GUEST POST BY NEIL STEPHENSON.

Neil Stephenson is a grade 6/7 teacher in Calgary, Alberta and has been his district’s 1:1 PD coordinator for the last three years.  Neil speaks regularly about technology and inquiry based learning, and was chosen in 2007 as a Apple Distinguished Educator.  You can follow Neil’s blog at Thinking In Mind.

Last year my students participated in a year-long, Humanities Project called the Cigar Box Project.  In a nut shell, the students walked through Canadian History by “remixing” historical images and artifacts into their own creations, designed to express their understanding while allowing students to use technology to build a holistic understanding of history.  Along the way, students crafted historical digital stories, as well as creating voice-recorded, self-assessments that accompanied each Cigar Panel.  The project was inspired by the online exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and after our students created their “cigar box panels” last year, the Museum asked us if we would be willing to link our student creations with the National Museum.  The kids were pretty excited!  There are a lot more pieces to project, and if you are interested, you can read more about the project here and here.

One of the pieces of the project last year was Skypeing with Sheldon Posen, the curator at the National Museum.  Since all of our students’ work (sketchbooks, iMovies, Cigar Panels, self-assessments, etc) was posted on student blogs, Sheldon was able to see and comment on the work.  He immediately wanted to talk with the kids, not about his work, but about theirs, which was amazing.  Using Skype, Sheldon was able to encourage my students, provide feedback on how the student creations compared to the historic panels, and speak about the curiosity the panels instilled in him.  It was so powerful to see my grade 7 students fearlessly engaging with a PhD in Canadian History about their work!

This year I am teaching the project again, with some changes and improvements.  One new layer is that another school just outside of our city has agreed to work through the same project at the same time as our students.  The other teacher and myself use Skype (almost daily!) to collaborate, share resources, plan and track the progress of the project.  I speak more with the other teacher through Skype than I do with most teachers in my school!  Over the last 4 months, our students have been sharing resources, images and peer feedback through Google Docs, as well as providing providing editing suggestions through Voicethread.  All of this has been possible because Skype makes it so easy for the other teacher and myself to collaborate and plan, so much that it feels like we are in the same building.

I have also used Skype to introduce and teach parts of the project to the other school.  Similar to Skypeing with Sheldon last year, this year I have become the expert that walks the other students through parts of the project.  We have also created some Skype accounts for our students, and have planned some upcoming collaboration times for our students to use Skype to share the historical understanding they are building.  As you can see, Skype has played a key role in the success of the project and how I now plan my work on a regular basis.