learn about the festivals of other countries than from a resident and even better from a student! My students wrote a blog post reflecting on what they had learnt. Thanks Jim and to your family for helping with the presentation. It was 8:30pm when Jim presented and a Thursday night. For us, in Australia, it was 11:30am and Friday morning! Also thanks again to Lorraine Leo for sharing with us and organizing this.

nb The video and audio showed worked, with no time lag this time. Students were on desktops and I was still on wireless internet on my laptop.

When I went grocery shopping that night, I noticed that some Halloween costumes, pumpkin baskets, lights etc were on display and up for sale!

On our supermarket shelves1

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