Today we tried another new tech in school - SKYPE.
Year 1 were having a Space Camp day which included various activities including Space Camp on the Wii learning about being an astronaut. For part of the morning year 1 wanted to speak to Neil Armstrong on the moon! As my staff often rib me about I don't mind dressing up in school for a various events and days, so out came my Neil Armstrong outfit. A pair of white overalls, a paper maiche helmet, lots of printed NASA logos, gardening gloves and supermarket veg box painted white. We set up two Skype accounts and created a space themed backdrop in my office. Simple!
We then set a time and I skyped into the year 1 class with some prepared answers unfortunately my visor blurred all my notes, so off the cuff answers had to do.
The children loved it! totally enthralled, great questions (more than I'd been given to prep) - every child engaged in the questioning, felt comfortable asking questions, hopefully learnt some new facts, hopefully will have been inspired to write (we'll see next week) and as the video shows totally believed they were talking to an astronaut in space (they asked me to come back soon pleeeeeaaase)
I went down to class afterwards the children were buzzing and then spent all lunch telling any adult they could find about the astronaut they had spoken too! Brilliant! One of the most effective uses of tech I've used so far. Unfortunately for me it seems I may be dressing up even more in future - Santa, Zeus, Churchill, Roald Dahl who knows...........
