Skype in the classroom - like penpals 2.0

This past week, I was excited to have a chance to Skype chat with a teacher in Maine about the amazing things she's doing in her classroom thanks to technology.  If you take a look at the Skype Education page, you'll be blown away by the number of teachers all over the world signing up and looking for classrooms to pair with on inspiring projects. And I imagine it can be great for homeschooling parents, tutors and maybe even an inspiration for parents too.

 

The site functions like a match.com for classrooms. Browse around and you'll find Yellowstone Park Rangers offering to Skype with classrooms about geology and ecology; a Greek school looking to talk to students around the world about what kids eat for lunch; and a London grade school teacher looking to have a global chat about the Olympics.

Read the comments there and it's pretty amazing - educators from Brazil, India, Australia, Denmark, and the US all collaborated on a program back in January that I can only imagine is coming to life this very week.

While obviously this is a great resource for teachers (and I might just share it with ours next year, should they be interested in getting involved), it made me think about how we might schedule a regular chat with cousins or friends' children in other parts of the world around a topic.

While "video pal" doesn't have the alliteration of pen pal, I think it's pretty awesome.  -Liz

Learn more about Skype in the Classroom on the Skype Website. You can also check out editors picks by topic on the Skype in the Classroom Collections page.

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