February 10, 2009
Connecting with Canada
Posted by teachingsagittarian under Classroom Happenings | Tags: aroundtheworldwith80schools, connections, conversations, Haultain Community School, Regina, Silvia Tolisano, skype |[11] Comments
On Friday morning we made our first connection via Skype (free video conferencing) with a small school in Regina, Canada thanks to Ms Silvia Tolisano‘s fabulous Skype Project: AroundTheWorldWith80Schools
We got off to a not so great start with Ms H completely mucking up the timezones (which she is renown for doing) and having students seated and waiting at 6.50am A WHOLE DAY EARLY!! Oh well, at least we know who can get to school early!!
So, eventually, timezones sorted, our sharing stories sorted, who was saying what and when sorted, the skype telephone rang. Haultain Community School was calling.
We learned so much about each other in such a short space of time. We compared temperatures, learning that in Regina, Canada the temperature at the moment is -15°!! (The coolest temperature we’ve experienced in Thailand has been 15°) Our actual temperature for the skype call was 24° with humidity around 95% at 7.00am! We didn’t really know what curling was – so Ms H found a YouTube video for us while we were at specials and after watching it some of us realised that we did know what it was. The biggest reaction to information shared was the comparison of students in the school. Haultain Community School has 11 sixth graders and 9 seventh graders in their class and the whole school compared to our 7 classes of fifth graders in the whole school. We do have the same number of students in our classes though!
Our data collection question was about Nationalities. Since we are studying fractions at the moment, we thought that we would compare and contrast fractions of nationalities in the classes we connected with. Ms Brown (their teacher) sent us a further explanation via email to help us understand the breakdown of Nationalities.
We’re all Canadian but some students are of Aboriginal heritage. The First Nations students are Cree while other are Metis ( http://metna.sasktelwebhosting.com/) all of them would have ties to the reserves in the province but particularly in the Treaty Four area. http://www.sicc.sk.ca/bands/ Our one student who is Inuit has family in Tuktoyaktuk, North West Territories which is in the Arctic Circle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuktoyaktuk. My family heritage from my father is Metis. His family was one of the Red River Settlement families (http://www.metisresourcecentre.mb.ca/maps/rrsettlement1870.htm) that were a mix of Cree and French. The Metis language, Michif, mixes Cree and French to create the language.
We’re very grateful that the students of Haultain Community School came back to school at 6pm – yes, that’s right – they came back to school at night (in the cold) just to skype connect with us. Thank you!!
Ms H recorded the first 5 minutes of the skype call before realising that she’d forgotten to enter the registration code for Audio Hijack Pro. When she edits the horrible “demo” version buzz out of the call, she will post the conversation podcast!
Room 202 students – you can share your reflections on the skype connection with Haultain Community School students in the comment area – or if you have your own blog you might like to post your own story.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:34 am
What a fantastic super idea a Skype conversation like that with the other side of the world was! It’s a great idea of sharing education and communicating with other people to make the world a smaller place. We would love to be involved in anything like that with either classroom if it was all possible. It must have been so powerful to hear the other classrooms voices.
Mr Webb and Room Eight
Melville Intermediate School,
Hamilton, New Zealand.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Chinu: I love to do skype calls, but we don’t have it currently. If we had skype we would connect with our relatives and connect with anyone around the world.
Dad Gereltod: Actually, I have heard the skype calls recently. Using the advantage of skype calls we can share our horizons and experience with other. Once, it is set up for all children as usual way of relation, I am sure kids would definitely be interested in learning and acquiring more about other societies and culture.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
To me I thought that the skype call over seas was really cool because we got to learn about Regina, Canada and meet some people over in Canada.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
To me the skype call was really cool because we got to learn more abut Canada and meet other people there. I also thought that it was cool because we were talking with kids over seas!
February 11th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
The skype call with a school in Regina, Canada was a great way to learn about another way of life in another country. It was interesting to compare data like how many nationalities we have at our school versus their school and the average temperatures.
I’m looking forward to our next skype call with New York (I think?)
February 11th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I found the number of students difference quite surprising but the temperature didn’t surprise me because I know Canada is usually very cold.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
The Skype Call was awesome because we got to talk with people in Canada (other side of the world) !! We got to learn more about Canada. I had a lot of fun doing that.
February 11th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I really enjoyed doing the skype call. I thought it was a great way to collect data from other countries. All of the members of room202 was very prepared and all of us practiced our lines carefully. I thought we did a pretty good job for our first conference. Even though we need more practice, our first one was quite successful. I hope we get to do this again soon!
February 11th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
It was cool to see the differences. Like the weather was way different. I think it was snowing too. The time was way off too!It was 6:00pm for them and 7:00am for us!
February 12th, 2009 at 7:08 am
This was a very good experience to see how different our countries are hot here 0-degree’s Celsius !!!!!
Also it will help me with future speeches if I have to make any.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I love Skype and I talk to my grandparents on it all the time!