When the power goes out the show must go on...
This past Friday at around 9:30 am all the power in my school went out. With a 9:50 am Mystery Number Skype* call scheduled with Louise Morgan's class in Texas things had to change. With no electricity, and the school wifi down as well, the only access we had to the outside world was through my Phone. The thought had crossed my mind to use Skype on my phone to make our connection work but with a full class and no way to project the tiny phone sized image for the entire class to see it, that seemed like a silly idea. So did we scrap the call completely? No way! With technology we were able to find another way to make it work.
Bring on Voxer. Voxer is a Walkie Talkie type system that allows you to send, images, text and most importantly voice messages between people. Louise and I are already connected on Voxer so it was easy for me to suggest using it as an alternative way to have our Mystery Number call. It worked really well too.
Some of the benefits of using Voxer vs Skype is that between our interactions we were able to discuss the questions they asked so that everyone could understand the answers we were giving without the other class having to hear our discussions. We could move around if we needed to too. Plus the bonus of using Voxer is that you're left with a recording of the entire interaction on your phone. I have uploaded our interaction and can now share it both here, and and on my class blog. It's another great way to share what we are doing in class with my students families and the world.
So if you ever find yourself with a scheduled Mystery Number Skype and your power goes out, why not try a Mystery Number Voxer instead. :-)
If you're interested here is the recording of our Mystery Number call.
*What is a mystery Number Skype? The link attached takes you to a task activity card that you can use if you'd like your students to do 1:1 Mystery Number Skype calls. The card itself explains the process which can very easily be adapted for a whole class situation like we used it on Friday. We also used number to 50 instead of numbers to 20 as the card suggests.
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