ISTE IVC Showcase: Monica Cougan, CILC with Janet Barnes and Lance Ford

In this section, they described, 22 sites across the U.S. and Canada to a district that has sites across the two countries.

In the PD, the teachers were learning how to be interactive in teaching full courses over videoconferencing. Doug’s emphasis was to take the same things you do well in a face to face class and to figure out how to do that the same way with students who are learning in a full length videoconferencing class. They split the groups into two sessions – Tonia Carriger teaching one group; and Doug teaching another group. Then the groups split apart into small groups to have discussions. The presenters would pop in and out of the different rooms. This was done with Lance Ford’s Tandberg bridge. The teacher participants wrote lessons together in the small groups and presented them at the end of the week.

Cool VC Strategy Tip

• Doug Meyer, CILC, described how he had the participants “huddle up” i.e. zoom really close in on the faces. It brought the group together and helped people feel closer to each other. After the huddle, they introduced themselves to learn more.

Building Community

Monica Cougan described how the format of the videoconference and the multiple sessions allowed a community to be created.

Lance Ford described how teachers have great strategies and lessons, and all that needs to be done is to wrap the technology around that. Teachers don’t have to change how they are teaching to teach over videoconference.

What is an MCU/Bridge?

Lance talked a bit about how each site can change their layout on the screen (Tandberg Codian MCU). Lance says: “an MCU is just a schoolhouse with a bunch of rooms” – and each site in the participants dialed in to the other rooms to do small groups or other activities.

CILC PD Marketplace

Monica explained the CILC Professional Development Marketplace and featured some of the various sessions that are listed there.