Last Wednesday afternoon, just before the early close for Thanksgiving, I VCed with Craig in Alaska, and Janet & Rachel in New Zealand to experiment with desktop VC.
Rachel beat me to it, with a great write up of our little experiment. I totally agree with her, that the big issue is accessibility with VC. How can we make this accessible to more students & classes?! Take a moment to read Rachel’s review!
Yesterday and today we’ve had several HistoryQuest8: Revolutionary War sessions. These ones have been nicely full with 3-5 classes in each session. The clues have been challenging, so the students have had to work hard. In face in one session, with 10 minutes to research, none of the classes guessed any of the answers! Still, I heard from those classes that they enjoyed it and learned more about the Revolutionary War in the process. I’ve been able to collect some great footage to make a HistoryQuest movie sometime soon as well.
Here are some examples of the clues:
An amazing drawing!
A clue for a person, can you figure out their position/job title from this clue?
From the same presentation… I liked the poetry!
Notice the nice bold writing! Easy to read & record.
Another poster example.
Yikes, what a math problem!! How would you have taken a shortcut in writing down this clue?
Love this clue: “No one sinks ’em better”. Can you think of what revolutionary war ship this would be about?
In the last session, we had a scheduling glitch so I had five classes in a 45 minute session. Believe it or not, it worked!! We ended right on time. This is good to know that it is possible. We’re not doing any clues repeated. I ask the school to repeat a clue during the presentation if it doesn’t seem clear; otherwise I let it go. And there are no clarifying questions either. But the classes are giving really good feedback, so it’s good to know this format will work in a middle school short class period. I’ll be running MysteryQuest World Geography in February this same way (registration will open in CAPspace next week.) Hope you can join us for a Quest in the future!
After a very successful Monster Match this year, several of my classes wanted to do a turkey match with the same idea. We called it Turkey Talk. Roxanne and I partnered our classes, and ended up with 18 classes participating! The sessions occurred Friday, today, and a few more tomorrow. We were able to use the training materials and agenda for Monster Match. Interestingly, some of our classes had done Monster Match just a month ago, but they still wanted to do it again with turkeys. Clearly this project is meeting writing and art objectives!
Here are some pictures of the turkeys from Friday:
Notice how the turkeys are easier to see and compare when they have a plain background behind them.
A funny comment: One of my classes said to their partner class in TX: “We weren’t surprised that your turkey was so big since everything in TX is bigger!”
This is what we are calling an “accidental project”. Didn’t intend on it, but it just grew! I think I’ll be making this a project for next year for sure.
Last week I wrote about our videoconferences celebrating veterans day. One of our World War II veterans, Ray Sreboth, wrote a little reflection on the experience. I obtained permission to share it here with you:
This morning, I was once more was involved in one of those two way interactive TV, living history sessions at the Berrien Regional Educational Service Center where I had served as Superintendent for some 14 years. Unlike previous gigs, we had one or two Vets on a panel, each, from WWII, Korea and Nam. Of course, that made me the senior member of the group. We interacted with kids in Texas, mostly from the Dallas School District and they were terrific! Grade levels varied from 4th grade, middle school to senior high school. There were a lots of Jr. ROTC members, boy and girls, Army and Marine Corps units. They were the best prepared of all of the classes I seen in the three or four years. The Lest We Forget Org has been participating in the program and I salute the students and their teachers: all of them did their homework. The pupils asked good questions, very clearly, were attentive and were taking notes. The ROTC Cadets stood at attention when asking a question and remained standing till the answers we forthcoming; they thanked us and took a seat. Each grade seemed to have distinctive and uniform clothing, i.e.; one group had red shirts, another blue etc.
Though I wasn’t feeling very well, I made an effort to show up and I told the Director, given the opportunity, I wanted to made two points. If nothing else this day: (1) That as these youngsters grow up they will run into Holocaust Deniers, perhaps even their college professors will be in that group and I wanted them to know I saw the prisoners who had been freed /released from Buchenwald — at least those who were alive — and I told the kids they should not believe who say those crimes against humanity never took place and that I would never forget the sight of those living skeletons wearing what appeared to be pajamas made from flour sacks. And (2) that those entering college ROTC should understand, as should their parents, that the were not going to get a “free college education” in such a program, at they were not signing up for the Boy Scouts or Camp Fire Girls and that, when commissioned, they would probably be required to serve in the military and that they just might be put into harm’s way as a result of such service. I suggested that their parents should be fully aware of such circumstances as well.
I concluded my remarks at one session by mentioning how in my school days we observed Armistice Day, which marked the end of WWI and that it was a big deal in my day and I recited the poem In Flanders Fields, which we learned in about the 5th grade in the CPS. I did not tell them how at 11 AM on Nov. 11, we stood, in silence and Faced east for the boys who went west.
What a powerful experience for students, veterans, and videoconference coordinators!!
If you’re not subscribed to the comments on my blog, then you’re missing out on this invitation from Craig in Alaska in reply to my post on The Shake Up in the VC Market:
You can have good quality VTC with a desktop/laptop computer, high quality web cam and an echo cancelling “speakerphone” today.
I don’t suggest one type of VTC equipment (computer with cam and mic) over the other (VTC appliance). I do believe there is a place for high quality PTZ cameras coupled with appliance codecs and good quality echo cancelling speakers and microphones. Groups attending a video conference merit this type of quality.
Well trained individuals can use a high quality web cam ($100,) an echo cancelling speaker/mic ($200) and their laptop ($???) with “video shim” software (ie. CamTwist or WebcamMax) to make quite a sophisticated presenter station. Couple that with a video service provider (for the bridging) and voilla, “inexpensive” high quality desktop units.
For anyone who is interested, I’ll host a video conference to demonstrate. This will be a hybrid web and H.323 video conference.
In the same conference we can/will have H.323 and desktop/laptop devices (bring your choice). I will provide the connection, bridge and URL. You bring your H.323 endpoint, or your webcam and headset. Meeting will be held the week of November 23, 2009. Lets “Negotiate a Time and Date” here: http://www.doodle.com/3pxntg7smk8rs435 😉
Rachel, we’d love to have you in too. Are these times too early?
There are people who will like the desktop/laptop solution for an individual. Some folks will want the same hardware as an inexpensive group solution. And then there are those who will value the higher cost appliance/group system with the PTZ camera(s).
Let’s get together and discuss this. 🙂
Thursday night I listened to Larry Cuban over at Classroom 2.0. It was an interesting interview, peppered with entertaining comments in the chat. While listening, I skimmed Larry’s blog. I found this comment from this post on his blog that is a nice succinct summary of the bigger picture problem with change in schools:
Do high school structures promote enough time and the classroom climate to support frequent and open use of reasoning skills? Hardly. Take for example, the 4 Ts: Time, Teacher load, Textbooks, and Tests. Read more…
We’ve discussed before the challenges for high school teachers to use VC in their curriculum and they mirror Cuban’s 4 T’s.
I’ve also been reading about change – What’s Worth Fighting For Out There?, Leading in a Culture of Change, and Educational Change Over Time? The Sustainability and Nonsustainability of Three Decades of Secondary School Change and Continuity.
I’ve learned about the big picture of change in education, which vibes with what Cuban is saying. I’ve also learned that it’s important to respect and listen to the resistance. They might be able to see challenges you can’t see. They usually have a good reason for resisting. We need to listen to that! Understand it. Respect it.
So here’s the question for you:
How are YOU respecting the resistance? If you are blaming teachers for not integrating your favorite technology in their curriculum, what are you doing to help them get past the 4 T’s? When’s the last time you really understood and experienced the pressures teachers face? Are you just throwing ideas at them (here’s a great Web 2.0 tool), or are you actually setting up lessons and projects that meet their curriculum goals?
Are you following all the interesting developments in the videoconferencing market? Here’s an interesting review and analysis of the changes coming down the pike. I highly recommend that you take some time to read it. Here are a few snippets to convince you to read further:
The future of videoconferencing is the software-based codec running on general purpose (albeit high end… for now) general purpose processors connected to a low-cost, high quality HD camera via a USB 3.0 connection. The $20,000+ plastic-camera-on-the-TV-set-on-the-desert-cart dedicated videoconferencing appliance is a business model with the lifespan of an alcoholic fruit fly chain smoking unfiltered camels. The singularity approaches.
[imagine that]…all of the sudden you can purchase a fully functional standards-based HD videoconferencing end-point at every Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart in the world…..
This is great news for schools, as I’ve been looking for the H323 (standards based) desktop-ish classroom VC setup (for less than $1000) for over a year now. It really bothers me that all these 21st century classrooms are getting installed without videoconferencing! Tricked-out classrooms with no VC! It’s a travesty! But maybe with a Logitech camera and good echo cancellation mic plus great desktop h323 software it’s actually possible! We won’t have VC in every classroom or school until it is much cheaper and readily available. Purchasable by teachers with little instructional grants from various organizations, or easily acquired with existing tech funds.
So, in my opinion, bring those changes on! We need lower cost easier standards based VC to bring all the great existing VC content to more schools!
Have you had a videoconference collaboration fail because you couldn’t nail a time and date?
Email: “Hey, when do you want to do our videoconference?”
Reply: “I can do it anytime.”
Reply: “How about Monday?”
Reply: “Sure, what time?”
Reply: “10:05-10:45 is best for me”
Reply: “Ok that works for me. ”
Later reply: “Oh what time zone are you in?”
Reply: “EST”
Reply: “Oops that’s 8:05 my time. I can’t do that time. My kids aren’t in school by then.”
9 emails later. Now you have to start ALL OVER again! In the meantime, a week has gone by and you’re past the curriculum that you wanted to cover in this videoconference, so you decide not to do it.
Email: “Hey, when do you want to do our videoconference? I could do any Monday between 10:00-12:00 EST (my time) / 8:00-10:00 MST (your time)? I’d like to do it before December 8 if possible. Can you fit that in your schedule?
Reply: “Sure, I can do Nov. 23 at 9:00 MST / 11:00 EST for an hour.”
How many emails do YOU want to spend negotiating the time and date for your VC?
Take the initiative and suggest some dates & times!!!
Sadly, I’ve decided to purge my “other VC blogs” list of any blog that hasn’t had a post in over a year. But I want to keep the archive in case I need to find them again. So here are the ones that I purged:
Did you know this is National Distance Learning Week?
USDLA is doing a full series of webinars on many distance learning and ed tech topics.
I presented yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to have almost 60 people in my session.
What do you think? Are webinars a quick and easy way to learn? It seems like it worked very well yesterday… maybe this is the latest for PD… training without leaving your computer? Do you prefer this method of learning? Please comment!
