Q&A with Lakeside Junior High, Springdale, Arkansas

Today my students got the chance to hang out with some students at Lakeside Junior High in Springdale, Arkansas through Google Hangout. We had prepared some topics to discuss - prisons, health care, education, diversity and the Nordic model. Each group had prepared some questions - and imagined possible answers to the questions coming in- and the discussion went on for close to 60 minutes. So educational - among other things, we found out that you may have to pay 5,000 dollars to mend a broken arm in the U.S., that there are "ladies' etiquette clubs" and "gentlemen's clubs" as extra-curricular activities at Lakeside Junior High, that a general type of lunch could be a chicken sandwich and that a typical stereotype of a southerner is a person in overalls playing a banjo. :)

Thanks to Brian for arranging yet another great Hangout! And thanks to my awesome students!

Link to video clip from Hangout

Mystery Hangout with Napier, New Zealand - Kia ora!

Kia ora!* We started off Monday morning with our next to last hangout of the school year. We have about three weeks left of school here in Sweden and we will have the last hangout on Thursday afternoon. I definitely hope to pick it up again in August/September, but I also need to put a new spin on it... 

This morning we connected with an unknown country (for the students) and very early on one of my students said "their accent - it sounds like they're from Australia or New Zealand"...and soon enough we had guessed the right part of the world. As usual, it's trickier to track down the exact city/town/village, but when the 30 minutes were up we had found out that they were to be found on the east side of the North Island, in a place called Napier. The name of the school: Tamatea Intermediate School. The students' teacher, Kerri Thompson, had organized an evening with students and parents and there was an energetic vibe from the New Zealand classroom. Two girls sang a little song for us with some accompanying hand movements...what was that, Kerri? Would love to find out! :)

Due to the big time difference it was 9.30 am in Sweden and 7.30 p.m. in New Zealand. So wonderful that we still could organize an event like this! Lovely! Here are some snapshots from the hangout:

On our big screen

Pinpointing New Zealand on the map

Melanie and Isabella

Lauri, Mukhtaar, Paolo, Lucas and a tiny hint of Liridona hard at work

 The wonderful Kerri Thompson

The students had roles assigned to them

From left: Liam, Felicia, Alma, Afnan, Isabella, Maya, Yasmin, Oden, Limar, Vanessa and Linda.

Bye and thank you!!

P.S. Next week we hope our surprise reaches the students in NZ... ;)

* = a Maori greeting meaning "be well" or more casually "hi"

Mystery Hangout with Springdale, Arkansas

Another week, another hangout - I do like the sound of that! I have four planned hangouts before the semester is over in early June and I'm looking forward to them all. I'm so amazed at how teachers across continents easily come together in forums and e-mails to quickly decide to "meet up" through Google Hangout or Skype. Talk about "No walls" in the classroom!!! :)

Today I had some students stay after school to hangout with Lakeside Junior High School in Springdale, Arkansas, USA. There was a mixture of 7th, 8th and 9th graders in the classroom as we took on the task of finding out their location. Tricky at first, but some of my students can also distinguish an American accent and they soon figured out that we were in the US. Brian Johnson led the Lakeside students through our yes/no-questions and the students seemed to have some common interests, not being so interested in sports being one of them. We had a great time with this hangout and the word that came up a few times was "awesome"!

Mystery Hangout with Buenos Aires, Argentina

We hang in with our hangouts....this time we (7B and I) were a little stressed when we encountered some technical difficulties when trying to connect, but finally we managed to connect with Daiana Martinez and her students in Argentina, at around 2 o'clock Swedish time. On my end the students were a bit disorganized, but we still managed to get our questions across and could answer theirs despite an annoying sound echo. Thanks Daiana for this experience! :)

My students in 7B

At the same time.... on the other side of the world - in Argentina

Mystery Hangout with Valladolid, Spain

Today it was time again for a hangout, this time with Brandon Pinegar and his students from Valladolid, Spain. Being in the same time zone made it easier this time too. My grade 8 was divided into two halves and I took one of them into another classroom to set everything up. A few minutes after 10 we connected via Google Hangout and started asking each other questions straight away. After a few minutes the Spanish students were able to guess our country and, by accident, one Spanish girl asked "Are you close to Estocolmo" and then my students understood that they were from Spain since "Estocolmo" is the Spanish title for Stockholm. Then, we asked if they were close to Madrid but no they weren't....We gave each other a clue about our cities and after a few minutes we both guessed right on each other's exact whereabouts. One of my students - Tilda - got to speak a little bit of Spanish too which I think made her day. Following are some pictures from the hangout: 

Mr Brandon Pinegar and students

 From our point of view

Here is a link to the Spanish students' school Cristo Rey and they write about their experiences.

Mystery Hangout with Highland Village, Texas

Today it was time for another hangout...(it's slightly addictive, I have to admit it! :) This time my students got to meet some students from Highland Village, Texas and we were fortunate to guess the right location after about twenty guesses. Seven girls (Ellen, Maya, Afnan, Mona, Jannica, Lola and Floor) showed off their verbal skills and asked/answered questions and searched for information on Google Maps. As their teacher I was extremely proud of them. Thank you Rick Bleemel for helping me arrange this. Such fun!!

Here are some pictures from the hangout:

Mystery Hangout with Windsor, Canada - year 8

Today we tried to Mystery Hangout with Roberta Brooks and her class in Windsor in Canada. On time we connected but somehow, without understanding why, we never got our sound to work. So, instead of listening to each other we had to write our questions in the chat, which worked, but a little of the excitement was gone, unfortunately. The students, however, still continued to work hard and after about twenty minutes we could figure out that they were from North America and were Canadians. It was more difficult though to find out which town they were from....

After a couple of hints from Roberta's students we were able to guess right, that they were located south in the province of Ontario and close to the American border and Detroit. Windsor was the name of their city. At that time the Canadians had already guessed that we were from Sweden and "south of Stockholm" and when we gave them "B" as a starting letter for our town they guessed "Byxelkrok" which was a bit off but they were slowly getting there. After a hint of "we're close to Gothenburg" they guessed right. Good job on both sides!!! And fun!! Next time though the audio needs to be in a better mood! :) Here are some pictures from the Hangout:

Photographer: Alice Palmkvist