11 April 2013

Mystery class in any time zone?

Skype, Google+ Hangout, and other live connections are an excellent way to motivate and personalize collaboration across town or across oceans. The mystery class game is an awesome way to authentically practice geography inquiry, develop communication and research skills, and cultivate international friendships! However, they are limited by time zone. For example, I would like to connect with schools in the Americas, but when it's 9am here in Japan, it's 5pm in California and 8pm in New York!

photo via gfpeck
My solution was to create this Google Document and share it with the other class' teacher. Feel free to make a copy and use it. We're just trying it out, but the plan is to add questions and answers each day until both classes solve the mystery. It's also a good way to introduce collaborative document editing to your class.

There is also the appealing notion of having an all-night, sleepover at school, worldwide Skype-a-thon... just sayin'...

4 comments:

  1. Good idea about the Google Doc. It's a good way to get students thinking about questioning. Maybe you could have a limited number of questions they can ask ... but I guess it's the same as having the first class that gets it right wins kind of thing.

    I'm not sure I would be up for an all night Skype session though. (I know it was a joke.)

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    1. We'll see how it works! I'm looking forward to seeing their collective thought process for coming up with each question. I'm trying to think of a catchy name for an all night Skype-a-thon...

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  2. Hi Bart, I am the Elementary School ICT Facilitator in Yokohama International School.Looks like a great project! If you'd like to collaborate with YIS, let me know.
    @aleaf

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    1. Thanks! I'll be in touch about collaborating, we're currently working on a unit about children's rights with a school in India and I'd love to find more interested classes to participate.

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