Exciting times. Today was the first opportunity for one of our Year 3 s to Skype into a higher class for Maths. He is 8 and working at stage 5 nearly stage 6 of the New Zealand NUMP (maths) programme. Through the power of skypetalkandwrite he was able to participate at his academic level.
He was so excited about this and it had such a profound effect on him that he reported to his teacher: ”I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”
It is so rewarding when you impact on a child’s education in this manner. I felt honoured to play my small part. Look out for commen ts by the teachers involved.
With big noses pressed against the camera lens and echoing children’s voices “Who are you???? What’s the weather like???” Jody Hayes and I launched into our Skype Experiment.
Her class are 5 and 6 year olds, mine are 7 so the level of conversation, let alone collaborative input is somewhat limited.
So this is what we managed to establish in the 15 minutes of to-ing and fro-ing: its fine weather in
Hastings and its raining at Palmerston North.
To any meteorologist this is fascinating stuff; the prevailing Westerly winds, sweeping across the country increase in altitude as they rise above the Ruahine Range, dumping their watery load before descending upon the Heretaunga plains and sweeping dry air through
Hastings. Palmerston North lies to the south of theRuahine
Range and is not within the rain shadow just described.
To a 5/6/7 year old the observation is “Ahhh, that’s not fair, we’ve got wet play and you haven’t.”
Bring on skypetalkandwrite for the Mac is what I say, and then we can start recording this stuff in a more meaningful way.
Miguel Guhlin invited me into a Skype call he was having this afternoon (night- his time) with a guy called 
Kevin. As I was brought up to date with what the conversation was about, it intrigued me: Kevin is heading up a not-for-profit organisation which seeks to promote the education of young people about the native wildlife of
New Zealand. As the conversation progressed we debated the value of ‘broadcast’ method of presentation against establishing a wiki/ blog inviting interest and collaboration from teachers and students. Although his target audience was year 12/13 I could still see the remarkable possibilities of such a project for my year 3’s. Currently there is a website associated with the project and I hope it will give something of a flavour despite them being somewhat out-of-date as Kevin claimed.
If you have a moment, take a look, but look out for the sound effects, have your volume turned up nice and loud.
Kevin also manages www.cmag.org.nz
Well it’s just hit midnight and I’ve finished a Skype IM with Miguel Guhlin. He managed to ‘talk’ me through converting my .wmv file to a .avi probably with his eyes popping out. Poor guy, sorry to keep you up so late.
Here are the couple of programmes he advised me on:
http://www.ipod-video-converter.org/free-ipod-video-converter.exe
http://www.effectmatrix.com/total-video-converter
Little old me, my video being played in
San Antonio…. Kind of gives me goose bumps. (That is if Miguel Guhlin will forgive me for spelling his name wrong on the Blogroll- How embarrassing)
Something else I learnt tonight, how to send a file through Skype. Above the IM messages is a toolbar, the second from the left reads ‘send file’ it’ll let you browse and then once you click away it goes. Easy.
The last thing it got me thinking about was my Skype name. what’s the point of having a name which noone can recognise. Therefore I have changed my Skype name to Dragon09 which some people may recognise, it’s makes a little more sense at least.
Picked this up from Vicki.
Makes you think. next time I talk to the staff about ICT curriculum and direction may begin or end with this.
Technology Fear Factor in Education
