Mason School Uses Skype for "Dad's Reading Day"

Recently, the Mason School held its "Dad's Reading Day" and used the web conferencing application, Skype, to bring in a father all the way from Italy to read to his daughter's kindergarten class. According to Keri Purple, the teacher of the class, the father of one of the students is currently working abroad in Italy. They decided to Skype conference with him so he could be part of the event. He read the book, "A House for Hermit Crab" by Eric Carle. He used his webcam to show them some landscape of Italy (he was outdoors). He also read a little to the class from an Italian copy of Harry Potter.

Skype is a great way to be able to connect with other classrooms, as well as bring guest speakers into your classroom. Below are some links to resources on ways to use Skype in your school. If you are already using Skype to collaborate with others outside of your school, please comment on this post and share with us how you use it!

Around the World With Skype: Presentation from the K-12 Online Conference on getting started using Skype int he classroom.

Skype an Author Network: A site that has a list of authors that will Skype with a classroom.

Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom: Site with ideas and links on using Skype in the classroom.

If you have any questions about safely setting up Skype for use with your classroom and making sure you avoid receiving Skype spam, please call the OIIT Service Desk.

Sumner School Video About Trees

What a great way to show what you know. The second grade classes at the Charles Sumner School students completed a tree unit by creating a song and video about what they learned. The song, entitled "Sweet Trees Alive" is sung to the tune of "Sweet Caroline". Sumner science teacher, Theresa Lee and technology teacher, Kate Klein, teamed up to teach the unit. It is a fantastic example of a technology teacher and subject area teacher collaborating to effectively integrate 21st century learning skills into an instructional unit. Ms. Klein uses the unit as an introduction to using the internet for research. The students use keywords and learn about finding important information from a website. One of the websites that they used was Trees are Terrific...Travels With Pierre. Ms. Lee works with the students on science skills as well developing a sense of environmental stewardship. She takes them outside to practice observing, collecting data, and comparing and contrasting. She also reads a number of books with them to build background knowledge and understanding the importance of nature. Two of those books include, The Lorax and Tell Me, Tree.

In the Spring, they went on a field trip to the Arnold Arboretum. They also made a field journal to help connect their classroom research with their real life experience, as well as support their writing. As the culminating project, they created the song "Sweet Trees Alive" with the important ideas they learned about. The teachers chose to use animoto.com as the publishing platform of the project using a free educator's account. Ms. Klein said that animoto.com was a practical, easy and polished way to present their student's work. You can check out their video by clicking the link below, be sure to leave them some feedback in the comments section:

http://animoto.com/play/K2J2iOsXy2lXcpjodK8HTw