Podcast pt. 6: Skype & Google Earth

Hey everyone! Sorry we're a day late again; state testing is so draining! This is our final "episode" to our Podcast blog "series". This week we are talking about Skype and Google Earth.

What Steph has to say:
So my last topic for our Podcast series is Skype. I really like the idea of using Skype in the classroom to connect students with others outside our class. You could take pen pals to the next level with Skype by having your students "meet" and talk to their pal on Skype. Collaborative projects with other students/classes/schools would be a great opportunity as well. I also like the idea of using it to interview people. For instance, maybe you've done a huge author study and love the idea of being able to have your students meet the author. Well let's face it, authors travel and work all over the place...so see if the author would be willing to set up a Skype meeting with the class! Like I also said, this could be a great tool to communicate with families outside of school. Have a student who can't come to school, but the family wants to help the student stay caught up on work. If you were to use Skype, you could talk with the student and help them if they needed instruction in order to complete it at home. These are just some of the ways I can think of to use Skype in the classroom. Have you ever used Skype in your class? What other ways can it be used?


What Manda has to say:

My last topic for our Podcast series is Google Earth. I have loved using Google Earth in the classroom. I have used it several times to take my students on a virtual field trip. When teaching a pre-k class about their city, I tagged several important places in our town. We then "visited" and discussed the different things in our town. I also used it to show them the difference in their town, state, and country. I have also used it to show students places that we are discussing in history. I like being able to give the students a visual of things that we would never be able to show them otherwise. It is so cool to be able to let students "visit" so many places we would never be able to actually take them to. Have you used Google Earth in class? If so What have you done with it? 

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~Steph & Manda