Tech in the classroom -- bringing more advanced students into the conversation

I think an interesting way to incorporate technology into my classroom would be in using skype (or another video chat platform) to bring in people with unique perspectives on our particular item of study. This year my mentor teacher wants to study "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury. I think it'd be interesting for me to find another teacher (via twitter or something) who is also planning on teaching this book. We could have weekly group chats with other students (in small groups) and similarly share a blog space (much like this one). I'm also very intrigued to see what would happen if the other class studying our text was at a higher grade level. Advanced students would have the benefit of viewing the text through the eyes of a less experienced students--they could even occasionally take on instructional roles themselves. Less advanced students would also then have the benefit of engaging with the text and exploring the academic methods of someone their senior. This opens up space for me the teacher to aggregate material generated by students in these small group or one-on-one conversations. It becomes my job to monitor conversations and pull what I believe to be the most instructionally rich insights and award students based on the engagement level within the process itself instead of on their ability to recall basics of the text.