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Class 3, beamed to Argentina
By Andrew Seguin
 Conversation used to imply being face to face, but in today’s world, people “converse” through cellular phones, text messaging, e-mail and instant messaging. Fittingly, Class 3 tried a new way to have a conversation: the videoconference.
On Thursday, May 3, the entire class gathered in teacher Perry Shure’s room to conduct a videoconference with fourth-graders from an all-girls school, San Martín de Tours, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lower School technology teacher Mary Beth Burns arranged the conference with Argentinean teacher Lucia Maldonado. Ms. Burns had been eager to test a videoconference for several months, and Ms. Maldonado, who teaches English, wanted her students to practice their speaking skills with native English speakers.
Both teachers used an Apple laptop computer with an internal microphone and camera to capture live audio and video of the girls. Simultaneously, the computer sent that information to the other classroom through a program called iChat, where it was displayed in two different ways. At Chapin, the computer was connected to external speakers and a video screen on the wall, which gave the girls in Class 3 a large image of the girls in Buenos Aires. At San Martín de Tours, Ms. Maldonado found that the sound and image quality were better if she just displayed the video on a laptop, though she used to use a video screen as well.
Despite being on different continents, the students could see and hear each other clearly. The magic of this was not lost on them; the faces in each group registered a kind of delight that only comes from doing something that seems impossible, like waving at characters on a video screen and seeing that they wave back. But on the most basic level, the girls were having a conversation.
The Chapin girls had prepared questions for their counterparts and written them down on note cards. Approaching the laptop so she could speak directly into the microphone, one Chapin girl asked the Argentineans, “What foods is Argentina known for?” One of the Argentinean students responded, “Beef.” The Argentineans then asked a question in response, “What foods do you like to eat?” In their enthusiasm to respond, the girls started to speak all at once, forgetting that the microphone on the computer was best suited to a single speaker in close proximity. After being gently reminded by Mrs. Shure, Ms. Burns and Class 3 head teacher Ms. Crandall, the room quieted. “Tell them we like ketchup,” one girl said to the designated speaker. The speaker obliged.
The exchange went on for 35 minutes, and each group of girls learned a lot about the other: what they studied, how they got to school and what they did when school ended. Questions engendered more questions, and the girls even realized the unique advantages of this technology: They were able to show each other the different uniforms worn at Chapin and San Martín de Tours.
Ms. Burns was pleased with the way the videoconference turned out. “This was just a test for us, but I hope to do more of it in the future. I’d like to do it with the countries that the girls study in Class 3,” she said, which include China and Kenya. “The main difficulty is finding a time when it works for both schools.”
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