Skype Game/Sim - Between Students

Hi, I teach instructional technology courses for pre-service and advanced certification teachers in a liberal arts college in North Georgia, US. For this upcoming fall, I would love to explore connecting my classes online with either another college class or a k-12 class in some form of Skype-based game/sim. I would also be interested in just a sharing between my class with a similar class of students, I have a special interest in connecting internationally. To start this process though, it would require some dialogue and some validation for each of us to ensure a good learning environment for our students. At this point, I am interested in any ideas involving Skype, or any interest by anyone, teacher or not, that have some ideas. Other ideas might be an online chat between students on digital citizenship, current connectivity issues involving students, how tech impacts learning, but ultimately I would like to explore some online gaming via a conferencing tool.

Please share your thoughts

Randy Hollandsworth

Favorite

0 members favorited this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Judee Blohm on May 7, 2010 at 8:15am

Hi Randy,
One suggestion I have is to contact Peace Corps' World Wise Schools program. You can find out about it by going to the peacecorps.gov website. They do all kinds of connecting of teachers and students in the U.S. to where Peace Corps Volunteers are serving abroad. You may be able to establish something of interest to your students.
Judee Blohm

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by chris saeger on May 9, 2010 at 6:39am

Randy,
This is a great idea. It strikes me that a cross-cultural simulation would be a good candidate for an online environment. Bafa Bafa comes to my mind as a great experiment. I think you could vary the original game dropping the Bafa Bafa language but keep the underlying theme of one culture who is very transaction/business oriented with another culture who is more social and egalitarian.
Chris

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Randy Hollandsworth on May 9, 2010 at 6:41pm

Thanks Chris, good idea on that approach, I would have to purchase Bafa Bafa kits to do this, but something cross-cultural would be really a good experience for any students. Hope you are doing well. Randy