Our First Mystery Skype!

Mystery Skype is a global guessing game that gets kids learning about geography, culture, and the similarities and differences of how children live all over the world.  It is, essentially, a 45-60 minute critical thinking challenge between our class and another class somewhere else in the world, where the goal is to guess the other school's location (country, state, city, school name) before they guess ours.  This is done by asking yes or no questions.  

Students are assigned specific roles (or jobs) to be performed during their Mystery Skype, such as Greeters, Researchers, Google Mappers, Questioners, Liaisons and Closers just to name a few.  These sessions are expected to run like a well-oiled machine, with everyone performing their jobs and contributing to the goal of identifying the absolute location of the other school.  While the challenge is designed for students to apply their understanding of geography and enhance their understanding of world cultures, it also promotes the development of important 21st Century skills, including but not limited to: 

• Communicate clearly
• Collaborate with others
• Think interdependently
• Think creatively
• Implement innovations
• Apply past knowledge to new situations
• Think critically
• Solve problems
• Metacognition (thinking about our thinking)
• Adapt to change
• Think and learn flexibly
• Manage goals and time
• Self-directed learning
• Guide and lead others
• Analyze media and manage information
• Use technology effectively 
• Produce results
• Determination and persistence

Despite some connectivity issues, students persevered and were able to pinpoint a relative location (state of Kansas) of the other school.  Though we ran out of time and were not able to complete the challenge, we were able to create a new global partnership for a future project. That's a win in my book!  😀