iGeneration - 21st Century Education (Pedagogy & Digital Innovation)

Skype Geography is a teaching strategy created by Amanda Morris (2019) that increases cultural exposure and builds global relationships in the classroom, while students develop mapping and geography skills. Our 21st-century learners are innovative, creative and social adolescents that learn best when in control of their learning and can have social circles that are nation-wide (Sparks and Honey, 2014). This strategy allows learners to collaborate with peers, interact at a global level, and use innovative and creative skills to display their mapping journey. The Skype Geography activity lasts between thirty to forty-five minutes per session, and the students are in groups, that are in a video chat via Skype with another group in a different classroom, somewhere around the world. The students collaborate in their groups to decipher questions that will retrieve the location of the other classroom. Students can only ask yes or no questions. The groups exchange questions until the classrooms are located and later document the coordinates and methods to retrieve the destination. In my mathematics classroom, students will split into groups and be provided with a template of the world map. Students will have five minutes to access online world maps and also to prepare underlying base questions they might ask: Are you below the equator? Are you south-east of Darwin? Students are required to retrieve the town that the other classroom is in, remembering we can only ask yes or no questions. Students will have multiple map resources available to help with decision-making and problem-solving processes to collaborate with team members to effectively retrieve the desired destination. After the Skype session is over, students will document coordinates of their starting point, key ideas throughout the process and the final destination. After three or four sessions, groups will identify the decision-making and problem-solving skills used to make the process more efficient. This strategy allows learners to collaborate with peers, interact at a global level, and use innovative and creative skills to display their mapping journey. This strategy can be used to transform learning in my classroom by increasing cultural exposure and building global relationships in the classroom, while students effectively develop mapping and geography skills.