One of my favorite things about these conferences is getting together with VC colleagues that I’ve connected with during the school year – and sometimes haven’t seen face to face ever. It’s pretty cool to swap stories and share the student impact we’ve seen over the school year. Here’s one of my favorite stories so far.

Howie DiBlasi, IT Director for Durango School District, Colorado is on the IVC ops team – behind the scenes networking and technical support for the videoconferencing sessions here at NECC. On Monday we chatted while sitting around waiting for a test call to work.

He told me about a project where kids in Colorado and Linden, New Jersey shared presentations with each other, and then turned to the Q&A time. This is one of my favorite parts of videoconferencing – students really connecting and understanding each other and realizing they are so similar. During this particular connection, one of the students from New Jersey asked a startling question.

Do you have bullies in your school?

Howie and the teacher looked at each other and wondered what to do.  Sometimes, though, you just let it play out. So they did!
One student in Colorado started to name the bullies in their school! But after that, the classes spent several minutes together discussing how they handle bullying in each of their schools. Turned out to be a very educational discussion.

Sometimes learning is hiding behind the unexpected! Are you ready for it?Conference Tags: necc necc06