Mystery Skype Part One

Part One: What is it and How did I introduce it to my kiddos!

About a month and a half ago, I saw a post on Edmodo. It was a teacher from Ohio asking if anyone wanted to do a Mystery Skype the following week. Without even blinking, I replied back. I had learned about Mystery Skype at the tech conference (MoreNet) that I went to in October, and had been dying to do it ever since.

The other teacher and I quickly connected, and started emailing about it. I told my second hour about it (since that's the time frame she was available for) and they were intrigued, but not nearly excited as me. Then I explained what it is and we watched a video or two on YouTube.

So, you're probably wondering, just what is Mystery Skype? This is the definition I found that I liked the most:

"Mystery Skype is a 45-60 minute critical thinking challenge that your class takes part in while Skyping with another class somewhere else in the world. Your students' goal is to guess the other school's location (country, state, city, school name) before they guess yours. We do this by asking yes and no questions."

(Thanks, Mr. Solarz for the awesome definition!! He has a great How To blog post about Mystery Skype!)(Skype has a fantastic explanation as well.)





So, once I explained the definition, we watched a few videos on YouTube (sorry, I didn't save the links!). Then we practiced!


To practice, I divided my class in half and gave them each a city. We talked about what kinds of questions to ask, and I also gave them paper maps to use. We went back and forth, each group asking one Yes or No question to try to rule out different states. We were able to be more specific with questions, like asking "Is your state East of the Mississippi River?" rather than "Is your state East?" and broadening our questions from "Is your state Florida?" to "Is your state bordering an ocean?"

We learned a lot about question types and patience during our practice, and I definitely recommend practicing before the real thing. One of my kiddos answered the third question with "No, we're in Tulsa!" and we had to start over with new cities!


Part Two will tell you all about the day of our Mystery Skype!

Thanks for reading!
-Melissa