Imagine students working on a science project and being able to connect with an actual scientist to get answers to their questions. Imagine students studying a country and connecting with a class there to ask questions and share learning. Imagine students being able to talk with older students and their teachers about the best ways to adjust to new grade levels. Today, there are a multitude of platforms we can use to connect and engage our students globally. Here are just a few.
Virtual Field Trips
One of the easiest ways to connect your classroom to the world is to take students on a virtual field trip. For example,
- Check out some of the many virtual field trips <LINK URL=" http://www.discoveryeducation.com/Events/virtual-field-trips/explore/" LINKTARGET="_blank">Discovery Education</LINK> offers, from a NASA space flight to exploration of a "smart farm" to a look at Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre.
- By spending a little money (less than most field trips cost), you can buy some Google Cardboards virtual reality viewers, download the <LINK URL=" https://edu.google.com/expeditions/#about" LINKTARGET="_blank">Google Expeditions app</LINK>, and let your students explore places like Machu Picchu, Antarctica, and the International Space Station.
- Your class can host a virtual field trip by recording a real-life field trip experience, using Skype, Google Hangouts, or other smartphone apps, and sharing it with a partner classroom. That's what Billy did when his class went to Ellis Island and captured the experience to share with a partner classroom in Massachusetts. Likewise, when those students toured Plimoth Plantation, they shared it with students outside of Massachusetts. Virtual field trip exchanges like these give students a chance to experience places they had only read about in their social studies lessons and to see these places through other students' eyes.
Google Hangouts
Sometimes it's not so much a place you want students to connect to as people who can share some cultural aspects of that place or who have a common interest or area of expertise to impart. Often, those people are students themselves.
Using Google Hangouts, Paula's students have shared facts and personal experiences related to Mardi Gras with classrooms across the United States and Canada. Students collect facts on Mardi Gras and create Google Slides presentations to share during the Hangouts. Paula uses Google Docs to create a shareable schedule of presentation times and publicizes the opportunity on Twitter. Interested teachers can sign their classrooms up to receive one of these student-led presentations on Mardis Gras. Paula's students dress in the elaborate masks and costumes of traditional New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations for the Hangout. They share their slides and favorite "catches" from parades they've attended and even do a "second line dance" for the viewing classes.
These Hangouts invite students to share and experience different cultures. Paula's class has also used Google Hangouts to learn about the Spring Fiesta from a classroom in San Antonio, hear Canadian students sing Christmas carols in French, learn about veterinary medicine from a guest speaker in Billy's New Jersey classroom, perform choral readings and poetry recitals with students in other schools, connect with authors, and hear another 4th grade class share their personal passion projects.
Edmodo
Classrooms can also connect through platforms like Edmodo, which enables teachers to control closed groups. Students can conduct research together, share stories, or do a science experiment—the possibilities are endless. For example, students might read stories or view photo essays or films from the Global Oneness Project, which includes lesson plans with discussion questions and reflection activities, and then share their thoughts with one another.
Paula uses Edmodo to complement Google Hangouts when guests are speaking. During these presentations, students from all classrooms participating in the Hangout can use Edmodo as a backchannel to pose questions and share thoughts. A teacher can create a private Edmodo group and share the group code with participating classrooms. Within those classrooms, a few students can be "backchannelers" during the guest speaker's presentation, typing notes and posting questions to the Edmodo group for others to respond to.
Google Docs
Google Docs is another platform for connecting and learning from others. For example, Paula's students created a survey on Google Forms to gather weather data from around the world. They received 200 responses from places like New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Abu Dhabi. Her students also used Google Docs to create surveys, which they shared with another class in Kansas to see the similarities and differences between the two classes. Using the information they gathered, students created large graphs and shared them with one another via Google Hangouts.
Paula also shared students' poem galleries, created in Google Slides, on Twitter. Readers could leave comments on these poems, and students loved hearing what others had to say about their poetry.
Mystery Location Call
Perhaps the easiest way to start your journey to becoming a globally connected classroom is by participating in a mystery location call. You can use Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime, or another video-conferencing platform to connect with another class. Through a series of questions, students on either side of the call try to determine where the other class is located.
Our classroom walls shouldn't be the limits of our students' thinking. As educators, we can open our classrooms to the world by connecting students with significant places, experts in different professions, and peers in different grades or geographic locations. In the process, we help students see themselves as part of a global community of learners who have something to learn from and teach all members.