Where to find schools to connect with

A Russian student plays us the Spanish guitar

Below follows a list of some sites that will allow teachers and educationalists to make connections for further collaboration including videoconferencing and global projects. It has been my experience that blogging  and/or global project partners often make great videoconference partners as there is an already established element of trust and confidence in each other. The students have already got to know each other and this gives an element of richness to the learning outcomes. However, many of the schools we have videoconferenced with, were new and some of the sites that were used are listed below. There are many websites and ning groups now and an online search will produce many more results. Timezone and language differences often prove to be challenges/barriers. Read “using skype in education ” for further information on successful skype linkups.

In 2008, these were some of the sites that were used for connecting to the globe:-

Classroom2.0 – with a membership list of over 17000, this is the first recommended stop.  ”Long distance collaborations” and “e-learning and online teaching” groups are already established where valuable contacts can be made. Join the groups and watch out for the updates for these groups. New or established forums often appeal for connections for global projects and videoconferencing. A valuable contact for us came from a forum on classroom2.0 which actually  put our school on Russian TV with our linkups to the Russian school!!

Projects by Jen – from Jen Wagner, USA, focusing mainly on primary aged groups

Global education ning started by Lucy Barrow, USA,  where people actively seek out partners for global projects

Flatclassrooms  commenced by Julie Lindsay (The middle East)

Beyond the Walls - a French ning started by Vincent Mouspelet  (good for secondary groups, with a strong European support base)

Onlineprojects4teachers

Global School House

Twitter – a quick tweet will often bring up some willing partners.

One of our favourite groups to collaborate with, is Collaborationnation with one of the students showing us a toy reindeer. (above)

Two new sites of interest

As I was about to publish this post, I checked out the edublogger and found that Sue Waters has added a page with a list of interested skype videoconference partners. This would be a great place to start with.

Another interesting site that has just gone online is Bringing us Together for student bloggers. (Blogging is my number one interest with web2.0)

Other sites suggested to me:-

skoolaborate

Please add a comment and tell us where you have found your global connections for projects or videoconferencing.

Virtual supper anyone!

Our virtual supper music

We were guests to supper. There were at least seven menu options, complete with dinner music and a dance show. A jovial atmosphere and comraderie added to the event. However, for us in Australia, it was really too early as it was 11:30am our time. Supper was with the students from collaborationnation in the USA. They came back to their school in out of hours time, to share with us examples of their supper (which we would call tea or dinner in Australia). There was broccoli, steak, pumpkin cheese cake (leftovers from Thanksgiving) etc

Turns were then taken to share a virtual gift with each other. From the USA came ice hockey boots, baseball, softball, reindeer toy, scout badge, coin collectionand a US one dollar note. We had a wonderful demonstration of guitar playing and dancing from two US students. From Australia, came a toy koala, a footy, a netball, vegemite, scout shirt, $20 note etc. Skype was the software used for videoconferencing as it is so user friendly – a live blog was the backup option. A basic desktop microphone, web camera and the library interactive whiteboard were used.  My students have nagged me for more ever since!

 A virtual gift toy reindeer, indicative that Christmas is coming soon.

A souveneir boomerang

Collaborating with a nation

Tomorrow morning, my students will connect with their blogging and live blogging pals from another nation – the USA, using videoconferencing via skype. Each student is to bring in something for ’show and tell’ for the other country. My students responded to my post with some suggestions and here is the result:-

• i will bring a footy
• hey mrs mirch
  i think i will bring my australian head band. it is a yellow head band with the australian flag on it. its very australian
  thanks
• maybe a footy or a cricket ball.
• hey mrs. murch
  i could bring in a football
• Somebody better bring a meat pie!! (from Mr P Bogush, their teacher)
• i will bring a footy jumper
• i don’t really kno what i could bring in… mayb a picture of my horse ?
• i will bring my toy possum tomorrow
• i will bring my skateboard
• i think i will bring a teddy kangaroo

So, vegemite, a meat pie with sauce, some pet birds and a banksia flower will also be brought in. If you do not live in Australia or live in Australia, what else would you suggest for us to show. We cannot wait to see what the US kids show us.

We have booked the IWB in the library with a very basic, small webcamera and a desktop mic. So lets hope the internet does not let us down.