A middle school in Kansas heard about a water crisis in Nairobi, Kenya and wanted to do something to help. They reached out to Skype and Microsoft to help get connected and collaborate with an educator in Kenya named Livingstone Kegode.

He connected with the teachers from the Kansas middle school and told them that the water pipes in his city and near the school had burst, causing a contamination in all of their drinking water with sewage water. In the video above, Livingstone informed the middle school teachers that the children want to be able to stay at school and not have to leave due to the water crisis.

The teachers got to work FAST with their students, and each teacher altered their lessons to help with the drinking water issue. In science class, the students learned how to create water filters. In social studies, the students learned exactly where Nairobi, Kenya was and the area in which the students live and went to school. In English, the students learned about current events happening in Kenya.

Students successfully figured out how to make water filters, and they decided to contact LifeStraw, a water filtering company via Skype. LifeStraw agreed to work with the middle school students from Kansas and with Livingstone in Kenya, and they sent 4 filters right away!

Through Skype, the students in Kansas were able to collaborate with LifeStraw and Microsoft to help their new friends in Kenya stay healthy and stay in school. So many schools are using Skype in the classroom to connect and collaborate with students and schools around the world, this is only the beginning for Skype and the many other platforms that offer this great tool!

Thanks for checking out my blog post on this amazing way two schools around the world collaborated and helped each other!

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