Even since the Jetsons, I’ve been intrigued by the video phone idea.

Now, we take it for granted, but back in the day it seemed quite futuristic. I was sure that if our society progressed enough to have the video phone, we would have flying cars, too. But I guess we’ll have to wait some time for highways in the sky.

This year, I decided to combine my excitement about video phones (like Skype), my middle school students’ curiosity, and the fun game of 20 questions. So, I employed the help of our district’s technology specialist, Kali Root, to figure out how to have my students Skype with other students around the world. She provided us with a laptop specifically-purposed for the Skyping event and with other tech support to make it happen. I signed up on the Microsoft Skyping website and let several teachers around the world know that we were interested in communicating with their classes.

I didn’t have to wait long. It’s now February and we have Skyped twice with classes around the world: Mr. Finkbeiner’s 8th grade classroom at Irma Coulson Public Schools in Milton, Ontario, Canada; and Steven DeFoer’s high school students in Berkenboom Humaniora in Belgium — though at the time, my students didn’t know their locations; they had to guess each other’s location. The teachers and I communicated in a patchwork of places: the Microsoft Skype website, twitter, and email. Part of my interest in this project was to introduce my students to students from around the world (and a bit of their culture). For example, the high school age students from Belgium were from a boarding school so the time change of several hours didn’t affect our call…and some of my students seemed surprised that students opted for that type of school.

Asking purposeful questions became a lesson in itself. We practiced and improved from the first Skype call to the second one. All in all it was a very worthwhile experiment, which I plan to keep re-visiting this year several more times; two out of my five classes have participated, so I guess we will do it at least three more times. Kali thought it went so well that she made us the spotlight of East Lansing’s tech page (you may have to scroll down a bit on the link). And I think my students had fun with it too. What started out as a far-fetched video phone idea turned into a risk I was willing to take and then a win-win-win learning opportunity. I highly recommend the experience to other teachers and would be willing to explain the process in more detail if others are interested.