Monthly Archives: October 2008

Monster Match "Horror" Stories and Last Pairs

Last day of Monster Match. Whew! We made it. I had 37 classes participate, which doesn’t sound like too many compared to a few other VC friends. But I’m still pleased with the results.

I thought you’d enjoy some “horror” stories from the week. These are some of the interesting things that went on behind the scenes. Any project of this size is going to have some little “issues” along that way the need resolving.

  • A fire in the room across the hall. Yes, can you believe it? And that connection only started 10 min. late. Not too bad!
  • Partner conflict over the depiction of a knife on the monster. This was resolved by removing the offending item.
  • Partner conflict/frustration over the use of “approved materials.” It seems a few teachers who did it last year didn’t think they needed to read the instructions this year. Oops!
  • Having to bus or walk to another location due to VC not working. Now that’s dedication to students!
  • A teacher on her own because everyone who runs the equipment left the building. With a little scrambling we got through it and everyone was happy.
  • A couple classes with such high excitement and poor classroom management skills that all the kids were talking and yelling at the same time. VC does tend to accentuate classroom management issues.
  • Hooked up the wrong building in a district. Oops! This is easily solvable too.
  • Custodian recycled the monster. Bummer. It made it impossible to compare, but they were still able to say how close it was.

Still, we had some great conversations about similarities and differences, and got to know each other a little more. I even heard a class this morning comparing who they were “rooting for” in the election.

Finally, a few more Monster Pairs for your viewing pleasure…

Lakeshore and Coloma Middle Schools, MI (6th grade)

This was one of the better matches I saw at the middle school level. Pretty close!

Doesn’t the head look a bit like a chocolate bar?

Coloma Elementary, MI and Groesbeck, TX (4th grade)

And here’s the monster that matched the one that got recycled. Check out the guitar!

Hope the stories this week inspired you to do similar projects. I’ve seen a few on CAPspace: Elves Exchange, Turkey Time, etc. You too can do this kind of project!

Monster Pairs Part 4

Another day of Monster Matches and some more pairs for you.

This monster’s name was “Mr. Cranky.” It’s fun to hear what the kids name their monsters. One class today said, “what is your monster’s name?” to a class that hadn’t named their monster. They had to think quick!

And the other pair….

Also, I caught some pictures of Ms. Purple Haired Facilitator herself!

“Who’s listening?! Are you thinking about the similarities and differences?”

“Now, children, it’s time to dance to Monster Mash!”

Ms. Purple Haired Monster was so kind to drop in on a connection this afternoon where the partner class was late and confused. Quick thinking “on her feet” to entertain our kids. Thank you!

Monsters and Marzano

As I’m listening to Monster Matches today, I hear the students working hard to identify what is similar and what is different between their monsters. In the session I’m listening to now, both teachers are having their students identify things that are similar and different. The teachers also have the students think about how they could have written their description better.

It occurred to me that this fits nicely with Marzano’s strategy of having students identify similarities and differences.

As an instructional strategy, it includes various activities that help learners see patterns and make connections. For example, students compare things that are similar and contrast things that express differences. They classify when they identify features or characteristics of a group of objects or ideas, and then develop a scheme to organize those objects.

After identifying the differences, students make connections (organize?) by trying to determine what they could have done differently to help the other class better understand what they meant.

Here’s a challenge for you today: How are YOUR videoconferences using research based instructional strategies?

"I Miss It"

This fall I have three districts who are part of our RUS grant who are having technical difficulties with their videoconferencing. This week I talked to one of the coordinators, who said, “I miss my videoconferencing! When will it be fixed??” She echos the feelings at each of these buildings that are currently not working. They were enjoying having videoconferencing and are now wishing it was working. A couple of them said they are watching the collaborations announcements coming out of CAPspace and so anxious to do some of them!

Here’s the situation in these districts:

Bandwidth
In two of the districts, the bandwidth they have is completely full. One has QoS, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Both of them are using United Streaming. One district is not willing to turn off streaming during the day, to allow only downloading at night. I tried to convince them to change this policy unsuccessfully. In the other district, we’re still investigating how United Streaming is set up. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to fix the policy there so that streaming/downloading only happens at night.

In one of these districts, two buildings connect through the Polycom V2IU firewall traversal unit. It seems to be more sensitive to bandwidth limitations, and usually won’t connect at all. However, the elementary building is somehow wired differently and they can connect with some freezing here and there. It’s tolerable enough to hear and understand what’s going on. Each building is sharing the two T1s that come to us.

Router? Firewall?
In the other district, they just upgraded from two T1s to Comcast where they have 10+M so the bandwidth isn’t an issue any more. This district was also using a Polycom V2IU for firewall traversal. The two districts with the V2IU were the only ones that we couldn’t get the NAT/port settings to work for videoconferencing on the WatchGuard firewall. Something in the switch to Comcast made the V2IU not work – and we still can’t get VC to work through the WatchGuard. We have a ticket open with our support techs and I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to solve it. This district did 100 VCs last year, so they are pretty anxious that it’s up & running soon.

I think that these situations illustrate how fragile VC can be on a K12 school district network. Wonderful when it works; but challenging to have the technical expertise and funds to appropriately support VC on the network. I’ve been testing with OSU for Megaconference coming up next week, and it always amazes me the high level of technical support and expectations at the university level. I’m hoping that soon we’ll get these issues resolved so my schools can keep using this great resource!

Monster Rides a Wagon

Here’s a story of persistance for you!

Sylvester Elementary’s videoconferencing system isn’t working, but they are in the same town as us. In fact, just across a parking lot and a field. So for one class’ Monster Match today, they loaded up their monsters and donned their jackets for a trip over to videoconference.

One monster was very large, so it rode a wagon on the way over, with two students holding it carefully so it wouldn’t fall over. Over the fields and through the woods, to Grandma’s videoconferencing room, we go!

Monster Pairs Part 3

Whew! Made it through a second day of Monster Match. I had eight classes participating today. I captured monster pair pictures for two of them for you to enjoy. I heard some really careful thoughtful comparison and contrasts today, as well as describing how we might have written a phrase differently to make it clearer for the other class.

6th & 8th Grade Edwardsburg, MI and El Paso, TX

Three Oaks, MI and Fairfield, TX, 1st grade

Great job, everyone! Two more days to go.

Presidential Energy Debate with Florida

Today, amongst several Monster Match videoconferences, we have Dowagiac Middle School connecting with Lake Stevens Middle School in Florida for a presidential debate about energy. These are two science classes studying the environment.

Our class started with an introduction by two students posing as McCain and Palin, and then some introductions from the “mayor” of Dowagiac. Some students also told about the Potawatami Indians living in our area. Then the students presented in groups various aspects of the McCain-Palin energy policies, complete with visuals.

The class in Florida started with an introduction from students posing as Obama and Biden. Their presentation included a little section of Obama saying “McCain says…” and the rest of the students shouting “That’s more of the same!” During their debate/presentation section, the students not presenting were more like a live audience during a campaign speech. Lots of spirit!

After the presentations, the students asked each other questions. Everyone was pretty excited to talk to each other. Here are some examples:

  • Have any of you experienced a hurricane?
  • What are the gas prices there?
  • How long are your summers?
  • How many kids are in your school?
  • Have you guys ever seen snow?

Everyone really enjoyed this connection… We found it on CAPspace.

Monster Pairs Part 2

And, I captured one other set of monsters today from a middle school 6th grade connection for Monster Match.

One of the monsters didn’t match very well at all:

I’m sure the students learned a bit more about writing directions in this pair!

Their second one was a much better match:

That’s it for snippets from today! Look for more pairs from tomorrow’s 9 Monster Match connections!

Monster Pairs Part 1

This week I have 45 videoconferences, 15 just today! The majority of them are Monster Match connections with Roxanne‘s schools. I’m hoping to collect some examples and pairs, and this is the first post in a series of captured monsters….

First, Lakeshore Middle School, MI and Dew ISD, TX. 6th grade students.


Had a little trouble with this one.


There was some confusion over the hat/head decorations and the skirt on this one.

Second, Mars Elementary, MI, and Franklin Elementary, TX, PreK students.

A little more teacher help with the younger students, and you can tell!

After the monsters the kids ask each other some questions. We had snow this morning, so weather was a hot topic. My favorite question though was from our PreK kids to TX: “Do you have cows?” Then, “do your cows have long horns?”

Stay tuned for more Monster Pairs throughout the week!

Diwali and Halloween

This morning 1st graders from Three Oaks Elementary are connecting with students from Kothari International School, Noida, near New Delhi, India.

The classes each shared about an October holiday – Diwali for India, and Halloween for the United States. Both schools shared a little about their area, visuals showing the food and dress for the holiday, and even a song. Three Oaks shared their Fall Poem, complete with actions! Each class had nice visual demonstrations for each other.

We connected at 8:40 am our time in the morning. The students had just arrived at school. In India, it was Friday evening, about 6:10 pm and the students gathered at a home with access to videoconferencing.

Here are some of the questions they asked each other:

  • Do you carve pumpkins in India?
  • What does your food taste like?
  • What is Halloween all about?
  • What is the weather like there?
  • Is it snowing there?

The students had a great time interacting with each other. Our students are going to study Diwali more to understand it further. We look forward to future collaborations with our friends in India.