My First Mystery Hangout

As a member of Google+ communities, I had read about Mystery Hangouts (Skypes) in the classroom- so this term I was determined to give it a go!

After responding to a post in Google Hangouts in Education (Google+ Community) I had co-ordinated a time with a school in Alberta, Canada. One normal constraint of Hangouts is that you must be in a similar timezone, yet this school was having a "sleepover" so our 12.30pm was going to be their 6.30pm (the day before).

Through some research:

• Blogging through the Fourth Dimension (great article with hints and ideas, including a comprehensive "jobs list".
• Mystery Skype- What is it?
• Our First Mystery Skype! (Jann Kwasnicki, Beach Grove Elementary)

 and with some ideas from my Canadian partner teacher, we decided on the following format for the session:

1. Introductions (5 minutes) - each class will share a short introduction, test connections.

2. Mystery Hangout (20 minutes) - classes will exchange clues to find out where each other lives.

3. Creating questions (5-10 minutes) - Classes will separately formulate questions for the other class that they are interested in- Will not be interacting through the Hangout at this time

4. Question period (20 minutes) - classes will exchange questions back and forth

5. Good-Byes (5 minutes) - classes will share their good-bye remarks and we will disconnect

There are 2 main ways that a Mystery Hangout can be facilitated:

• like a game of 20 questions, each class asking Yes/No style questions until the location is found
• clue giving, where each team prepares clues in advance to feed to the other team to help locate them in the world (we first gave clues to Australia, then to Melbourne, then to Mount Waverley)- this was the option we went with!

Preparation

The day before was an important session to outline expectations of the roles- check out our Google Doc with the roles and a brief description.

We also discussed and brainstormed clues for our own location- Australia/Melbourne/Mount Waverley. We used a shared Google Doc for students to add in clues and then as a class tried to order them from most difficult too most obvious. We initially found it difficult to come up with clues that wouldn't immediately lead them to the answer with Google- e.g. if we said we have an emu on our coat of arms, Google would immediately give you Australia. There was lots of rich discussion about broader clues and also how search engines on the internet worked.

On the Day

Student excitement was at fever pitch (parents even asking me what we were doing today because their child was hurrying their whole household up to make sure they got to school on time!). There was lots of speculation about where the other school could be and lots of countries ruled out because of their timezones (little did they know!).  

Feedback

In order to gauge students ideas about what worked well and how it could be improved, I designed a simple Google Form to get their responses. Here is some of the feedback:

On a scale of 1-10, how much did you enjoy the Mystery Hangout?

What did you enjoy most about the Hangout?

"Being able to have the class work as a team"

"Because we got to talk to people all of the way from Canada and we got to know more about their culture."

"That we all had to work together to try and work it out by doing our job!"

"What I enjoyed most was probably when we got to ask questions and answer them to learn about the other school and I also enjoyed researching and the whole mystery kind of feeling it gave you during the whole thing."

What could we do better next time?
"If we had less think tanks. If we had more runners. The placement of groups. More google researchers. No one on the whiteboard because the clues were up on IWB. Think tank on the floor in a circle."
"Increase the roles and explain more about them. More thinking time to prepare the questions."

"Have more runners and researchers"

"Make the think tank smaller, about 5 people"

To have a read of our "reporters" version of events, complete with their photos, please visit our class blog.

I have maintained contact with the Canadian teacher and we are hoping to plan some further collaboration between our two schools in 2015. I am looking forward to 2015 and the opportunity to plan more Mystery Hangouts and to use technology to connect our classroom locally, nationally and internationally.

Please comment below if you too have used Mystery Hangouts and also if you have any interesting resources or websites that would help me and other teachers as we explore this exciting concept!