What is Skype? by malthe

Today one of my reading groups started “small-group Skyping” (thanks for the phrase, @bjnichols) with some of Karin Perry’s (@kperry) students. The students met on Skype and then watched three book trailers before settling on Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies as the novel they wanted to read and discuss together after winter break. I thought the entire experience was awesome and illustrative of how teachers can use social media for familiar things like reading groups or lit circles. I think proof-of-concept successes with common practices bridged across classrooms by new technologies have great potential for attracting skeptical teachers to embrace meaningful uses of classroom technology. Certainly small-group Skyping can be the gateway to re-imagining several common classroom practices like character tea-parties or interviews.

Karin and I met at Teri Lesense’s (@professornana) #NCTE09 presentation on new classics. We sat next to each other at a table in the back corner. I arrived after Karin and thought she had picked the best spot for live-tweeting. We followed one another on Twitter, exchanged blog URLs, and kept in touch about the possibility of a Skyped reading group. Neither of us had much experience with Skype, but we set up our accounts, put together a pool of books, tweeted back and forth about our meet & greet/book-trailer lesson plan, tested our Skype connection at school, recruited kids and brought them together, and then got out of the way. The kids did a great job. They commented on the moods and tones of the trailers; they talked about taking into account everyone’s genre preferences, they set up an opt-in agreement to read one book over break, and they all agreed to read another book together afterwards. I can’t wait to read with them and hear what they say. I can’t wait to figure out how to scale up what works. I most enjoyed watching the students’ synchronous engagement with discovery and learning.

We watched trailers for American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang, The Maze Runner, by James Dashner, and Uglies. Uglies won as the book group, while The Maze Runner became the opt-in title over break.  Each trailer was unique in its approach and production values.  It was cool to watch the fan made trailer for Uglies and think about having students undertake a similar project for a book.

Here are initial student comments:

• “It was fun to talk with different people from different places.”
• “I liked meeting new people on Skype because I didn’t have to write to people or type numbers on a phone.”
• “It was interesting. It draws your attention.”

I’m looking forward to students’ reflections on their books and their new partnership at the end of our project, whenever that will be.  Hopefully, the students will resist an endpoint.  Today’s activity had a lot of splash, but for me, the lasting educational benefits of small-group Skyping and other communications technologies come from the relationships formed around learning long after the novelty of the technology fades.  I hope students will feel the same way.