Topical Teaching

Courtesy of edudemic.com. Below is the first 17 suggestions:

1. Meet with other classrooms:
   One of the most common projects educators utilize Skype for is setting up exchanges with classrooms around the world, usually for cultural exchange purposes or working together on a common assignment. The program’s official site provides some great opportunities to meet up with like-minded teachers and students sharing the same goals.
2. Practice a foreign language:
   Connect with individual learners or classrooms hailing from a different native tongue can use a Skype collaboration to sharpen grammar and pronunciation skills through conversation.
3. Peace One Day:
   Far beyond classroom collaborations, the Peace One Day initiative teamed up with Skype itself and educators across the globe to teach kids about the importance of ending violence, war, and other social ills.
4. Around the World with 80 Schools:
   This challenge asks participating schools to hook up with 80 worldwide and report back what all they’ve learned about other cultures and languages.
5. Talk about the weather:
   One popular Skype project sees participants from different regions make note of the weather patterns for a specified period of time, with students comparing and contrasting the results.
6. Collaborative poetry:
   In this assignment, connected classrooms pen poetic pieces together and share them via video conferencing.
7. Practice interviews:
   The education system frequently receives criticism for its failure to prepare students for the real world, but using Skype to help them run through mock-up interviews with each other, teachers, counselors, or professionals will help grant them an advantage.
8. Gaming:
   Merge the educational power of gaming with the connectivity of Skype for interactive (maybe even international!) role-playing and other competitive delights that educate and engage in equal measure.
9. Hold a contest:
   Challenge other classrooms to a competition circling around any subject or skill imaginable, and work out a suitable prize ahead of time.
10. Hold a debate:
    Similarly, Skype can also be used as a great forum for hosting formal and informal debates to help students with their critical thinking and research skills.
11. Make beautiful music together:
    Build a band comprised of musicians worldwide, who play and practice together over video — maybe even hold digital performances, too!
12. Who are the people in your neighborhood?:
    All the press about classrooms meeting with one another tend to veer towards the international, but some schools like to stay local. These two Tampa Bay-area kindergartens met regularly via Skype, sharing their current assignments with new friends only 10 miles away.
13. Highlight time differences:
    But there is something to be said about global exchanges, too, as it provides some insight into the differences between time zones — great for geography classes!
14. Combine with augmented reality:
    Both at home and in school, Skype provides a communication tool for collaborative augmented reality projects using the PSP and other devices.
15. Mystery call:
    Link up to a classroom in another region and have them offer up hints as to their true location, challenging students to guess where in the world their new friends live.
16. Each student works a specific job during calls:
    Divvy up responsibilities during Skype calls so every student feels engaged with the conversation, not just passive participants watching talks pan out. Assign bloggers, recorders, mappers, and any other tasks relevant to the meeting and project.
17. Play Battleship:
    The classic board game Battleship offers up lessons in basic X and Y axes; plus it’s also a lot of fun. Compete against other classrooms for an educational good time.

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Tags: Classroom Resources, Education, Engaging Students, ICTin the classroom, Parent-Teacher Conferences, podcasting in the classroom, Skype, Skype in the classroom, Teaching digital literacy, technology, Technology in the Classroom

This entry was posted on September 17, 2012 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Technology in the Classroom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.