Google Hangouts! Connecting Your Students to the World

Google Hangouts are a great way to connect your students to the world.  Recently, Mrs. Keene from Leonard Lawrence Elementary hung-out with a teacher from Raleigh, North Carolina.  The end goal is that these two classes will embark on a blogging buddy journey this year.  Each student will have a buddy who leaves comments and suggestions on each other’s writing pieces posted on their respective Kidblog.org sites.  

But first, they had to figure out where the other class lived and what grade they were in.  There are several roles involved in a good hangout.  Here are the roles we used to make the hangout successful:

• Greeters:  These people had a clever opening and welcome greeting for the other class.  
• A Videographer:  This person is in charge of capturing the video as the hangout is happening.
• A Photographer:  This person takes still shots to be used in a video once the hangout is over to showcase the hangout, (see below).
• Inquisitors: These students work in groups to come up with closed ended questions that help the mappers determine the location of the class in question.  For our Hangout we had three different inquisitor groups.
• Documenters:  These people work on a collaborative Google doc to take notes during the hangout to document questions and answers in case anything is questioned later on.
• The Mappers:  These students have maps in front of them.  Based on the answers to the questions being asked, they mark through areas that are eliminated.  
• Closers:  These students say a polite “thanks” and close out the hangout with follow up steps if necessary.  

I was impressed with their questions and they learned a little bit about time zones, different foods, and sporting events in both states.  Our goal was accomplished!  Not only did the students learn a bit more about their world and others in it, they had to use deductive reasoning to solve the puzzle.

And now the fun begins!  I can’t wait to see how their blogging buddy partnership is going to flourish and impact their motivation for high quality writing.  The whole thing took about an hour including prep time, and I think was worth it.  Check out the video below from their experience.  

Written by:  Jenny Krzystowczyk

@jennykbps