Yippee! We Skyped today with a 4th grade classroom, at a Catholic school, in Pennsylvania. It went very well. I'm so glad I didn't give up on using Skype in my classroom.??
I just made a few small changes that made all the difference. My main problem was related to the fact that my school does not have wireless WiFi. It was difficult to set up my Mac Book for the students to be able to see the call on the SmartBoard and look into the camera. How I solved that was by moving desks. I had all of my student's desks face the camera. I also had them remain seated throughout the call. In the past, I had a few students come up to the camera at the beginning of the call. This lead to some students not being engaged in the call. When the other school asked a question, if one of my Skype Ambassadors knew the answer, they raised their hand and I called them up to the laptop to answer the question.??
The teacher who arranged this call with me is the technology teacher at her school. We exchanged thank you emails after our call. ??I was really excited that our call did go well because, unknown to me, ??she was being observed. She said that my classroom's enthusiasm for Skyping transferred to her students and helped them relax. You can say one thing about my students, they take after their teacher, enthusiastic about technology!??
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