Key Distinct Outcomes
Key Distinct Outcomes
The "Mystery Classroom" or "Mystery Skype" is an educational game often used in classrooms to enhance students' geography and critical thinking skills. The concept is fairly simple: two classrooms or groups, often from different parts of the world, connect via a video call. The goal of the game is for each group to determine the location of the other by asking yes/no questions.
For us it was way more, a very engaging way to start the Young Activist adventure. It was a brilliant way to say with who we will join forces for a real purpose: improve the water situation of the World.
Curious about trying it in your English lessons? Here's how Mystery Classroom worked for us!
Preparation:
Teachers coordinate in advance to set up the call.
Students may research potential questions and learn about their own location's geography, culture, and key features. In our adventure they learnt how to use AI in order to create what we called "smart" questions.
Gameplay:
The two groups take turns asking each other questions. For example, "Are you in the Northern Hemisphere?" or "Is your country landlocked?"
The other group answers only with "yes" or "no."
Students use the answers to narrow down the possibilities and try to guess the other group's location. In our version of the game, we did two videocalls with one week of difference in between them so all students' groups had time to go over the answers they obtained and using the personalized AI tool they could start thinking which their location could be.
Objective:
The objective is to be the first group to correctly guess the other group's location (usually a country, state, or city). However, in our case we did not mind who would discover it first, but if we were both of us able to find it out.
Geography Skills: Students learn about world geography in a fun and interactive way.
Critical Thinking: The game encourages students to think strategically about the questions they ask.
Communication: It develops communication skills as students must ask clear, concise questions. And all in English! it has to be used in a real and very meanigful scenario.
Cultural Exchange: There’s a cultural exchange, as students might share interesting facts about their location once the game is over.
So, these are the steps we have followed in our personalized
Mystery classroom using an AI tool
Students asked each other the 20 questions and wrote down their answers. Each of them had a specific role during, before and after the videocall.
Once it finished they had some lessons to analyse the answers obtained. They created a poster with all their answers as a sort of information source about their mysterious friends. They also used AI to narrow down the possible locations.
Finally, when each of the groups in Spain had differnt proposals of locations, they shared their ideas and justified them and then individually they voted 3 possible locations, which would be the ones they would ask during the second and last videocall in which hopefully they will be able to discover both of their locations .
During this second call and after doing lots of research being able to use AI, children had 3 opportunities to ask 3 possible locations from their new friends.
Nigerian kids were first to discover the location using their second question, they first asked with they were from Italy.
Then, spanish students also discovered their location using their second question too.
It was such an exciting moments for all of us!
All students had their individual saying eventhough they worked in groups. We wanted to hear all their voices and opinion.
This is the exact moment in which both schools discover their location when doing their second videocall together playing the mystery classroom game. It was a great success, as you can see in all the children's faces, they were all so happy and proud of being able to discover by themselves where their project partners were from.
Right after discovering our locations, kids exchanged some unique moments in which they shared cultural dances and songs.
A picture is worth a thousand words...
It was important to check from the very beginning students' opinion on the starting project. We really wanted to see what was their initial feeling but also to let them have an individual space/opportunity in which they could share privately with the teachers their opinion on the adventure that just started. Some kids wrote very superficial comments but others really shared a great level of critical thinking. Others shared their exciment of having new friends from abroad and also using Artificial inteligence for the first time on their lives.
Feel free to download them if you find them useful.
Feel free to download it if you like it!
Children from both schools watched this video as a trigger point of the main content of the awareness campaign: climate change and water issues.
Teachers decided in their weekly organizing virtual meetings that AI would be used not just with children but also to design and create materials for the project. This video was created with the help of AI.
The Nigerian kids decided to do a video in which they were introducing themselves to the Spanish kids.
After the mystery classroom game, they discover their secret locations but they did not have much time to get to know each of them, so a very efficient and fast way to do so was to think how they could introduce themselves to their new friends.
Since the English project evolved into a interdisciplinary project and became a huge adventure TOGETHER, this Ebook proposal was done from the Arts and Crafts class in which students designed their own individual presentations in English using Canva.
Thanks to this meaningful tasks, both schools started to get to know eachother better. It was a very useful ice-breaker to join forces for a real purpose: save water, save lives!
When we were deaing with this adventure, Spain was suffering a huge drought and we were under an emergency. Goverment and city halls decided to take mesuares and gave some new instructions on how to deal with water.
For example, it was forbidden to water plants or vegetable gardens with a hose in order to save water. So kids had the idea to collect rain water using the rubbish containers we had available in the playgrounds of the school so they could some water to still water all the plants and vegetable garden from the school. However, this idea was not very succesful since after a couple of weeks they realized it was not raining, so they had a much better idea: put buckets in the water fountains of the school so they could pick up the waste water when they drink or wash their hand and colllect it for a later useful use. That was amazing! Besides, we learnt using AI that if we put some straw on the ground around the plants, it will even keep humidity much more time. Everything really worked out and we had plenty of water to maintain our plants and veggies despite the severe drought we were suffering.
Children prepared at school the guideline for an interview to be done to friends and neighbours around the Oakbridge Foundation.
They wanted to gather opinion and information about what is really happening to their community related to water and to start thinking on ways and ideas to improve their situation.
Spanish children were surprised to realized that Nigerian kids and their families get water from wells or rainwater privatly.
As you can see, the project that was born from the English classroom became such a global and interdisciplinary experience for everyone.
In here the Nigerian Young Activists went out to their streets to gather information from their neighbours to see what is going on with water in their nearby context.
Students from both countries shared the presentations and included information about each of their countries to be able to research and analyse the water situation at that time in Nigeria and Catalonia.
Do you want to listen to the campaign's anthem?
Students from Nigeria used AI to create song lyrics based on a popular tune. However, they had to adjust the AI-generated lyrics to better match the rhythm of the soundtrack, as it wasn't perfectly aligned.
Thanks to the music teacher of Sant Jordi's school (David! Big thank you) he managed to put voices together singing together as they have been working during the wholle campaing adventure: together with a real purpose in mind: save water, save lives!
There's a world in need of saving,
Where the rivers used to flow.
But now they're running dry,
And we just can't let them go.
You'll find we can make a change,
If we stand and do our part.
Each drop we save will matter
There are ways to save it,
If you care enough for the future
You'll save water
You'll save lives
Chorus
Save water,
Save water, save lives
For now, tomorrow and the entire future
There are ways to get it done
If you care enough for the future
You'll save water,
And you'll save lives
Both of the 4th grader tutors from the Spanish school prepare how to interview a City Hall member through Catalan. They showed interest to learn what was happening to their city and which ideas the city hall had to improve the situation related to water drought.
It was a very interesting morning in which students learn so much than content!
More news coming real soon
Both schools were in charged of working in small groups and come to some brainstorming ideas to have a catchy slogan for the project/campaign.
Each group had to have one proposal. They could also use AI to do so.
Eventually we had more than 15 different slogans so we all decided to create an open voting with the whole educational communities from both continents! Africa & Europe!
It was a total success! To be honest, it was quite unexpected to have so many votings from so many different parts of the World! Please have a look below its results, the winning slogan and some of the comments we got from people we don't even know!
Children were amazed and excited, their faces will always be in our minds forever. Those little moments are the reason why this hardwork adventure makes sense and motivates you to continue doing this innovative type of approach when teaching English and so more!
With a 29,8% the winning slogan was:
SAVE WATER, SAVE LIVES!
With 115 votes from all over the World!
Hey! Great Job! The world needs more children like you. Keep up the good work!
Great job! I’m writing from Chicago in the USA
My name's Noèlia and I live in La Granada. All your slogans are awesome. It's been difficult to choose just one. Congratulations for this project. Not everybody is aware yet, but Planet Earth is in our hands due to different issues, that's why all of us must take action and saving water is one of the first steps. Good luck with the project
Sóc la Gemma Talayero, la Cap d'Estudis d'El Turó de Bigues i Riells del Fai. He vist la vostra web i crec que esteu fent una gran feina. Endavant!!!
Congratulations for caring about water. You are working for a better world. Thank you.
Felicito la vostra iniciativa i lluita!!
Love your project, congratulations!!! keep going! We are participating from Milos island in Greece!
Hi am Uche. I believe this is a noble cause. Every drop counts.
Nigerian children were in charge of creating different proposals of logos to use in our awareness campaign. Maria also connected in some of their designing lessons through videocall so she was also part of this process.
They used AI in order to create their designs. They learnt how to write good prompts to get what they wanted and imagined. Once they had several proposals they sent it to their Spanish friends. Teachers created a Google forms and this time just the young activists could vote and decide their campaing logo. This is the one choosen that included also the name of the adventure and our slogan!
Thanks to the support of GREIP RESEARCH GROUP from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, all children involved in this adventure could get a water bottle to continue saving water, saving lives even when the project has already finished!
We are so grateful of their unconditional support! once again...
BIG THANK YOU!