Tuesday, November 08, 2005

I Spy Geography, a simple yet fun way to review geography through videoconferencing

Third grade students from Avon Heritage South showed their geography knowledge with students from Kensington Intermediate School in Rocky River and Riely Elementary School in Salem, Ohio during an interactive game of Geography I Spy. Both programs took place in a multipoint conference one through Ohio’s ATM network through OET in Columbus and the other was bridged locally over IP with the Polycom at Heritage South.

The game was simple, using Google Earth I selected six points around the globe and provided four clues for each. The sites chose one spokesperson for the class. After each clue the site guess the continent or ocean. The students were encouraged to discuss their answers with their classmates and submit their answer. If after four tries the other school had the opportunity to answer. Each of the schools were well prepared and none of them needed more than three clues.

This activity provided the students a fn review of material while meeting social studies and technology standards. This is an excellent program to introduce students and teachers to videoconferencing. We look forward to running this program again.