Google Hangouts: More than Geography

In a world full of social media and instant gratification, keeping students engaged during a lesson is tough. In their spare time, they are “Googling” questions, learning from YouTube, and commenting/conversing with other people all over the world. The need for understanding and collaboration through cultural globalization is more important than ever. Google Hangouts is the perfect tool to expose your students to other students and experts around the world. Here are my top FIVE ways to utilize Google Hangouts in your classroom.

1: Mystery Hangouts

The most famous instructional way to utilize Google Hangouts. This tool focuses on improving the geography skills of our students. Mystery Hangouts is a challenge between two classrooms in which students try to identify where in the world the other class is located. Typically using “yes” or “no” questions, the classes engage in critical thinking and focus questions to narrow down the location in as little questions as possible. Whichever class is able to correctly identify the other classroom first, wins! You can start small with challenging another classroom in your building and picking different states in which to be located. Once you feel comfortable, check out Connected Classrooms or reach out on social media (Twitter, Facebook) to find other classrooms around the world to challenge! You can schedule your hangout with ease using Google Calendar (Thanks Christen Bouffard).

2: Reviewing Content Around the World

Raise your hand if you have ever created a Jeopardy board for review (I have both hands up). That’s right, I can remember using the SMART Board template to create engaging questions and categories. When my students piled into the room, they were divided into teams and competed for the most points. Don’t get me wrong, this is a fun way to review content in your classroom, but what about kicking it up a notch? What if you could compete or review content with another classroom anywhere else in the world? Here are some of my favorites:

• Guess Who – Have each class choose 2 or 3 people/items from the category and have the class try to guess them based on attributes or key facts. Examples can be a periodic table of elements, presidents, math formulas, or artists.
• Family Feud – Challenge another classroom to the most popular answers to various topics (battles of the revolutionary war, optics and waves, community helpers). After naming an item from the category, the class can gain bonus points for describing the person or event in more details.
• Heads up – Each class is given a category (biomes, reading vocabulary, math vocabulary). In each round, the class gets 2 minutes to describe as many words as they can using everything but the word. You can complete 3 rounds and then tally up the total words guessed by each class. The class with the most words solved, wins!

3: Access to Content Experts

As teachers, we do our best to become experts in every aspect of our core content. With tons of standards and other obligations, it is difficult to provide the deeper learning opportunities for students around each and every standard.

Enter the experts!

Through Google Hangouts, it has never been easier to provide an opportunity for your students to talk to graphic novel authors, doctors, lawyers, scientists, and any other related expert about your content. These experts can provide different perspectives and connections from the content to the real-world that are sometimes difficult to replicate in the classroom. By connecting your students to experts, you can provide your students access to job fields they never knew existed, fine tune their interviewing skills, and allow them to ask the questions they’ve always wanted to know.

4: Global Project Collaboration

I remember teaching in South Carolina and studying the various biomes with my students. If you have ever visited South Carolina, we basically have one temperature (hot) and there isn’t much change for most of the year. I did my best to build background knowledge, show videos, and filled every lesson with images. I’m sure my students got the gist of the lesson, but I bet they weren’t highly engaged. Imagine if my classroom could reach out to other classrooms that live in the various biomes. Imagine what our days would be like if every day my students could collaborate and communicate with students around the world to collect and synthesize data to create visual reports of their learning. This content would now take on a new meaning and the students would be able to talk to “expert” students who interacted with that biome each and every day.

5: Peer Tutoring/Classwork

During my tenure as a fourth grade teacher, I had a student named “Josh.” Josh was my go-to guy when I either needed an answer to a question that I know others struggled with or I needed assistance with a student who was struggling with a concept. When I look back, I may have failed Josh in supporting his thirst for new knowledge and sharing what he knows. See in the real world, being an expert on something is what we get paid to do. Whether it’s being a plumber, computer programmer, or landscaper, all of these jobs encourage being an expert and sharing one’s expertise with others.

To encourage my students to obtain knowledge and share, I set up a peer tutoring and class work group with a fellow friend of mine in New York. Each and every Friday, our students hopped on Google Hangouts with their peer and could share their expert knowledge on a topic or collaborative project we created for the classes. It was awesome to see students valuing the new knowledge they learned and seeing the thought process of how they worked to teach other students. Some were natural teachers and others had to feel the frustration of lack of communication and background knowledge. Whether they were natural teachers or not, the connections they made with the other students was huge for them. It’s like Pen Pals but with instant connections. Our traditional Fridays of “extra recess” turned into educational experiences that students clamoured over. With some scheduling, you can create this same opportunity for your students.

Have other unique ways to utilize Google Hangouts? Let me know if the comments below or tweet me at @EdfromEdTech!