Back to School: Storytelling with Skype

Two Waltham, Massachusetts, public schools connected classes for story time in April 2009 over Skype. Jeff Gilbride tells how a Kennedy Middle School class (older 6th grade students) wrote, then read, fairy tales inspired by a third-grade class (younger students) across town at Northeast Elementary School.

This peer service delivery was asymmetric, each side of the conversation performing different roles. This is different than most mutual classroom exchanges where, for example, Spanish and English native speakers spend 30 minutes in each language at the same level. 

Skype brought the two classrooms together without travel costs, parental permissions, and time spent out of the classroom.

Most important, it let two teachers experiment with their curricula, quickly, cheaply, without any new capital investment. Just two Skype webcams running on classroom computers.

tags: skype, education, writing, performing, waltham, massachussets

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