Skype...it's a whole new world

Here I was, thinking that I was pretty tech savvy. I mean I had dial up internet when I was in middle school and I was IMing with the best of them in high school. I got my first cell phone when I got my drivers license and it had no texting or camera functions. I felt the frustration with my parents for not having a clue about creating email addresses or facebook. The past few months of educational technology revelations have left me feeling old and I suppose much the way my parents felt when they had to ask "what is myspace"? When skyping...yes skyping the other night with high school seniors enrolled in an online girls school, I was left amazed with not only their literary abilities, but their ease and comfort with technology.There they were on the screen conversing with a room full of teachers or soon to be teachers as if they did it everyday. I found myself shoving myself out of my comfort zone just to ask them a question. Even though I question students every day, I found this hard. To think that students in high school are feeling that this technology is second nature is amazing to me. They skype and blog and have twitter accounts and google-docs and wikispaces and use them well. I have these things now and still don't use them well. These students were connecting with people worldwide on political issues! When I was a senior in high school I think I was pretty proud of myself when I figured out PowerPoint! I was also impressed with their answer to a question about elementary students and technology. They did not respond the way I thought they would, instead they pointed out that many of these technologies might be too advanced for kids in the k-5 level and should focus of different types of learning strategies. My fear has always been how much is too much? I often wonder how many more advances we can make before we are "plugged in" completely and it was nice to hear teenagers speaking to balance. While I am not yet comfortable with skype and while I could probably enjoy it with friends, it will take some getting used to if I want to connect with people I am not familiar with.

Skype Session 2

I must admit that I am getting hooked on the ideas of skyping both for myself in terms of connecting with far flung family members and a brother in the Service, but also as a teacher. While I still don't have my own classroom after 2 years searching...I have gained so many ideas of how this classroom technology can be used! Lisa posted a video from the classroom of Ms. Dunsinger which I was blown away by. Lisa's Blog  With students going back to their neighborhood schools, teachers are incorporating a multitude of learners, with and without disabilities into their classrooms. Having worked with children and teens with Autism, making a video to introduce them to the space they will be coming to seems like such a no brainer, yet I have never seen it done, nor thought to do it myself!  This use of technology is even easier with small devices such as flip cams, with these, we can record the daily happenings in our classrooms, even students can be incorporated in this recording process.
Ms Dunsinger's blog is motivating for beginning teachers, like myself. I especially like the story telling aspect that was recently posted. This can give students the chance to post their stories online, collaborate and expand stories and allow parents to view what their student is working on in school. I always thought that creating a blog, wiki space etc would be one more thing I would have to keep up after school hours.
Our skype session with Ms Dunsinger and her students opened my eyes to the fact that we can allow students to take the lead on this classroom technology. This session also let me see how useful Skype can be when teaching classrooms to be "global learners". We can easily collaborate with students in different countries ( as we just did), different states or towns. We can compete, collaborate and learn from one another in a way that was not an option when I was a student.