On Monday evening, we tried out a new idea for our staff meeting at school. We had arranged for Mike Fleetham - of thinkingclassroom.co.uk - to train us in some of his thinking skills and criticial skills techniques.
Mike is based in Winchester, and our school is in Nottingham. That's a long way to travel to conduct a staff meeting (not to mention extremely carbon unfriendly too), so we attempted something we'd never done as a staff before - conduct the meeting through Skype.
Mike had previously Skyped (is that a verb?) with the Deputy in school - and even conducted a lesson with a class through a videolink, so we knew that the technology worked within the school. What we were curious about was how it would work for a staff meeting.
Initially there was some discomfort from some staff - getting used to being "onshow" throughout the meeting was a worry, but that soon passed, and everyone settled into the actual meeting. The actual process of talking / listening / replying was interesting. We had discovered in a brief test prior to the meeting that both sides of the conversation could speak at the same time, but it would result in the audio from the other party simply being cut off. Very quickly we adopted some unofficial 'protocols' to ensure that we didn't cut each others audio off, and so reverted to also a "walkie talkie" style of conversation where one person speaks and when they finish the other party can reply. Rather than interupt, we adopted the sign of raising a hand to show that someone was waiting to say something.
Another interesting outcome of this meeting came from Mike himself. He's used to being in a hall with groups of people, and therefore able to view body language, eye contact, and other clues to how people are responding to him. This was much harder whilst using Skype, as the camera did not allow him to see (and hear) everyone clearly.
By the end of the meeting there were thoughts on how we could continue to use this in the future. Obviously, contacting other classes in other schools (even in other countries) was mentioned as a way to enrich pupils to how others live and learn.
One point discussed about this though is that pupils may need to be 'trained' how to respond to the camera in the classroom. I've had the camera switched on in class on several occasions, with it's image displayed on the IWB, to get the children used to seeing themselves on the screen. The first couple of times I did this we had the usual staring and waving at the screen, and children moving around. This has since died down, and now the camera is just "another piece of technology" in the classroom - like the IWB, the visualiser, the voice recorders or the cameras. Maybe this is the way to go, rather than launch straight into a video conversation, and avoid battling with the children to sit and behave sensibly. It might also be a good idea to Skype another class in school and learn about how to listen to the person speaking without interrupting, learning the protocols of Skype conversations, before speaking with a contact school.
So, our Skype adventure is just beginning, but it looks like it could be a great journey we take with this, and staff seemed to like the idea of it. I hope to be able to say more about just what we have done with it in the future.
