Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Skype Call

Hooray! Our second Skype call with Mrs. Wells' 4th graders in Ozawkie, Kansas went much better. I found my web camera, so they were able to see us this time. Since both Mrs. Wells and I were participating in Jen Wagner's project entitled Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, we decided to have our students read the book together during the Skype video call. My students read the left hand pages, and her students read the right hand pages. After the reading was over my class surprised her class with a song. Two of my students were our cameramen. Corey, handled the web camera so our Skype buddies in Kansas could see us, and Wayne used our Flip camera to make a video of the event. We had a few sound issues, and need to learn how to use the Flip camera better. I also need to invest in a better microphone. I created the videos for viewing using Windows Movie Maker. We hope you enjoy the videos. Feel free to leave us a comment.

Meeting Our Skype Buddies

On the morning of September 17 we did our first Skpye call with Mrs. Wells' class in Ozawkie, Kansas. I found Mrs. Wells through a Ning called OnlineProjects4Teachers. We communicated back and forth on the Ning and did a couple of Skype calls at home to figure out what we would do for our first collaborative project. Well, there was great excitement in the air on that Thursday morning, but as sometimes happens with technology things didn't work out quite right for me that day. My web camera went missing, so we had to go to Plan B. Mrs. Wells' students introduced themselves to my students since everything on their end was working fine. My class loved "meeting" them through the Skype video call which I projected onto our Promethean board. Our microphone was working so her class could hear us, but they couldn't see us. Below is a video of some of the introductions. Mrs. Wells and I Skyped each other later that day and set up a date for our second Skype call. She told me her studnets said it was like a mystery that they couldn't see us but could only hear us. They perked up when some of my students talked about being born in other countries. They are looking forward to "seeing" us soon.