ejourneys

The student in the image  asked me a question on the content of  my lesson. However, she was not really my student. She was one of Chad Ball’s students from New Brunswick in Canada and was part of a 100 strong class of Canadian students seated in their school lecture theatre, listening to me, speak about Australia, our culture, our way of life, our school and our farm. Pre-existing impressions of Australia were of us living in the outback and ‘croykie’ (crikey!) , the crocodile hunter – our own Steve Irwin!

 Mr Ball’s students (14 year olds) are currently studying the topic of Oceana and are about to study Australia and NZ. Through my association with Jeff Whipple needing to return his favour of teaching my classes how to use a wiki and walking us through the 1001tales project, by using skype and bridgit conferencing tools with the IWB, I was asked to tell Chad’s students about Australia.

Chad had already set up a wiki for this topic and associated resources, so I was able to check this out before I took my 60 minute session. Students had replied to his bulletin board message on facebook, with questions they would like me to answer, so this was a valuable resource, giving me direction and prior knowledge. Understandably I was nervous and I later found out that Chad was nervous, but Jeff was there helping things along.

As there were up to 117 students from four classes, and other interested teachers in the theatre, I needed to keep their attention throughout. So I pondered over how to share photographs, as our school does not have a license for bridgit conferencing or elluminate or other tools. The quickest, simplest way, I decided was to set up a series of powerpoint presentations, convert them into slideshare and embed the slideshares into a wiki. Both countries accessed the wiki and as I said, ‘click’ or ‘next’, the students in Canada could see what I was referring to. In the image below you can see me using skype and Jeff displaying my wiki images (map of Australia) as I talked about it.

At times, I stopped to see if there were any questions and as there often were, I answered them and then proceeded. Students thought I had a funny accent, but theirs was rather different as well!!! I got mixed up with a question on “do we have beach shacks” then realised they said beach sharks!! Skype dropped out only once, and although my voice broke up at times, it worked remarkably well. The best part for me were the student evaluations and feedback re the class. How often do we, as teachers get such comments? Read Jeff’s post for his version.

This is powerful learning and indicates the way that education can go. Textbooks will surely be used less and ‘real’ teachers from other countries and cultures teach our students about their areas using the wonderful world of web2.0

The first comment is from Chad Ball, their teacher..

• It was incredible,
  Its just so different from what is normal here. I probably would of never found any of that out if it wasn’t for that presentation!
• That was soo cool! it was real awesome of the cool things i (and everyone) learned, I think i’m gonna do some research on more later…
• i really liked the fact that we were actually talking to her. not just in email. i thought all the pictures she showed were pretty sweet. also, i thought it was cool how we are used to different surroundings and habbits.. yes, we dont say put your bookbag in the boot… i still find it awsome, though. i love australia so much! (not to mention thier accents!)
• I thought that was so cool, for anyone who missed that, I wish that they could have seen it!
• that was an EXCELENT, presentation. I LOVED IT.
  it was very interesting, and i think that getting to learn chinese
  is a very diffrent thing then what we learn here.
  THANK-YOU SO MUCH. :
• i dont really understand why they learn chinese… i dont really think that makes much sense
• Hi Mrs. Mirtshin
  We were just watching you video and we wanted to know what bubble taps were.
• I really enjoyed seeing and listening to her.
  I learned a lot of new things
• i loved her accent. when she said RIGHT-O ! hahaha !
• Hello again..
  I jsut wanted to say thanks again for taking the time to talk to us abotu Australia. It was really interesting and i learned a lot!.
• it was swet
  her accent was cool, but the conection kept breaking up
  but it was till sweet
• thanks allot for sharing some of the intersting facts about were your from and for taking the time out of your day!!
• I thought that it was great! And I love her accent. Plus, we got out of Math!!! It was really fun and I hope we can do it again.
• Mrs.Mirtschin,
  Thank you very much for taking your time to teach us about where you live. I thought i was really interesting to learn about how different it is from here.
  thanks again !!
• Awesome presentation and pics. I’m gonna look up some more stuff on Australia… We should have a field trip there lol it would be fun…
• Yeah we thoguht the presentation was cool, and the web-cam thing was a really good idea. We both learned lot’s of new things about Austrailia.
• thank you Mrs. Mirtschin, that was really cool… and i hope that someday i will come to australia, and now that i know a little bit about australia i will be able to understand things there even more.
  for anyone who missed it, it was a very awsome presentation.
  you should have been there.
• Thank you for teachiing me lots of things that i didnt know about Australia.
  P.S. I LOVE YOUR ACCENT!
• Thank-you for teaching us stuff… PS. Kangaroos are cute!
• Thank you for teaching me so much about your home, Australia. I learned a lot of really cool stuff, and I hope that some day I can go there to explore for myself.
• jsut wanted to say thanks for talking with us today and taking the time to teach us more about australia. hope you have a grate day MATE, or nignt i dont know
• I that it was to cool that we got to talk to you this morning
  Thank you lots
• hey mrs. mirtschin
  thanks for teaching us about australia it was fun thanks again
• Thank you Mrs. Mirtschin for teaching us alot about Australia and what it is like to go to school there and about the farms and the sheep and everything. I enjoyed listening to you talk and asking you questions thank you for your knowledge that you shared with us.
• thank you i learned stuff that i dident know about befor
• i really liked the presentation you gave!!! thanks bunches
• good stuff, cool last name
• That was really interesting! It was pretty wicked awesome in my words. -lh
• i thought that was a really interesting presentation. i can’t believe you can EAT kangaroo! gross.— emma.
  P.S- her accent is AWESOME.
• Lucas: thanks for doing your awesome presentation! ps: i would like to try kangaroo
  Stephen: thank you for taking your time to do that it was great!
• Thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed listening to your presentation. I thought it was very interesting and very well done !
• Thank you so much for staying up late to talk to us. I thougth it was really fun and nice of you. Hopefuly we can do it again sometime!
• Thank-you so much for staying up late and talking to us about Australia.! I learnt a lot just from that presentation. : ) . It made me want to take a trip to Australia! That would be pretty sweet .! Anyway, THANKS SO MUCHH! : )
• Thank you for the grate moring here.
  Thank you for geting ous out of the frst 2 class of the day!
• Thank you!
  I learned a bit from the presentation this mornig!
  I wish I could visit Australia sometime!