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I have been fortunate to participate in two Google Expedition pilot programs, one for virtual reality and another for augmented reality. Staff and students using Google Cardboard had a great experience visiting remote places and looking at dinosaurs in their classroom.

If you aren't familiar with VR, it allows the user a chance to virtually visit another place that you couldn't otherwise get to on any given day, like, the Moon. From classroom chairs, our teachers brought students to college campuses, museums, Machu Picchu, swimming with sea turtles in the Galapagos, and more. Imagine the possibilities as students can explore places they might never get to see in real life.

The Jetsons were spot on! But, I'm still waiting for my flying car. :)

Just recently, I had the pleasure to work with some fourth grade teachers on our first Mystery Skype. A secret ranger from a secret national park called us for the first Mystery Skype session in our district. Although this video conferencing tool typically connects mystery @SkypeClassrooms, the option to connect with a national parks was an easy sell for us. You see, part of the focus for fourth grade involves learning about the regions of the United States. Included in their studies was a focus on, you guessed it, the National Parks System. Ranger Heather dialed in from a secret, to be determined location which I dare not share publicly.

As this was my first Mystery Skype, I'll admit, I was a bit nervous. My biggest fears were that the call would drop and we wouldn't connect.... big fail, or I would forget one small snippet of information that was critical to our success. Fortunately, everything went super smoothly and there was no cause for alarm... Did I say alarm? Oh yeah, except for the fire drill that cut our call short. All in all it was a great success, fire drill included!

To get started I did a quick search for "Mystery Skype" and I was off, landing here, poked around the site, set up my account, and started to make requests for a connection. Mystery Skype is something that I have wanted to try for a long time. Our first attempt did not gain any classroom connections. When we learned about the guest host option with the national parks service, the teachers and I quickly identified new dates and blocks of time. We learned that is was important to be flexible with time and to provide lots of potential options. It's much easier to start with a wide variety of dates and times than it is to play email tag back and forth trying to pin point a specific date. A ranger reached out to ask for some specific details to help them prepare for our meeting.

Now that we were scheduled to connect, it was time for the kids to get involved with the planning. There are many methods for organizing your video conference call which you can find with a quick Google search. That said, I included some awesome resources that I used to the right and below. In addition to these resources I tapped into a resident expert, my eleven year old daughter. Although she is now in fifth grade and no longer a student of Mrs. MacGregor, aka @MrsMcGrefor206 on Twitter, my daughter enjoyed many a Mystery Skype events in her class. After consulting with my now fifth grade expert on her experiences with Mystery Skype, the teachers and I came up with a game plan. Students were put into groups to perform various tasks so that everyone was included and able to help with the event. For example, we had student greeters to say hello and a photographer to help take pictures. Other students took turns asking questions. When they were ready to take their first, and last guess, another collected and tallied the votes. That's right, they nailed it! Still others made a map to include locations and names of the national parks. And finally, we had record keepers who recorded the questions asked and the responses.

It is often tough to sell an idea when you don't have actual experience with the product. Sometimes you just have to believe. I'm glad we did! Kudos to these teachers and the students for taking a chance on something new and bringing this awesome opportunity to Florence Roche. We were thrilled to participate in this experience are already thinking about the next time. Let's do it again soon!