Time Zones

[Frank Dachille]

I want my US Government class at North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, IL, USA to share a virtual classroom with a US Government class at Wycliffe College in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, UK starting in September 2008.

There is a 6 hour time diference between NSCDS and Wycliffe.

Unfortunately, it looks as if my teaching schedule and that of my counterpart at Wycliffe will not coincide.

Does anyone have experience with something like this? If so, how did you make it work?

Thanks

Frank Dachille

[Julie Lindsay]

Hi Frank, thanks for raising this discussion.
This is exactly what we are 'dealing with' throughout our Flat Classroom projects all the time. There is no way we can have all classrooms, or in fact usually any classrooms, communicating synchronously unless one class gathers after hours...and often this may mean really after hours late at night or early morning. With 6 hours difference you have a chance of doing some synchronous work, but once again the UK school will need to stay after school, or you will need to come in very early.
Therefore can I suggest you change your mindset, in fact embrace a paradigm shift, and use asynchronous methods of communication. By using a wiki, a blog and a Ning, as well as other Web 2.0 tools you can be connecting, communicating and collaborating on a mutual project. Have a look at our project wikis and Nings and review how we approach this type of interaction (see this Ning top left for URLs).

[Lisa Parisi]

My class has worked with classes way out of our timezone. This mostly leads to asynchronous learning. Use podcasts, vodcasts, and voicethreads as a way to include visuals and voice to your project. I know some schools do have students come in early or stay late once or twice in order to connect. If you are in a private school, you might be able to arrange that. Good luck.

[Lisa Parisi]

Also, I have just finished creating a timezone wiki. We are asking students from around the world to add information about their timezone and their months (climate info). Feel free to stop by, join up, etc. http://timezoneexperiences.wikispaces.com/

[Julie Lindsay]

Lisa I love your wiki for this project. This is Glogster for the front cover? I must find time to play with this, it really looks great!

[Paul Hieronymus]

Hi Frank,

We have partner classes in the UK and this is a challenge. We are in the Eastern Time Zone which puts us at 7:00am to their 12:00pm. We have been able to do our teacher meeting over videoconferencing before school and during their lunch. We have a narrow window for our connections during the school day, but the students have come in early when need be for special programs. Flexibility is the key to real time connections with time zones.

We have also had success bringing students back in the evenings for connections to Australia. The Reef HQ virtual dive is an amazing program for students and their parents.

A key resource when working with classrooms of different time zones and multiple time zones is the world time clock. http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ The Meeting planner link can be a real lesson saver when dealing with daylight saving time.

Hope this helps :)