Back in January of 2020 I wrote about this exceptional tool, Skype in the Classroom. Just a quick recap of that article:  Skype in the Classroom is awesome!  Skype boasts six ways that you can connect to the world:   

• Virtual Field Trip   
• Skype Collaborations   
• Mystery Skype   
• Guest Speakers   
• Theme Collections/Lesson Plans  
• Special Events  

Fast forward to December 2020 and this tool is changing. As Microsoft has continued to invest in Microsoft Teams and Flipgrid, they are discontinuing Skype in the Classroom during the summer of 2021. You might remember from our previous article there are a lot of impressive aspects of Skype we are going to miss. While I can’t make a direct connection to each of the ways that you can use Skype in the classroom listed above, I have found a few ways that Teams and Flipgrid can be used to meet the needs that Skype provided.

​Live Events: 

Microsoft is moving into live weekly events that will vary and will include authors, experts, and amazing sites from around the world. Check out all of the upcoming events at aka.ms/EDULiveEvents  

Classroom Connections: 

If you have ever checked out the Flipgrid Community,​ you might be familiar with GridPals. Through GridPals you can find other educators who share similar interests with you. Check out these examples: 

• A Kindergarten class in Iowa connected with Kindergarten students in Sudan. 
• Three Norwegian educators connected their students with classes in South Dakota 
• A high school English teacher in New York connected his students with a middle school Science class in Ohio 

As an educator you have the ability to make thousands of connections, using GridPals to increase your classrooms social learning, global empathy, and cultural understanding. As teachers began using this tool more, Flipgrid realized they need to create a new tool with Topics so that teachers can work together. This program is called CoPilots. CoPilots allows you to collaborate on Grids and Topics with other teachers.

Content Partners: 

Don’t worry about missing those amazing virtual field trips or content from those providers​ including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, California State Parks, Epic! Books, Scholastic, and more, in Flipgrid’s Discovery Library.

For many schools, finding someone to come and speak to the class about something that they are an expert in can be difficult due to time or budget constraints and Covid-19 restrictions.  With Skype going away, Microsoft is still making sure that you can have those opportunities through Flipgrid and Teams. To find more information, check out the Flipgrid Community!  

If you have any questions or thoughts, leave your comments below and we will see you next week!