Mystery Skype has been on my Edu Bucket List for the last several years, and I checked it off today! It was so much more than I imagined it would be, and I can’t wait to do it again.
Mystery Skype is where you connect with another teacher, decide on a time to meet online, and have your students ask each other questions until they figure out the locations of each other’s classes.
Kim Hewitt and I set up a practice session a few days before to make sure our equipment worked and have our students run through what it felt like. (Kim is just across the hall from me). The teacher she would be Mystery Skyping with had sent her some tips about how to make this work better, and we were able to prepare ahead of time for things like holding up a sign for think time.
We had roles the students would take on in order to ensure that as many students as possible had an active part in the process. This was really helpful because it took a lot of the management off of me. We had Researchers that were on Google Maps narrowing down the search. They would come up with a question to tell the Runner, who would tell the Questioner, who would speak to the other class on camera. Then when they asked us a question, the runner would go back to the Researchers who would figure out the answer, tell the runner who would tell the Answerer, who would then give the answer on camera.
Before the actual event, I had the students write down what jobs they wanted, and justify their choice so that I could assign them their roles. I have never seen so much focused writing out of some of them! They gave reasons like: I would like to be a Sign Shower because I don’t like to appear on camera, or I would be a good photographer because my dad taught me how to take clear pictures.
Our class decided to have a strategy of asking a broad question first like: Are you in the United States (See pie diagram in image above). Then we could start to narrow down the questions. That worked pretty well, although we got sidetracked today when they gave us the hint that they were on some type of military establishment. We had already narrowed down their area to Southern CA when my students jumped in and asked if they were in Area 51? Comedy!!
Our goal today was to discover each other’s location and then discuss a bit of the Global Read Aloud book we are both reading, Pax. (We found each other on the Facebook group for the Global Read Aloud.) Our class prepped for the discussion today by having small group conversations on the questions the other teacher and I had agreed to ahead of time.
When it was finally time to meet our partner class, the excitement level went through the roof! They all got into position, and the girls who were the greeters read their script to introduce our class to them (without giving away our location)! We traded back and forth asking and answering questions. Things got a bit loud in the background because there was such excitement going around about their answers to our questions. That excitement energized some into greater focus for their jobs, and threw others off into an emotion overload! That will be something to come back to and visit next week.
The students really had to think about how to communicate, how to politely respond, and how to listen to others.
One of the most interesting jobs that 3 students had was to be a Director. They sat in the back and watched everything that was going on. They made a T chart to take notes on what was going well and what we could improve for next time. That job took insight, focus, and finesse when they reported back to the class afterward.
One of the most coveted jobs were the photographers. They took all of these pictures on iPads so I could upload them to my Drive. Their goal was to stay out of everyone’s way and capture everything. They loved it!
We also had students who recorded the questions the other class asked and our answers on one of our whiteboards, and another student recorded our questions and their answers. This will be great evidence to analyze before we do our next round.
They were coached on being good sports when the other class found out our location, and also not to go crazy when we found out theirs. Here is their quiet celebration:
Being in the middle of it all, it was hard to understand the impact of the process, but in looking at the pictures, hearing their verbal feedback and collecting individual feedback through a Google Form afterward, I now get the power that this process holds. So many skills were practiced in the prep as well as the actual event. It was pretty amazing.
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