In my second year of teaching, I began a classroom blog. That was my first adventure into classroom connections using modern technology…penpals had been a less than successful experiment in my first year!
In my fourth year, I was still blogging and came across @misskyritsis on Twitter. I have a feeling that we connected our classrooms using a Mystery Skype format and then a few weeks later, we connected with another Year 4 class to discuss and share our Christian Studies presentations about Religious Festivals. We Skyped @misskyritsis again, plus another class to share our Genius Hour ideas and progress. Kids love talking to other ‘real’ kids!
My Year 4’s began participating in the 100 Word Challenge (#100wc), giving and receiving feedback on other students writing. How powerful!
Last year, I was still blogging, Skyping and sharing comments and blog posts with classrooms all around the world. My Year 2s helped me write draft comments, reply to other blog visitors and broadened their geographical knowledge of country location due to the variety of people visiting our blog!
This year, I teach Preps on a Thursday afternoon. We do a poem and craft related to the sound of the week and then visit the library. Throughout the year, I stumbled across a Prep blog, which I showed the class. They loved seeing other ‘real’ Preps’ work and writing, so we began commenting. We Skyped them and their teacher @kaz_phi and talked about the similarities and differences between our school – their school is near a beach!! During our Bookweek, they Skyped us to share a picturebook that they had reflected in their artwork…so we listened to the story and created our own artwork too!
Yesterday was my birthday and the highlight of classroom connections is receiving a gorgeous audio message of a class of Preps singing Happy Birthday to me- we’ve never met in person, but it was so beautiful to hear it!
Why SHOULD you connect with other classes?
- geography skills
- authentic speaking and listening skills
- to share ANY aspect of your learning
- to learn from another class
- to widen your audience for class presentations
- debating purposes
Why AREN’T you connecting with other classes?
teacherlearningjourney 
Thanks for the special mention Fiona! We have loved connecting with you and your preps via skype – one day we’ll get a really good connection 🙂
I also love Quadblogging -linking with classes of similar age from countries around the world. Previously we have been involved with schools in England and Scotland. We have just joined a new group with schools from England and New Zealand. Such a terrific way to break down the classroom walls and learn from others around the world.
The other bonus is presenting work to an audience outside our immediate school environment. The preps are so keen to share their learning with others and love having feedback from others, not just from me!
Connecting with others online is also a perfect way to integrate eSmart behaviours – being exposed to positive online behaviours at a young age will hopefully have an ongoing impact on their own online behaviours!!
Looking forward to our next skype session!!