Steve Auslander @sauslander is a 5th grade teacher and a Skype Master Teacher with the Skype in the Classroom program sponsored by Microsoft. Skype in the Classroom allows 5 exciting ways to bring the World into your Classroom: virtual field trip, skype lessons, skype collaborations, mystery skype, and guest speakers. During the Skype-a-Thon, his class travelled over 30,000 virtual miles when they connected with educators, other classrooms, and working professional in the real world all over the US, South Africa, Israel, and Australia.
On his blog "learning rocks outside box" he includes examples of authentic learning experiences such as:
"We kicked off the Hour of Code, with a Skype chat with my friend Kevin, a coder for Twitter. He took time out of his workday and chatted with his office about what it’s like to be a coder."
He also had visits to his class by other real-world people like an author etc....
Moreover, my favourite that I want to try is this one:
"Classrooms that connect with NASA’s Digital Learning Center, for example, will be able to interact with scientists and engineers to learn how to design a spacesuit mission patch, prep for takeoff, find out what living and working in space is like, and learn basic robotics."
Students can also connect and actually contribute to global initiatives for Skype for Peace and Peace One day.
All in all, Skype in Classroom has tons of potential for facilitating exciting and economical field trips and cross-curricular and interdisciplinary teaching. I will definitely use it in the fall. Also, I now follow a few Skype Master Teachers like Auslander @sauslander and these guys are digital innovators in the field of education and tech integration.
Great learning activity. Thank you!
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