We had our first video-conference at Morgan this week! Ms. Tara Smith and her 3rd grade students were able to communicate on-line with Nik Scheffler through Skype (video-conferencing software). It went really well! Several students had questions about how it worked and what we were actually doing. It was a great opportunity to talk about communicating on-line and current technology! We used a laptop in the classroom this week and plan to use a computer in the Media Center with a web camera for future conferences.
Ms. Smith tutors Nik at home to keep him caught up on all of his school work. Nik's classmates have been divided into groups called literacy circles to read books and discuss them. Up until now, Nik has not been able to participate and discuss the books with his classmates. That is about to change! Ms. Smith's idea is to be able to include Nik in the literacy circle discussions for the remainder of the year. I will be downloading Skype on a computer in the Media Center next week and working with Tara to get her own account set up. She will be able to send Nik's literacy group down during the group discussion times so they can video-conference with Nik about the current book they are reading.
Nik and his classmates are really excited to see more of each other and work together in the literacy groups! I am sure this will go well and lead to more opportunities to include students who are unable to be in the school buildings.
For more information on how this works, check out an older post: 'Video Conferencing In the Classroom'. You could also Google search video-conference software or go to:
www.skype.com
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