Category Archives: Professional Development

Professional Development, Training, Faculty Development, Workshops

When Things Go Wrong

In the 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing workshop last week, my participants asked me to tell my stories of all the things that can go wrong with a videoconference.

I shared several stories, most of which I’ve written about before in Top Ten Reasons a VC Gets Cancelled.

Then we talked about what to do about it.

  • Have a backup plan. It’s always a good idea with any technology lesson plan to have a backup plan in case the technology (or electricity) fails! Have another lesson plan or simple activity students can do while they are waiting. Make a list of everything you know about where you are connecting. Brainstorm questions for the place you’re connecting to. Content activities. Puzzles. Etc.
  • Dressing up. If you’ve been partnered with me for Read Across America, you may have seen me in my Cat in the Hat outfit. I dress up every year so just in case the connection doesn’t work, the students have something interesting to see and they can share their presentation with me. Sure helps with some of the frustration.
  • Rescheduling. Sometimes rescheduling is all you can do. That in itself can be challenging. But this is a good reason to have the equipment in the building. Makes it easier to go back to class and continue on if things don’t work!

As we ended the discussion in the workshop, one of the participants reminded everyone of one of the optional articles for reading. It includes a checklist for videoconferencing that deals with this issue.

Turrell, G. “Good Practice in the Use of Video Conferencing.” ATHENA. May 7, 2004.

Do you have any creative ideas for what to do when things go wrong? Share them in comments!

MysteryQuest as VC PD

Today I had an “aha” moment in our 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing week long workshop. We did MysteryQuest Beaches this morning. And here I will quote reflection comments from two principals in my group.

Mystery Quest is a lot of fun. This would be a good ‘ice breaker’ event to use with staff new to vc. It could be done between buildings in a district or between RUS grant buildings in Berrien ISD. It teaches so many things to staff and is so interactive (plus a lot of fun!). There are so many ideas that you could jump off of this from to anywhere!

This was a fun day. There was not a lot that I could have my classrooms use because we are a k-2 building. I did think that I could use aspects of mystery quest as a professional development activity. This was also a day where a lot of planning took place between myself, another principal, and Janine for the next year. That is a great start for me.

It never occurred to me to use MysteryQuest Beaches as a PD for anything more than as PD to learn about MysteryQuests for teachers who plan to participate in a MQ. But both of these principals see this as a good intro to VC for teachers, even the K-2 principal who doesn’t see the MQ format working for K-2 (and I basically agree). This is really a new idea to me. I told them I was worried about the teachers being overwhelmed by it, but they thought it would really get them excited about videoconferencing and highly engaged in the process. Then in debebriefing you really can use this format with just about anything.

It’s likely that we’ll actually do this sometime during the school year. I’ll definitely write about how it goes…

Online Class Networking

Here’s another neat NECC story from talking to people.

At the fireworks party on the 4th of July I ran into Donna Farren, NY and Carol Scott, OK, who took my online class together a year or so ago – Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections. It was great to hear how they had kept in touch with each other and done projects between their classes.

I knew in my head at least that the networking in the class was a huge value to the participants, but it was wonderful to hear much later how that networking was impacting students with quality projects. Go Donna & Carol!

Conference Tags: necc necc06

Providing Content For Your Schools

This morning I had a conversation with several colleagues in Texas about the 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing workshop we are planning for this summer. Besides planning the workshop, we had a great conversation about how we support our local buildings and how we promote and encourage the use of videoconferencing. One concern that came up was the need for content. "We have lots of equipment, but we need more content for our schools." The context of this conversation was the discussion of the training materials and activities. This workshop focuses heavily on collaborations between schools. 

I am increasingly convinced that educational service agencies should not only be providing bridging, purchasing, training, and technical support for their schools doing distance learning; they also must be offering content! It takes time to move from a consumer of content to a producer of content, but that should be the ultimate goal for all educational service agencies who seriously want to make distance learning successful in their service area. Schools need lots of free simple first experiences with videoconferencing to get them started.

Some great examples of service agencies or district distance learning coordinators offering content are Macomb ISD's ASK, LAPS and  RegionQuest programs; Joan Roehre's KUSD, Wisconsin History Mystery; Kathy Mohr's NOECA, OH Chapters, Classmaters, and other projects; and Linda McDonald's creative projects in Katy, TX (see Documents on her page). 

Andrea Israeli, NY, blogged about the challenges of producing content last week. It's definintely a challenging task, but oh so worth it! It gives your teachers high quality free content! You may also want to browse my blog entries about our ASK programs (which we learned how to do from Macomb ISD) and our MysteryQuest programs.

Several of the people in our conference call today had taken my Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections online class and that was how they began to offer content to their schools. Another session of this class starts on April 17 if you want to join us! I'm also rewriting my Kid2Kid Videconference Connections class this summer for next year. It will be targeted not only to teachers, but also to educational service agencies who want to learn how to run ASK, MysteryQuest, and new projects for their local districts. So keep that in mind if you're interested. I'll advertise it here as well as on the VC listservs in the fall.

Bottom line, if you have done videoconferencing for a year or two, it's time to generate and provide content. Create your own projects based on ideas from others and your curriculum of course! Then fill up those sessions with local classes and classes from the listservs. It's always a wonderful experience for students to interact with classes from far away! You CAN do it! Just jump in and start with something simple!

Math & Science Content Providers

This afternoon I have a group of teachers participating in our Math and Science Videoconference Field Trips workshop, or the Virtual Providers Showcase shared with us by the Macomb ISD. Thank you to Arnie Comer for sharing this with us!
The first content provider we’re connecting to is Mote Marine in Sarasota, Florida. They have an MTV like program with lots of visuals, interactive game shows, and a high energy presenter. These are definitely high energy quality programs. Mission Sea Deep sounds fun where the students are flying the ROV during the program to complete missions. If you have a Polycom or Tandberg unit you can run the ROV using the number pad on your remote.

Next we connected to the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. They are a new content provider. What I liked about their sessions was the inclusion of students drawing the plants to increase student observation skills. We look forward to them getting cameras out in the gardens to improve the visuals of the programs.

Next we connected to the Ocean Institute in California. Their programs are organized around observation sequences and encouraging students to participate in research as scientists do. I haven’t connected to the Ocean Institute in a while. I like how the students are participating in research and observation techniques. Having animations and visuals that would be difficult or impossible to find or do otherwise.
Finally we connected to Kigluait Adventures in Talkeena, Alaska. We started out with a live run on the dog sled with the mushers. We were “in” the basket of the sled riding along. Live! How cool is that?! Right away we jumped into asking questions of the dog mushers out in the snow with the dogs. We found out the names of the dogs. You could hear the crunch of the snow and the howls and yaps of the dogs. How totally cool! I think they might be hooking up an iSight in the snow to an iSight on the Mac which is hooked up to their Polycom. They are clearly stretching the technology as far as possible to show us as accurate visuals as possible.

A great evening it was, sampling the various providers’ programs and the pizza.

Teaching with Documents

This afternoon we have several teachers learning about using primary source documents in the classroom. Leann Potter, an archivist at NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration. She’s a great story teller and knows what items will pique our interest. She showed us the patent documents for the light bulb and telephone, the check that paid for the purchase of Alaska, rough drafts of presidential documents, and many other cool things that can really enhance historical studies.

This is a great PD session for all levels of social studies teachers. I highly recommend it!

One-on-One with Teachers

Today I met with our Career Technical Education (CTE) teacher advisory groups from around the county. They were participating in a professional development day and had an hour to work in groups. I floated from group to group to talk about what they could do with videoconferencing.

It was very interesting. Most of them are interested in using VC, but there aren’t any “ready made” programs in their area: marketing, business, advertising, computer graphic arts, building trades, public safety, firefighting, EMT, etc. So we talked about guest speakers. I asked them if you could bring any expert in your field to your teachers, who would it be? We made lists of ideas to work on.

We also talked about project connections with other classes. One of the more intriguing ideas we came up with is for the building trades class. We’re talking about our class locally sharing a video clip of a field trip to an local historical building, interesting for its construction. Then we’d share that with another building trades class in a different area who was also studying about a local interesting building. We hope to make this happen in May. It’s a morning class, so we’d need a partner school in EST or CST time zone. If any of you reading this blog have an interested class, send me an email. We’ll probably be working out the details in April.

This confirms what I’ve been thinking this year about my local teachers use of videoconferencing. They know what VC is and what it can do, but they really need someone to talk to them one-on-one or in small subject area groups to assist them in selecting or creating a videoconference opportunity for their curriculum.

Creative PD for Teachers

Bringing Teachers on Board with Professional Development by Dave Miller and Paul Heironymus from The Lorain County Distance Learning Consortium.

Dave and Paul started their session with an IVDL Jeopardy game that they use with their teachers in training.

Dave and Paul have a very creative professional development program going with team teaching projects that occur locally within their consortium.

I really like how they categorize their types of videoconferences – it’s fresh & new compared to what I’ve seen elsewhere:

  • content providers
  • team teaching
  • school initiated partnerships
  • specialized programming
  • course offerings
  • student operated classes

Dave & Paul had some video clip examples:

  • a team teaching session where students were working on writing samples
  • a virtual recital
  • a virtual college tour

In the session, we learned about the extensive PD model that they use instead of one-shot inservices. They work with a set of 75-80 teachers each year. Their consortium buildings have to send at least 2 teachers to the program each year.

The first day covers what is VC, who can I connect to, what’s a content provider, how do I mute the mic, etc. They also have to select a partner to work with before they leave in the first day.

After that, they have to do 4 videoconferences: A meeting between the teachers, a planning session with your partner teacher, an introduction of students, and the fourth is a connection with a content provider with the two classes connected.

Two months after the first day, they come back and share all the things that they did. Then they build skill sets. They learn to team teach with their partner.

Then they do 4 more videoconferences with their partner class.

This pattern is repeated for four days during the school year and a total of 16 videoconferences together in their partnerships.

They have also a pool of existing trained teachers as they repeat this process year after year. Then, these existing teachers participate in continued training. They learn to develop programs and look for partners locally, within the state, nation, and internationally. They have to offer at least 3 projects during the school year.

Their term for local district contacts is “district advocates”. I really like this term! Might borrow it!

They have an incredible reporting system as well to help districts see their use & set goals for using the equipment in the next year.

Each year at the end of the year they do an end of the year showcase and each teacher presents their favorite videoconference of the year and they make it into a DVD to share with the other schools and teachers to get ideas for new programs.

I think Paul and Dave’s model is incredible. I’ve never seen anything as comprehensive, sustained, and effective for integrating VC in the curriculum. This program is fantastically successful and I think we have a lot to learn from it! They do about 1000 connections a year with their 16 member organizations and 38 videoconference units! I think I need to set my goals a bit higher!

As with the other sessions, you can get the handouts online at the Keystone Conference website and their distance learning website is LCDLC.org.

As I was listening, I was thinking about my new online class, Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections. I was worried that requiring 1 VC a month between the partner classes would be too much, but I don’t think so! I hope that we get many people to participate in the class so we can do at least a mini-version of what Paul & Dave are doing in their county in Ohio. The class starts November 1. Registration details online here.

I hope that someday I can actually try this type of full year model with my districts as well.

Keystone & PICC

Today I’m off to the Keystone Conference in Indianapolis. It’s not too late to sign up to view the conference streaming! And you can access the handouts online as well even if you can’t come. Just scroll down to the sessions & you’ll see uploaded handouts there. I am lucky enough to be one of the last presenters on Wednesday night. I’m sharing Issues in Integrating Videoconferencing in the Classroom, qualitative data from my online class, Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections. The issues are in three big categories: administrative, curriculum, and teachers. Looking forward to a great conversation with the participants!

I plan to blog the Keystone sessions too if I can get online. Hopefully!!

Also, today we begin another session of Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections. This session I have a participant from Saipan! We’re a small crowd but I think we’ll definitely have fun learning together! If you want to join us, you can still sign up. Call Jo at (269) 471-7725×149 by Wednesday at 12:00 EST and I can still get you started in the class.

New Middle Schools Online

Yesterday I tested with the three Benton Harbor middle schools who just installed used Polycom 512s. I’m so excited that they now have access! A huge barrier to using videoconferencing in my middle schools is the transportation to the high school to access the technology. It’s easier for one or two elementary classes to come over and use it, but for 6 sections of a middle school subject area, it’s pretty much not worth the hassle. So now that these middle schools have the technology in the building, I know they will be using it much more this year!

A few other factors will make them successful this year, I’m sure. Each building has an assigned distance learning coordinator, mostly media specialists, who are in charge of the equipment. They are excited about the possibilities and find the Polycom remote easy to use. Having an enthusiastic “advocate” is what makes the difference in usage among the schools in our two counties.

In addition, most of the teachers already know what videoconferencing is. So instead of doing “awareness” sessions, we’re doing “pick your program” sessions. We’re trying out a new format for this professional development. The school will connect to me in my office for the whole day. Then as teachers have their conference hour, they will stop by the library to talk about what program(s) would be appropriate for their curriculum. They will be able to see the technology in action, experience how their videoconference setup works, and talk to me about possible programs or projects. I’m hoping that this will help teachers feel comfortable with their selections. I will help them fill out our mini-grant/scheduling request forms as well.

To my local principals & distance learning coordinators, if you want to schedule this type of professional development for your teachers, just contact me!