An excited but rather nervous audience gathered together sharing conversations whilst waiting for the TV camera team to enter the classroom and commence filming. A newspaper reporter waited in the wings to catch the news in print. One team member made sure his hair was done neatly. Others completed tasks on their computer while they waited. I was introduced to the key teachers and students involved whilst we waited for the camera crew to arrive.
This was no normal audience as it was not local but global in nature. Katherine from Austria had put a skype text into the group chat looking for people to be online with her for her first class of the day. A TV camera team was coming in to film her class using skype to videoconference with other countries. In the wings waiting, were educators from England, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Lithuania, Peru and me from Australia online ready to be part of the action.
Veronica and Evon of Malaysia had a news reporter from Ipoh with them. While we waited they interveiwed me and shared their plans for promoting their local region, called Perak in 2012. Using the webcam, they shared brochures and promotional material using the webcam and talked of the exciting places to visit in Perak.
Soon it was time for me to come online with the students in Austria. Skype started to falter, so the Austrian classroom switched off their video. This meant that I could not see or feel what was going on the other end of the world but the connection was then stable enough to allow my webcam to project my image.
- the weather and seasons
- school
- holidays
- food and meals
- Australian culture and icons – I showed vegemite, the Australian flag and some of the beautiful Australian native flowers that are currently flowering in our spring season. They talked about eidelweiss.
The real life participants in this drama:-
- the teacher combing his hair was from the UK, waiting with his class.