March 4, 2009
Connecting with Benton, Tennessee
Posted by teachingsagittarian under Classroom Happenings, Joe | Tags: aroundtheworldwith80schools, Benton Elementary School, room202isb, skype |[12] Comments
Tonight 9 students from Room 202 came back to school (yes, that’s right – came back to school) at 6.45pm to get ready to make connection #8 in our Aroundtheworldwith80schools skype project.
At 7pm, March 4, 2009 Bangkok, Thailand connected 14 530.08 kilometres away with Benton City, Benton, Tennessee USA, their time 7am, March 4, 2009.
Their accents were strong, and they said they were a little nervous, but the students at Benton Elementary School did a fabulous job of their very first ever skype call. They told us the temperature in Benton was 29°F (or in temps that Ms H understands 5ºC – brrrrr that’s cold) while we swelter in temperatures of 93ºF (34°C)!! Their school has 33 teachers and about 570(?) students – we will need to listen to the recording to check those figures. Out of 46 students, 1 is Spanish and the rest are American.
As usually the “hot-seat” technique worked a charm – one person speaks at a time up at the webcam/microphone. You can see that we use a chart (we brainstormed as a class what we wanted to say in our 5 minutes) to help us keep on track and to help us if we forget what to say.
We had some parents with us tonight – which was great. One of the things that they noticed was that perhaps we needed to explain that even though we’re in Bangkok, Thailand, we are a melting pot of nationalities. Our nationalities include American, Korean, Thai, Japanese, Mongolian, Taiwanese, Hebrew and Kiwi!! (That’s New Zealanders).
Ms H recorded the conversation using Audio Hijack Pro. You can listen to our whole call conversation if you would like too.
Room 202 students who came back to school tonight …… please add anything that Ms H has left out and any comment that you would like to make about the connection with Benton Elementary School.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Wow! What a great project. We have been thinking about trying to set up something similar to this with our regular contacts around the world. Well done to the students (and teacher!) for being willing to come back to school after hours. Fantastic.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Who in the class is Taiwanese?
March 18th, 2009 at 8:03 am
The connection was awesome!!
I want to do it again!
March 18th, 2009 at 8:06 am
I liked coming back to school more than skyping during school because it was fun to use the library to skype and I liked skyping at night.
D
March 18th, 2009 at 8:07 am
I had a lot of fun coming back to school at night. It was very fun because we don’t usually come to school at night but that day was very special. I was very excited and nervous at the same time because the school we skyped with was very new to skype and it felt that we had to be perfect at this because it was our 8th connection already.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:08 am
You forgot to mention that everyday is some thing different like that day it was crazy hair day.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:09 am
I like it because it’s fun and I said Thai
But it’s too dark but I love it like scared
March 18th, 2009 at 8:11 am
I thought it was fun coming back to school, at night for a skype call because we got to learn about the other school.Also I like skyping with other schools around the world, because we can learn more about where they are and what they do in school and outside of school.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:13 am
I’ll liked it because its fun to be the last one is talking.
Now I’m no shy to say to order class room in the world!!
March 18th, 2009 at 8:17 am
I had a blast coming to school late at night because for some reason I had a lot of energy and I think a lot of other people had a lot of energy too. I enjoyed talking to the school because I learned a lot of things like they had crazy hair day when we talked to them. Everyday they have different actvities.
I hope we can do it again sometime.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:50 am
It was really fun, Although I didn’t skype with them.I like to meet my classmates at night or after school, but not for this.
When I was at the school.There were almost girls………
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:01 am
Wow!!!I think this skype machine is expensive!!!I can’t buy in the korea