How to Combine Tech Tools to Create Globally Connected Classrooms

From Edudemic:

1. Twitter and Mystery Skype

If you don’t already have a classroom Twitter account, you should create one today. Twitter is a fantastic tool for connecting directly with public figures whose work you may be studying, like authors or political figures. You’d be surprised how many times you can get personal responses from influential figures.

One great way to enhance your use of Twitter is to follow the #mysteryskype hashtag, which lists other teachers from around the world who are eager to connect with sister classrooms abroad. Together, you can set up a time for your classrooms to Skype with each other. Mystery Skype suggests you play a game of 20 questions to guess where the other classroom is located.

Before your Skype meeting, students should come up with questions to ask, like those provided here. Some teachers like to assign jobs to students, such as call greeters, answer loggers, bloggers, and photographers. If the classroom you connect with is far away, and you can’t Skype during school hours, you have the option to leave video message. You could extend the game over the course of a few days or weeks. Once the game is over, your students will have new, international friends to connect with on future projects.

2. Google Hangouts and Kahoot:

While Mystery Skype is a great way to find a sister classroom, the Google Hangout tool is more robust and comes with more fun add-ons, like sound effects and screen animation. It can also host multiple classrooms for bigger meetings, and you can even archive sessions on YouTube through Hangouts On Air, so absent students and parents can catch up on the day’s action.

While you can use Hangouts simply to chat with foreign pals (that’s educational on its own!), you will take your time together even further by playing an educational-based game on a platform like Kahoot while you do so. Kahoot allows teachers to create quizzes, questions, discussions, and surveys, which students can answer using any device. In both global classrooms, the Kahoot game can be projected onto a screen, while all students can join the game with their devices and play against each other individually or as teams as they race to the top of the leader board. You could even pair your students with other students in the sister classroom – a great idea for teaching students how to collaborate across cultures and time zones.

Kahoot has a simple, drag and drop interface for quiz and survey making, so you can encourage students to collaborate in creating their own Kahoot games. International teams can use Google Hangouts to meet and design quizzes for others or challenge each other to complete the Kahoot game they’ve created. Now that’s truly global collaboration!