Mystery Skype at Lincoln

This morning I got to hang out in Mrs. Brown's 1:1 Android classroom as they participated in their first Mystery Skype.  How it works is the teacher posts a request to participate in a Mystery Skype and if a class responds then you agree upon a time.  We fired up the Skype machine and students took turns asking yes or no questions to the other class, trying to narrow down the location of the other school, first by state, then by city.

I didn't get there for all of the prep work, but I know they spent a lot of time looking at Google Maps, trying to generate questions to ask their partner school.  You could tell the other school had done this before because they asked really pointed questions and knew how to respond loudly so that our whole class could hear them easily.  We both figured out what state each other was in pretty quickly (they were in California) but the cities took a while longer.  For me, it was neat to see the wheels turning in students' heads, using their maps and knowledge of landforms, etc. to hone in on their faraway neighbors.

The other school had two representatives that did all of the talking and the class behind them supported them and did research.  They figured out we were from Wenatchee first and it took us awhile to find them in San Bernadino, but we got it eventually.  Thanks to Mrs. Brown's students for a fun morning!