HEC-TV Live! Connecting Classrooms with the World

SIG IVC Showcase: Helen Headrick, Higher Education Channel-Television with Tim Gore

HEC-TV’s programs are not available on demand – because they take videoconferencing onsite live to a location. The programs are also live on television and streamed through HEC-TV. Their programs are also archived on their website, and also in iTunes University. You can be view only in the session, or you can be interactive. Each session has only 4 interactive sites. These are television shows, and hosted by a producer and includes “b-roll” video clips to include in the program.

While their funding is from St. Louis and they do their programs free; they welcome participation from other areas and states.

Sweet – they have a Tricaster for their programs -and they gave a great overview of how it works.

Your students are interacting with a LIVE TELEVISION program – in terms of videoconference and production quality of the session.

We watched a clips where they went onsite to Shakespeare in the Park; an explosion in a quarry actually onsite (The Science Behind Explosions) – and an artist in a contemporary art museum. Students are interacting with the experts onsite.

Tim Gore and his team did a by request program for us a couple years ago where we needed a judicial program – and they went onsite and we talked to the judge and court reporter and saw a bit of an actual trial. You can email live@hectv.org for requests too. A few years ago Tim was involved in the Lewis and Clark re-enactment and VCed live from the trip. Amazing programs!

They totally allow bridges to dial in and connect to a whole bunch of schools behind it.

They are doing a program on Sept 17 for Constitution Day and they are doing it on the Supreme Court selection process. Sweet! Gotta sign up for that! Sign up for their e-list here. Registrations open up about a month before the program. They are doing a The Giver program next year! They are starting a new series of programs on The Civil War. They also have a series of Holocaust survivors.

Their programs are an hour long; and they don’t mind – you just need to let Tim, the host know that’s what you are doing.

A nice ending to the session was a comment to Tim from the audience: “you retired after 29 years of teaching and landed the most awesome job in the world. Thank you for staying passionate about education, as this is exactly what we need in our schools.” Awesome!!

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