Recently I had the opportunity to facilitate a Skype session between Mrs.
McAvene’s Spanish Three class and a class of English language learners in
Barcelona, Spain. Although Skype has
been utilized by a number of ACPS teachers, this was my first opportunity to
use this program in a classroom environment.
This session came about as a result of a
digital story telling exchange
her class is doing with Ana Guuisande’s
English class in which ACPS students, and their Spanish counterparts are
creating videos depicting life in their respective areas.
While
working on this project we learned that,
although there is a six hour difference between us, there is a window of time
in which we are both in school and in our respective language classes. Once we had figured that out, it didn’t take
long for someone to come up with the idea of a Skype exchange. I tested Skype out from a student laptop
computer one day while at NHS and found that it indeed worked.
So, one
Friday morning, as the students were getting settled at the beginning of the
school day, I used an iPad and opened a
Skype session with the class in Spain.
We had to reopen it about three times and then stay in the corner of the
room where the connection consistently worked.
The students approached the iPad
about three at a time. We had an
interesting time to say the least. The
Spanish students suggested that they try to ask questions in English, and that
our students should respond in Spanish.
We quickly agreed to this, and just as quickly seemed to abandon it in
practice. We did note that the students
in Spain seemed to be no better with English than our students were with
Spanish. For example, when the class was
about to end over in Spain, the students told us they were about at the end of
their “journey.”
Ana’s
students wanted to know if our students were familiar with any Spanish singers,
if any of our students were licensed to drive yet, what sports we played,
etc. We also learned that the things the
textbook suggest don’t necessarily work:
when they asked about football,
we tried to get clarification by following one of these suggestions—“Do you
mean football Americano?” That question
seemed to baffle the Spanish students, but, we eventually straightened it all
out.
Everyone
involved seemed to really enjoy this experience and we will probably be trying
it again. One of the lessons I learned
from this experience is to use one of the student laptops with a camera, rather
than an iPad (so that by doing so we would then be able to project the image and use speakers
so that the whole class could see and hear better.) I’d also recommend that students prepare
questions in advance and rehearse asking them in the language they are
learning.
As part of this same project, I also worked with Mrs.Brittingham's French class and they also had a Skype session, except theirs was with French learning students living in Spain. Here is what Mrs. Brittingham had to say following the session: "This project has been a cultural eyeopener for my kids and me as
well. I think it's more about our similarities than our
differences. My group is a multicultural group and we were all
involved in the skype portion of the project with communication
taking place in English, Spanish, and French... If I do (this project again), I will be more specific in my
guidelines to the students ... in the organization of the Skype project."
At Nandua's fall athletic banquet they annually induct new members in to their athletic Hall of Fame. This year one of the athletes who was being honored in this way accepted the award, via Skype, from California. Mr. Reese, Nandua's athletic director pulled this off on his own. However, if any of
you would like to try a Skype session in one of your classes, and don’t feel
confident enough to try it on your own, let your friendly, local ITRT know and
we’ll try to be there to help make it happen.
