Explore The World With Mystery Skype

This post was written for the Christchurch Connected Educators blog as part of Connected Educators Month of October 2015. You can read the original post here.

Mystery Skype is a fun activity being played by classrooms all over the world and presents a fantastic opportunity for students to become “global citizens” as they meet other students from around the country and globe. On their website, it is described as:

Mystery Skype is an educational game, invented by teachers, played by two classrooms on Skype. The aim of the game is to guess the location of the other classroom by asking each other questions.

The St Andrew’s College Preparatory School has completed many Mystery Skype sessions now, ranging from students in Year 3 through to Year 8 and the students always thoroughly enjoy the challenge of guessing the location of the other classroom. So far we have played with schools in:

• Australia (Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland)
• Singapore
• USA (Oklahoma, Alabama, California, Delaware)
• Russia (Sakhalin Island)

Given the time zone of New Zealand, there are many parts of the world where it is virtually impossible to connect (although check out this Skype we did with the Viking Museum in York, where students came before breakfast to connect)

The Mystery Skype to Russia was one of the more exciting and challenging Skypes, as the class was very small and every student appeared to have a different nationality. It turned out that it was an International School set up by Shell Oil and all of the students had parents involved in the oil industry. Here is a video of our Mystery Skype (If you’re interested in recording your Skype calls, check out this affordable plugin):

It’s interesting seeing how different teachers have prepared their students to play Mystery Skype – the American schools often have very formalised “jobs” where some students are researchers, others are questioners, whilst others hold up signs confirming if a question was answered correctly or not. Ultimately, it’s up to each teacher how they choose to play, but preparing students to think about how to ask effective closed questions is critical since answers can only be “yes” or “no”.

The temptation for students to zoom in and ask very detailed questions is almost overwhelming. For example, given the amount of American and Australian television we have in New Zealand our students can guess the accent of the students very quickly, but they tend to then ask very narrow questions such as “Are you in Los Angeles?” or “Are you in Sydney?” Teaching the effective use of atlases is really helpful and can then lead to more useful questions such as:

• Are you landlocked?
• Are you north of the equator?
• Are you on the West Coast?

One of the real privileges I have had helping classes with Mystery Skype is the sharing of Māori culture with other schools that may never have seen any aspects of it before. The students in our Preparatory School jump at the opportunity to sing waiata and perform the College haka and invariably the students overseas love it:

Mr Craig Kemp, the teacher at the school in Singapore and an ex-pat Kiwi, tweeted the view from his classroom:

CONCLUSION:

Mystery Skype is a fun way to connect with classes all over the world and I would really encourage you to give it a go. It is easy to find other classes thanks to the Mystery Skype website and our experience has been the other teachers are thrilled to find classes in New Zealand because they are often “so far away.” Once a connection is made, it is fun to then re-connect and ask questions of the other class for curriculum related topics e.g. if you’re studying weather patterns or transport, why not Skype that class in the US and find out their experiences or views on these things? Finally, Mystery Skyping is contagious – once classes find out their friends in different classes have done it, they start asking their own teacher to get involved. Have fun!

Sam McNeill - Director of ICT at St Andrew's College, Christchurch 

The Power of being a Connected Class- Celebrating International Dot Day

Room 1 Celebrates International Dot Day

From Meg Feller, Year 3, Elmwood School

Imagine the power and potential of a million people all around the world connecting, collaborating, creating and celebrating all that creativity inspires and invites. My classroom joined this growing global community of creativity for the first time this year.  I am an experienced primary teacher and I.C.T P.D facilitator, and passionate about using eLearning tools the classroom.  I am always on the lookout for authentic and engaging learning experiences to bring to my classroom. 

A colleague shared the annual ‘International Dot Day’ (http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/) with me earlier this year.  Immediately I knew it would bring an opportunity to my children that would facilitate creativity, collaboration and global connections. International Dot Day was inspired by the book 'The Dot' by Peter Reynolds and is a global celebration of creativity, courage and collaboration.  The book shares the story of a girl who begins a journey of self-discovery after a caring teacher challenges her to “make her mark.”

For art during Term 3 we focused on 'Making Your Mark' with painting as our medium.  We are lucky to have a very talented artist as a parent in our classroom, Lisa Bowden.  She came in each week and shared her passion and expertise with the children.  Peter Reynolds books ‘Sky Colour’, ‘Ish’ and ‘Dot Day’ inspired our painting throughout the term.

On Monday 15th September we marked 'International Dot Day' with a day celebrating our creativity, courage and collaboration!  I had the support of the parents, which made it possible to have a range of engaging and creative activities all based around ‘Marking Your Mark’. Lisa created the art for a tea towel with the children with a ‘Love my ish’ focus, Carrie made an amazing ‘Dot Day’ cake, Emma helped the children make fossils and all of the parents sent dotty inspired food for our shared lunch.  The children were also involved in writing, sharing their thoughts in a collaborative Google Doc, making bubbles, Morse Code, using the iPad Colar app, chalk dots outside and art. 

I have recently discovered ‘Mystery Skype’ (https://education.skype.com/mysteryskype).  This is a critical thinking challenge that your class takes part in while Skyping with another class somewhere else in the world. The goal is to guess the other school's location (country, state, city, school name) before they guess yours.  I had connected with a teacher in Dallas, Texas through the website ‘Mystery Skype’ but we very quickly figured out we were never at school at the same time.  Solution, create a video during ‘Dot Day’ and send it to one another with our ‘Dot Day’ learning and clues about where we are in the world. The fact that NZ was the first have ‘Dot Day’ and our mystery class had their ‘Dot Day’ when we were asleep was a great learning opportunity for the children.  On the 16^th Sept there was a video waiting for us in the morning.  The class loved watching the children, the similarities they had in their ‘Dot Day’, the school environment and the connected learning we shared. The future learning opportunities we could have with our new friends was immediately evident. 

As a passionate educator I want to ‘mark my mark’ on every child in my care and provide them with a class they will remember.  Providing engaging learning experiences, using the expertise of parents, integrating eLearning tools and making connections with learners in a global setting, through days like ‘Dot Day’, are what memories are made of in Rm 1.

Dot Day - Rm 1 ENS - 2014 from MegJF on Vimeo.