Skyping with Mexico

On Friday we were fortunate enough to Skype with Ms. Gomez's class from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon , Mexico.  We connected with this class through a project started by Mrs. Harrison in Ontario. where we were invited to share our school yard through a digital book or video with the world.  Ms. Gomez's class did the same thing.

As is often the case with technology we had trouble skyping at first.  While we could clearly hear and see Ms. Gomez's class, they could see us but they could not hear us.  So after a few messages with white boards, we switched computers. It made a big diffference for them (they could hear and see us) but it caused issues for us - we could only hear them through our computer's speakers and NOT through our additional speakers.  But we made it work anyhow.

The conversations between the two classes were quite fascinating.  Ms. Lirenman had us think about and write our questions on our personal white boards, and we brought those white boards to our carpet area.  We took turns asking and answering questions. We were curious about their guard and soccer field, and they were curious about many things too. We surprised them by the ten languages spoken in our homes.

Near the end of our skype call we asked if they could teach us a little spanish, which they did.  We really hope that we'll be able to skype with them again soon as they had some very interesting things to share with us.  As much as we were very different from them, we were a lot more alike.

Skyping continues to be a very valuable way for us to learn and we can't wait to do it again.