Library Media Tech Talk

I am excited to be joined by Mrs. Elizabeth Hutchinson, Head of Schools' Library Service on the island of Guernsey. She and Mrs. Angela Etheredge (teacher at St. Anne's School on the island of Alderney) share their perspectives as we discuss how this wonderful activity took place in February 2016. Mr. Brooks Lee (social studies teacher at Lakeside High School) also shares his reflections. Introduction Mr. Stony Evans I was delighted to receive a Tweet from Mrs. Elizabeth Hutchinson on a Saturday morning just a few weeks ago. She had read the blog post about our first MysterySkype and had sent a few comments to me. I happened to notice that Elizabeth was located on the island of Guernsey, which is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel! We have been seeking a way to connect our students to a school in another country so I asked Elizabeth if we might be able to try a Mystery Skype or Mystery Hangout. We discovered there was a six hour difference betwe...

📌 Updated May 2026: Skype was discontinued in May 2025. The activity described below works equally well with Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom. See the note at the bottom for current platform recommendations. I have heard of Mystery Skype sessions and Mystery Hangouts for many months while trolling social media. A few weeks ago, Heidi Harris (@heidibobeidi), a teacher in Lincoln, Maine contacted me on Twitter to see if we were available for a Mystery Skype session. I checked with our 8th grade social studies teacher, Mr. Brooks Lee, to see if he would be interested in allowing one of his classes to participate in the event. He was very intrigued by the idea, so I set out to investigate exactly how one of these sessions needed to work. Mrs. Harris was very helpful and shared with me a typical way to setup the library (or classroom) for the activity. We decided to set up these station areas in the library: Inquirers/ Responders (all at the webcam), Atlas Checkers, Google Map C...