Tag Archives: International VCs

Notes to my RAP teachers

Now that I’ve made it through organizing my 63 Read Around the Planet connections, I sent an email to my teachers on preparation. I haven’t done this before. Usually I trust to the email and my coordinators to make sure everything goes well. But this year I wanted to check up on the process a little more carefully. Here’s what I sent. Feel free to use it with your teachers if you want. (The interaction ideas are copied from the teacher packet.)

Greetings teachers,

By now you should have received an email with your partner information and date & time for Read Around the Planet. It came from admin@twice.cc. Please let me know if you didn’t receive it!

Communicate with your partner teacher
Please take some time in the next week to email or phone your partner teacher to let him/her know what you are planning.

Preparation Information
The teacher packet is online here: http://www.twice.cc/read/RAP-TeacherPacket.pdf
If you printed the one from the match email, please get this one instead because it’s newer and has more lesson ideas.

In particular, these ideas below can be used to increase the interaction – so it’s more than just two presentations and then Q&A.

Increasing Interaction

  • Ask your partner class questions related to your presentation as you go through. I.e. presenting state symbols: “What are your state symbols?”
  • Ask your partner class to guess something (i.e. who do the biography dolls represent).
  • Make statements about your class and have your partner class decide if they are
  • true (touch nose) or false (touch shoulders).
  • Share riddles for your partner class to solve.
  • Give the other class something to print and fill out (i.e. lyrics to a song and fill in the blanks).
  • Have your students dress up as a book characters and have the other class guess whom you represent.
  • For middle or high school students, have your students perform with the other class acting as judges.
  • Create a Mad-Lib for your partner class to complete.
  • Teach the other class something – a local saying, a local dance, how to make some local food, how to draw a book character, etc.
  • Research your partner class’ town and create a presentation about similarities and differences that you learn. Prepare questions about facts or news items that you find interesting or are curious about.
  • Play Wheel of Fortune with phrases, nouns, or sayings from your town or school. (This one should be 3rd grade or higher and watch the time!)
  • For older students – middle or high school – write a story about characters who journey between your town and you partner class’ town. Share it during the RAP connection. (If you really want to get creative, use a wiki to write collaboratively and then meet in the videoconference to present it.)
  • Play twenty questions. Be sure to review the rules of the game before you begin and give a clear idea of what they will be guessing. Example: You will be able to ask us 20 “yes” or “no” questions in order to figure out our mystery Dr. Seuss’ character.

As always, you can get assistance from me or your school videoconference coordinator.

What are your tips for keeping organized for Read Around the Planet and supporting your teachers? Please comment!

Day 19: Now, Participate in Megaconference Jr.

20 Days to Being a Better VC Coordinator

Now that you’ve been through this little training experience, it’s time to join the global learning community!

Megaconference Jr. is one of THE videoconferencing events of the year for K12 videoconferencing. It’s a 12 hour videoconference, facilitated by students, with student presenters featured. An incredible global experience, a chance for networking with other schools, and an opportunity for learning what other schools are doing with VC.

What to Expect on February 19, 2009

Because this is a large videoconference with many sites participating, it’s quite different than point to point experiences. So make sure you come into the experience with appropriate expectations.

  • You will see 30 minute sessions on all kinds of content and topic areas. The presentations come from elementary, middle, and high school students.
  • You will see a variety of presentations styles and tools. Some you’ll learn best practices; others you’ll have ideas on how to improve the presentation. Take it as a learning experience for everyone.
  • You will NOT have perfect audio and video. You should lower your expectations for the video quality.  This is partly due to the huge number of sites connecting and the variety of bandwidth capacity represented.
  • Megaconference increases the opportunities for global education. So INCREASE your expectations for global learning, and increase your patience and tolerance for international connections.
  • You will also see that some participating sites are new to VC and don’t know how to behave. i.e. MUTE your microphone in a multipoint. Take it as a learning lesson of what not to do. And make sure you are MUTED unless you’ve been called on to ask a question or interact.

Make the Most of Your Participation

  • Set up Megaconference in your library and have different classes come in and out throughout the day as they have time. Take the schedule and share it with your teachers. But warn them to be flexible because sometimes Megaconference gets off schedule due to the realtime nature of the event.
  • Make it an event to showcase the possibilities. Invite teachers and administrators to view.
  • Offer refreshments.
  • Have prizes. Make a geography game of it. Who can identify the location of the presenting site?
  • Hang up a large world map and have students mark the locations of the sites presenting throughout the day. Print the participants list (after registration closes) and have students find and mark the participating sites on the map.
  • If you’re not an interactive site, pretend that you are. Have the students answer the questions (but stay muted!).

Registration Choices

  • You can sign up to be a view only or “not interacting” site. Some schools prefer this for getting their feet wet.
  • Or you can sign up to be an interactive site. 3 schools get to interact in each session. The interactive spots go quickly, so hurry if you want to do this.

Comment Challenge

  • So, take a moment now to sign up! (If you usually register for VCs through someone else, you may want to check with them first on how you should register.)
  • If you have a story or suggestion for participating in Megaconference Jr., please comment and share!

Negative Things About Using VC in the Classroom

Yesterday we began this little journey of examining results from a little survey I did last May. Review the previous post for more information on the survey.

Today, let’s look at the companion question:

Please identify three to five negative things about using videoconferencing in your classroom.

Negative Things About Using VC in the Classroom

What words jump out at you this time? TIME! What ways are time challenging for videoconferencing?

  • Time zones
  • Time to schedule a videoconference
  • Time to prepare the students (and yourself) for a videoconference
  • Time to get all the classes at the level/grade to participate
  • What else can you think of?

Scheduling and technical problems stand out in this list too. While these teachers tend to be in my schools with better bandwidth and infrastructure, they still have done enough VCs to run into glitches.

I’ll share a couple full answers with you. This one is from Lacy Payne, F.C.Reed Middle School, in Bridgman, Michigan, (RUS grant school) whose students have done ASK programs, MysteryQuest, The Cleveland Museum of Art (to name a few), and has also participated in the Jazz workshop.

I have a couple of experiences where I had to reschedule because of technology problems, scheduling problems sometimes occur, time availability, and cost. I have two sessions of classes I teach and in order to get them both in I have to have them at the same time which creates a large number of students upwards of 50-60 kids. If money wasn’t an issue it would be much easier to do one conference per class.

From Peggy Clore, Coloma Middle School, (RUS grant school) 6th/7th grade language arts teacher:

1) Preparation takes time out of other lessons I’ve planned, so I have to make sure I’m covering as many of the GLCE’s as I can. Editor’s note: GLCEs are Michigan’s Grade Level Content Expectations.
2) Snow days cancel programs:)
3) Hearing may be difficult due to the other classes’ facilities.

And of course, this one is my favorite answer from a teacher who preferred to be anonymous in the survey results.

I don’t consider any part to be a negative worth griping about. If forced to nit-pick, the time frame is sometimes out of classwork sequence.

Are these negative things a barrier for these teachers? Read yesterday’s post!

So, please comment – either with your own list of negative things about using VC in the classroom, or with your own interpretation of the data represented above, or your own ideas of how to address these challenges.

Positive Things Abut Using VC in the Classroom

Last May (2008), I asked twenty of my teachers who used VC most often to complete a little survey. This is the beginning of sharing the results. Each teacher had used videoconferencing at least 6 times in the school year, and the teacher using it the most had done 12 videoconferences in the 2007-2008 school year. All of these were “curriculum videoconferencing” or using VC to support curriculum instruction.

In this post, I’ll share the answers to one of the questions. I decided to use Wordle to represent the data visually. Interestingly, it’s quantitative data (counting the number of times the word is using) represented in a more qualitative way.

Please identify three to five positive things about using videoconferencing in your classroom.

Positive Things About Using VC in the Classroom

Isn’t it interesting that the word students is so huge?! Learning, experiences, and opportunity jump out at me. It’s all about the students, isn’t it! Click the graphic to see the words much larger. Think about each of those other descriptive words.

And, I selected one full answer to share with you. This answer is by Peggy Clore, 6th and 7th grade language arts teacher at the Coloma Middle School, Coloma, Michigan (one of our RUS grant schools). She took the Jazz workshop a couple years ago and has been hooked on VC since. One of her more memorable VCs was the Around the World project in April 2008. She has also participated in the ASK interview with Jim Stovall and Read Around the Planet.

1) Students have an authentic audience, causing them to take greater care with their work.
2) Students learn to create valid questions through the ASK kit.
3) Students reflect upon what they learn and sometimes change their thinking or make connections to what they know.
4) Some of our challenging students’ behavior is so much better because they’re interested in what we’re doing.
5) When we connect to another part of the country or a foreign country, we open our students’ world to ideas they may not learn through a text book. Most of our students do not have opportunity to travel or see areas outside of our rural community and county.

So, how would you answer this question? Please comment – either with your own list of positive things about using VC in the classroom, or with your own interpretation of the data represented above.

Need partners for Eco-Conversations

I need two more partners for our EcoConversations project. We’ll take classes in the US if we can’t get Canada or UK partners.

Description: Students connect internationally to discuss current environmental issues and their impact locally. Students present their research and the local perspectives and then discuss the issues with the partner class.

Please check the project website for which times are still available. Registration is online there too.

At the time of posting this, I need two classes.

Fresh Water: Dec. 9 9:20 – 10:05 US EST / 2:20-3:05 UK
Carbon Emissions: Dec. 11 8:50-9:50 US EST / 1:50-2:50 UK

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.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, so I thought I’d write about a few Canadians I’m thankful for today! Hope you all are enjoying your pumpkin pie! I had mine for Sabbath dinner. Yum Yum!

And, for the Americans reading this blog, check out a little history of Canadian Thanksgiving. Did you know it was celebrated before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth? Wikipedia concurs. Wouldn’t that make an interesting videoconference, to compare the history and celebrations of Thanksgiving in these two great countries?!

Creating Connections: Cool Collaborations

In Julia Heighway‘s keynote this morning, she featured some interesting collaborations. Both of these ones here are using other Internet technologies to support the videoconference.

Human Rights Club

Several high schools videoconferenced about genocide and the holocaust. The students decided they wanted to start a Human Rights Club. They created a wiki to support their work together. Check it out at The Human Condition

Hong Kong
We videoconferenced during the keynote with Chun Fung from Hong Kong who posted this project request on CILC. Roxanne’s school, Clifton Elementary, did one of the first videoconferences with his class. Isn’t the world small!?

They started with cultural exchange, dances, group games, etc

Now they are looking for longer lasting collaborations. “To obtain the full benefit of VC, it must be used as a wholistic program.” They combine VC with pen pals to establish relationships ahead of time. Videoconferencing as just a “one-off” is just a pity. It’s better to establish a long-term relationship. They did a children’s art festival to raise money for an AIDS orphanage.

Now they are working on long term programs in computer science, ICT, and math. They are doing a project with Google Sketchup. They emailed the models to each other, and then videoconferenced with each other to explain their model.

Now they are doing projects with Scratch – where the students are learning programming with icons. The students will create games, send them to each other, play and dissect each other’s games, and then videoconference with each other.

“There’s so much more to gain from a sustained collaboration vs. a quick “one-off” collaboration.” – Chun Fung

First International Math Olympiad for elementary students. There’s one for high school, but not for elementary. So now they want to focus on specific subjects instead of just cultural exchanges or practicing English. All of their projects are open and they are looking for long term partnerships.

As a sidenote, I was sitting next to Roxanne in this session and it was pretty interesting that her class did the To Kill a Mockingbird project featured, the connection with Hong Kong, and my class was the audience for the winning KC3 project featured.

Two Successful Jazz Sessions

So, how is your summer going? Going, gone? Feels like that to me.

Last week we participated in the second successful Jazz workshop of the summer. If you’re not familiar with this workshop, visit the website.

The participants and facilitators really enjoy the process of immersion into videoconferencing in the curriculum.

Some features from this summer’s sessions include:

How did your professional development sessions go this summer?

Last Notes from NECC

I’m just cleaning off my computer desktop from NECC and a few scribbles here and there.

I lost two video clips due to somehow losing the sound on them. Very frustrating. But I wanted to mention these two poster sessions in case you missed them.

Dissolving Boundaries in Ireland
Nigel Metcalfe, from the National University of Ireland, dissolvingboundaries@nuim.ie, was presenting about their project to connect kids via videoconference from Northern Ireland and Ireland. The students got to know each other and then worked on projects together in all content areas. You can read more about the project at  dissolvingboundaries.org. I was particularly interested in the research (peer reviewed published research!) section. While the organization supports specifically this project, some of the schools are using VC for other activities as well.

Synchronous at a Distance: Bridging the Gap
The other clip I lost was of Shirley Pickle and Leesa Potts sharing about the Arkansas shared classes distance learning program. The state offers programs to meet the needs of high schools that can’t offer those classes on their own. Leesa is one of the teachers and shared some tips for getting kids to know each other early on with introductions, presentations and other strategies. Be sure to check out the website for the Arkansas Distance Learning Center as you’ll find many tips and tools.