Connecting students with real-world experts

By Wesley Fryer On February 17, 2007 · · 5 Comments

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Two weeks ago at TCEA in Austin I had a great conversation with Rachael Tucker, who experienced this past fall the power of having her elementary class connected to a U.S. college student studying abroad for the semester in Guatemala. (The student happened to be her daughter.) Rachel pointed out that we need a “matching portal” which can connect K-12 classroom teachers and students with college students studying abroad for these types of sustained conversations about that country’s culture, history, people, geography, food, etc. As a former international exchange student myself (to New Zealand for a summer in 1987) I can personally attest to the value and power of international exchanges– and the desire you feel as someone who has had a positive international exchange experience to share it with others.

Vicki Davis’ post yesterday on TechLearning, “The Future Wave of School Volunteerism: Be the Textbook,” extends this idea of bringing in the experiences and perspectives of others outside the traditional walls of the classroom to corporate America. (And the corporate world in general.) Vicki shares a story of how her class, studying nanotechnology and not finding a lot about the topic in her school library or textbooks, invited a nanotechnology expert to dialog with her students via Skype. What a great instructional example of using disruptive technologies to engage students and enhance the learning environment! Go Vicki!

More teachers can and should follow Vicki’s lead. I agree we need to have portals for “matching” content sources like these (students studying abroad or corporate folks armed with webcams and skype) to facilitate these types of connections.

(Blogged from the Apple Store in OKC!)

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On this day..

http://www.learningismessy.com/blog Brian Crosby

Wes have you seen how we connect and dialog using Skype yet?

http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=196
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com Vicki Davis

Of course, we can start connecting now with those we know and trust who are located around the country. Yes, and we do need a “massive” database of educators to be matched for flat classroom type projects AND for resources. Otherwise, only the “connected” educators will be able to do such things. Either that or we can help everyone “connect” and learn to use these tools.

Thank you for noticing!
http://elgg.net/dtruss/weblog David Truss

Wesley,
I remember one of your posts that said you preferred comments to e-mail, so I am posting here.
After stewing over the idea of a portal for some time now, the combination of Vicki’s post, and yours here, inspired me to write about and create a mock-up of a dedicated portal:
http://fieldfindr.wikispaces.com/
I am a digital immigrant that took 25 min. just to figure out how to do the table of contents… there has to be some tech savvy educators out there that can make a ‘real’ portal a reality!
Dave.
http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

Thanks for that link Brian, I had read about you working on getting the equipment for that project early in the year but hadn’t seen the video or heard the update. GREAT WORK! David, nice work on the mock-up. I think this should be built? Who will take this great idea and run with it?!
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