Thursday…
Manjunath loves cricket. Sukanya is a baseball fan. Lingappa likes to play volleyball. My young Indian friends say their names and their favourite sports, with accompanying actions. To play this game they each need to repeat all the previous names and actions, so by the end the ice has broken, they are relaxed and laughing and I am finally becoming familiar with their names. This is my forth Skype interaction with my group of Grade 8 students in a SOME session at Ashraya Neelbagh (a residential school for children of migrant labourers 100Km from Bangalore) and things have certainly warmed up since the first.
Marlinga’s favourite sport is Kabbadi, which I haven’t heard of, so I share my screen and show them how I can type the word into Google to search for and then watch a Kabbadi video which comes up. Then it’s their turn to find out about Australian Rules Football. I leave them to it for a while and they take turns to read from a site they find, then share their discoveries with me. I show them a video of Aussie Rules and they are clearly entertained!
Monday…
We talk about time differences and adjusting the clock for daylight saving, as I accidentally came an hour early, forgetting about our clock change! I give them the link to Qlock where they can compare my time with theirs and check the time in other places in the world.
This leads us to Google maps. I share my screen and try to place them on the map of India. They are quick to inform me that my positioning is incorrect! So I show them how to share their screen with me and ask them to find themselves on the map and show me. It’s great to observe the process as they explore and figure out what to type in the search box, how to zoom in and out and shift the map around.
Thursday…
I’m a bit disappointed in today’s session… NOT because screen sharing doesn’t work this time which spoils my plans. I improvise and we do other things. I have them look at Google maps again, I teach them a song with actions, they tell me all about their recent exams and the coming festival of Dasara, how they will celebrate and what they will do in the holidays, and we even make origami, but…
Why are they sitting in lines? Why do they keep glancing to the back? Why are they less responsive than last time? Why are they much quieter and more serious?
It takes me a while to figure it out…
There is a teacher present.
What Ed Said 
I think it is great that you get to interact with these students. I did find it to be sad that you were not able to have fun learning with them when the teacher was in the classroom. I think my kids would love to interact with students like this from across the world. I look forward to seeing your next post.
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Thank you for sharing the importance of teaching with purpose. No longer do we teach only our class, the walls have been removed. What we do and how we behave effects our world.
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