Trial Run Today Using Skypecast

We had a trial run today with a Skypecast! One of our third grade classes took part in a skypecast with a group in New Hampshire with one of my newest, dearest friends I met in Seattle and we are really planning some super neat things together! We were honored today to have Dr. Ash, our State Assistant Superintendent of Education come visit to see what we were doing. In she walked and we were in the middle of a skypecast with Nicole and her group in New Hampshire. Today was a trial for our skypecast planned with Nicole in New Hampshire, Mary and her class in Massachusetts, and our group in China. It went great. The students loved it and our topic today was weather since that is what they have just finished in class. You of course would guess the number one question our third graders had was "does it snow" and how does it look? Both groups loved it and can't wait for next week when we do another skypecast. We did learn that we will have our webcams connected and we must get our necessary "parts" installed that have just come in to correct bandwidth problems with are experiencing with our server. While Dr. Ash seemed to be very into this and I think she really enjoyed it, we were able to iron our some problems during all of this! Our Assistant Principal shared with Dr. Ash our project and she loved that and expects to certainly be a part of bringing an Innovative Teacher Forum to Alabama! Yahoo, the more we have to buy into this the more successful we will be! Alabama will be on the map folks!! I am rambling but so excited that we know this part of our project is going to work and excited about our trial run on a skypecast. If you have not used skype yet, please download it, it is free, and it opens up the world to our classrooms! Connecting classrooms around the world is my new motto!