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Connect your classroom to one gigantic sing-along!

By Team ISTE
October 17, 2016
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If you get into the randomness of National Blueberry Popsicle Day, the geekiness of Pi Day or appreciate the principle behind of National Courtesy Month, October may become your favorite month on the calendar. That’s when people like you celebrate Connected Educator Month.

Performer and teaching artist Dave Ruch from Buffalo, New York, is once again going all out to put the fun in the fundamentals of online connection. For the second year running, he's setting up a worldwide sing-along for elementary students at 1:15 p.m. ET Oct. 27. Zoom is hosting and donating bandwidth.

Last year's inaugural Largest Online Gathering of K-5 Classrooms (Ever!) attracted 27,000 students from 19 countries.

The “show” will last about a half hour as Ruch performs a handful of songs and asks students from Los Angeles to Zimbabwe to move and participate with him. He’ll also demonstrate unusual instruments and teach students a new trick, like playing hambone using their bodies to make the rhythm or mastering the time-honored ability to play the spoons.

“I wanted to do something happy, and perhaps it opens teachers’ eyes to what else they could do as far as videoconferencing or bringing experts into the classroom electronically,” he says.

You only need internet access and an interactive whiteboard, desktop or laptop computer, a tablet or other device to plug into a projector, but each classroom must register individually — no schoolwide enrollments.

What better way to make the world small enough to fit within four walls?

Teachers can sign up as late as one minute before the event begins. Feel free to explore Ruch’s site for additional free learning tools under the resources and writing tabs.

October is Connected Educator Month. Find more ways to connect and share at Connected Educators or follow #CE16 on Twitter.