I hadn't considered that sensation would be something the students would have felt, too. Nothing like a Skype video conference to stir the pot.
For the past few weeks, my classes have been reading Red Scarf Girl, a memoir of the Cultural Revolution in China that began in 1966. During that time I set up many different activities to help them comprehend the novel and make meaning from it. Students read and discussed in small groups -- both student led and teacher directed. They used reflective writing exercises to ask questions and explore themes, and they connected the story's events and ideas to experiences in their own lives and to other novels. Along the way we hooked up with another 6th grade teacher (thank you Twitter) and her classes from Cary, NC for a project in which we uploaded new content to the book's page on Wikipedia. For the most part our classes worked indpendently from each other and never really interacted. Certainly, the students were aware they were writing for a larger, more public audience, but the activity didn't seem much different than anything else we had done throughout the year. Probably the greatest amount of collaboration and interaction between the schools was between us teachers who were setting it up.
Skype changed all that.
As a culminating activity we set up a video class discussion via Skype. That morning things started our as planned. At 8:15am we popped up the feeds, and instantly our classes, one in Massachusetts and one in North Carolina, were staring face to face.
Without warning, my kids froze.
One of the most talkative students couldn't say the name of our school or where we are located. Another student, one of the most boisterous, reverted to speech so babyish, it would have made my toddler blush. The best adjective that another student could come up with to describe our community was "ghetto." Not what I would have ever dreamed would come out of the mouth of the one student in class who's done missionary work overseas. There was nervous chatter and laughter from some, while others simply became silent. It was as if my entire class had been reborn from giant alien space pods straight out of a 1950s B movie.
Now, of course looking back at the video, I'll admit that in general things went really well. Several of my students stepped up with some very thoughtful and interesting points, carrying our side of the discussion, and making it more than a worthwhile endeavor. And, I guess in the bigger picture, I'd go so far as to say it was wildly successful. We were able to do many of those things we always talk about -- use the web to remove classroom walls, engage in meaningful discussion across great distances, participate in authentic learning experiences. Still though, I had much higher expectations for my students' participation, and I couldn't help but wonder why such academic stars failed to shine as I know they can.
It was that nervousness. They didn't want to look silly. They thought that the other class used "big words" and was really smart. They didn't want to be perceived as not knowing what they were talking about, and so they clung tightly to old adage, "better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." Really? Is that all it takes to shake a student's confidence? A video feed?
It makes me believe that these kinds of authentic interactions are even more important than ever. Students need opportunities to practice communicating not only with their peers, not only in publishable writing activities, but in ways that foster discussion, collaboration, and communication that stretches students into unfamiliar territory to places where their status quo might be disrupted. They need to become comfortable with the consquenses of publishing their posts, to speak their minds in face to face conversations, and to be the first ones out on the dance floor.
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