Talking with Teachers

Yesterday I spent some time with two groups of teachers talking about videoconferencing possibilities. I heard some interesting stories.

One teacher participated in an Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum videoconference for the first time last year. Another teacher had signed her up, and I found out later that she had been so upset about it she didn’t speak to the other teacher for two days. But when she told me about the experience it was all positive. She came in saying, “I did one of those last year. It was better than a field trip!” She told about the hands-on activities; how the students were engaged, how she turned off the second monitor so they would behave; how she lectured them for days ahead on how to behave; how she thought the presenter might be a PhD but he interacted so well with the students. I asked her why she thought the videoconference was better than a field trip. “In a field trip, all the kids see are arms and legs.” A pretty apt way to describe the insanity with young students on a field trip. The videoconference was more focused and all the students could see what they were learning.

I talked to a group of new teachers yesterday. Usually I just give an overview of the possibilities, not really expecting them to use VC in their first year since it’s so hard for them. But this time we took half an hour to let them search and ask me about topics of study. For each topic I suggested possibilities. I did this with the Alberta Broadband Summer Institute on Tuesday as well. A “pick Janine’s brain” session. So many of the teachers were able to get specific ideas of programs to do. They sounded ready to sign up right then & there.

Another great story was from one of our local high school media specialists. She told me about two teachers she almost literally dragged into a videoconference with Global Nomads last spring. During the program, the teachers were watching interestedly. Pretty soon a question was asked, an answer given. The teacher turned to the media specialist, and said, “Are they over there [in Uganda] right now?!” “Yes,” came the answer. “You mean they are live with us RIGHT NOW??!!” “Yes,” patiently came the answer. Then the teacher hurries to the other teacher. “This is going on RIGHT NOW!! Come look at this!!! Can you believe it?” Two more teachers sold on the power of videoconferencing. And all because someone in the building convinced them to use it & supported them throughout the process.

Finally, I talked to a middle school computer teacher. My new beginning of the year greeting for teachers is, “Where are you going to connect this year?” We talked a bit about his idea for after school competition videoconferences, and my idea for a project for computer classes. I was reminded again that for middle school to use videoconferencing, the programs need to be (1) free; (2) easy to do / low preparation; (3) schedule-able for each section; (4) and always a tight fit to the curriculum.

What stories do you have from talking with teachers as the school year starts?

International Polar Year

Catching up on previous notes & scribbles.

Did you know that it is the International Polar Year? Check out the website for the focus and research. Note this announcement from Mark on the Megaconference listserv a while back:

As some of you may be aware, the International Polar Year (see http://www.ipy.org ) officially began on March 1, 2007. It builds on prior International Polar Years (or IPY), the first being in 1882-83, the most recent being the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58. Emphasizing polar science and global impacts, this current IPY officially runs through March 2009 but will have momentum for years to come. The key themes are trends in melting snow and ice, the challenges facing Arctic residents, and the role of carbon in the Earth system. Made up of over 200 diverse international projects, with thousands of scientists, educators and enthusiasts from over sixty nations, IPY has tremendous potential to showcase state of the art technology (like I2) and help demystify how scientific research is actually conducted.

Looks like they’ll be participating in the Megaconferences this school year. I wonder what other events could tie in the use of videoconferencing & K12 education? Check out the educator’s section of the IPY site. There are some suggested activities, resources, and more. Maybe some classes could participate in some activities and then videoconference with each other to share results. Do YOU have any ideas?

Read the Comments from Yesterday's Post

If you’re subscribed to this blog, you may be missing the very interesting discussion in comments on yesterday’s post, Is One Use of VC Better Than Another? Thank you to Carol, Roxanne, and Jerry for the thoughtful comments so far.

Jerry – I think you’ve hinted at the importance of someone “on the ground” in the building supporting and promoting videoconferencing. I know that our usage has increased so much that I’m moving from supporting teachers directly to supporting and training coordinators in the building. We are moving towards a model where primarily the coordinators support and train the teachers in their building. I’m still offering lots of PD and even more content, but the daily support & promotion is falling more & more to the building level coordinator.

What a great conversation…. thank you for taking the time to discuss this topic!

Is One Use of VC Better Than Another?

I’ve had a few conversations with colleagues over the summer about the use of videoconferencing in our respective areas. I’ve noticed that sometimes we judge each other’s use of videoconferencing against our own. Yet some educational service agencies focus more on course delivery or shared classes; others focus primarily on curriculum content from sources such as international and local classrooms, zoos & museums, guest speakers and authors.

Do you think that one educational service agency can effectively support multiple uses of videoconferencing: professional development, meetings, curriculum content, course delivery etc. Is it possible to do all types of VC well & to capacity?

Does it matter if one county (or region or state) uses videoconferencing primarily for one type of videoconferencing? Or should we all be trying to do all of them?

Or is what really matters the needs of the districts we serve? Some need course delivery and others don’t. Some have flexible curriculum and scheduling to access videoconference curriculum content and others have a more rigid curriculum/schedule that doesn’t allow for creative teaching with videoconferencing. What do our districts need?

What do YOU think? Is one use of videoconferencing better than another? Is your state sending a message of prioritizing a type of VC use over another? Is that a good thing? What do you think? Please comment!

Internet2 Commons Site Coordinator On-line Workshop

Here are some notes and ramblings from the Internet2 Commons Site Coordinator On-line Workshop today. If you want to attend future sessions, sign up for the email list.

H.239 is NOT there yet. While the tool has potential, I have yet to see it work well in a conference with multiple kinds of units & MCUs. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but give me the old S-Video connection into the codec anytime. It just seems to work consistently across any kind of unit or MCU. To the receiving sites it’s just another camera input.

VC is the canary on your network. It’s always good to have a reminder that while things might work “fine” on a network, videoconferencing may not. VC shows the potential problems and issues on your network.

Get rid of hubs! I know in our elementary schools we still have some hubs in the network path of the videoconference. Something to work on upgrading as time and money allow.

Ethernet duplex mismatch between device and switch. There is a need for collaboration between videoconferencing and networking people to work to solve these types of issues. See this Cisco page and Hostingtech page. It’s best to talk to your networking people and check the duplex settings. If at all possible, stick with auto negotiate.

UDP. The majority of H323 videoconference content is UDP because if packets don’t get there in time they are discarded (vs. TCP where the packet is sent again).

An interesting thought about packet shaping tools. If the system doing the packet shaping is overloaded it can introduce jitter and packet loss because it can’t keep up. So it may not always be a quick fix tool for bandwidth and traffic problems.

Firewalls. An interesting thing about H323 and firewalls is the UDP ports. Usually the devices negotiate with each other which UDP ports to use for video and audio. So think about those calls that start, ring & ring, but never finish negotiating and you know that at least one firewall is involved in the call. The two devices probably can’t negotiate the UDP ports to use. This also explains why if you set your codec to fixed ports for UDP, then sometimes you can’t connect to other sites because their codec might be locked down to different UDP ports.

It’s interesting also that this workshop suggests that using a firewall that “snoops the H323 call set up channels and opens ports for the audio/video as needed.” With my limited experience with firewall traversal systems, I think I agree.

NAT. If you ever see a 10.* or 192.168.* you can know for sure that it’s an internal NAT address that you cannot call from outside the network. If you’re talking to people outside your network, make sure you know how to give them the external address.

Latency (the transmission delay) can be introduced with an overloaded network. There’s the “store-and-forward” delay which is the time it takes the networking devices to receive, process, and resend the packets. It varies based on the network load. Jitter is the variation in latency over time. Someone shared that anything over 50ms becomes a problem.

Packet loss. Numbers to pay attention to. 1% is noticable. 5% is intolerable. How high have you seen? Me – 80%. Pretty bad!!

As participants shared, I thought about all the different network names out there. How many videoconference networks can you name off the top of your head? CANET, MOREnet were two mentioned. Others I can think of are TETN, JANET, K12HSN, to name a few. Leave a comment if you know where those are! Pop quiz!

H323 is “network sensitive.” Ever heard that phrase? It’s an apt description of what we deal with on a regular basis.

Chuckles. They suggested that you shouldn’t make changes to the network without letting everyone know. Yes, wouldn’t it be nice if in little K12 schools we could know when someone changes something on the network!! Usually the techs are so busy that they forget videoconferencing until a problem comes up.

GDS has redundant gatekeepers with geographically dispersed gatekeepers to take over in case of a disaster. So in theory if GDS doesn’t work, it’s probably at your endpoint.

They say that if you want to be a citizen of the world you should join the GDS dialing plan. I tend to agree with this but haven’t been able to implement it successfully yet. But I really want to so that my schools can call JANET schools without going through an MCU. Did you figure out where JANET is yet?

The whole gatekeeper section of this workshop was very helpful. While we’re not really into gatekeepers so much in K12, I do think it’s one potential solution to many of the dialing problems we have.

The workshop also covered MCUs, gateways, etiquette and Internet2 Commons procedures. If you look at the procedures implemented in the Internet2 Commons, they are a great model for any K12 educational service agency.

This was a great workshop and one I recommend for anyone getting started with supporting videoconferences.

Gratitude Simmers

smooth green turf
cool shady breezes
blue blue skies
deep green woods
chirping birds and bugs
white fluffy clouds piled high
pure white snapdragons
    with golden hearts hidden deep
        for shimmery green hummingbirds
            to feed with long sharp beaks
green tomatoes hanging waiting
    for the blush of summer sun
        to sink deep into red sweetness
a lazy swing and a sleeping cat
rich thick fresh fruit smoothie
    reds of strawberries and
        blues of berries and
            golden red sweet dripping peaches

gratitude simmers inside me

New Keyword Search

Over a year ago, a librarian/media specialist at the MACUL Conference sat in a session on how to find videoconference content. As usual, I showed how to search our VC Program Database linked on TWICE and Polycom. I don’t remember what keyword we searched in the description field, but the results were not all on topic. I know one search word that is problematic like this all the time – “business“. If the content provider’s description includes anything about business hours, that program shows up. But it sure doesn’t help the business teachers looking for content!

So when Polycom started sponsoring our database, I knew we had a chance to actually do something about it. This spring we contracted with a local university librarian who specializes in indexing. He added keywords and subjects for all 1800+ programs. What a job! Now it’s finally done and searchable, and we’ll use that data to update future programs added.

Try it out and see what you think. Of course there are still some topics, like business, where there is hardly anything or nothing available. But if you search business in the keyword field now, you’ll get the one program that is honestly, truly about business: No More Business as Usual from Global Education Motivators.

If you have any thoughts on how it works, let me know!

Professional Development for 2007-2008

I’ve been planning my professional development for the year in the last few weeks. Today I finished up by putting all the details online for my districts.

  • My online classes are scheduled and registration is open if you want to join an international (usually) learning community for a few weeks. Read more details here: Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections starts September 10 and runs four weeks. Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections starts October 8 and runs for six weeks.
  • I have a new series of sessions meeting the requirement for a “long” course that I required of my distance learning coordinators in the RUS grant. We’re calling it Supporting Videoconferences and we’ll focus on using the new document cameras, etc., scheduling on their own (new procedures here), and troubleshooting.
  • My “short” courses that also meet our RUS grant requirements have expanded greatly due to collaborations based on the Jazz workshop.

I noticed an interesting trend or pattern as I put these online today. The beginning of the year is heavy with PD sessions, and then it fades out towards the end of the year as we get busy with lots of VCs (ASK, MysteryQuest, Read Around the Planet, Michigan Week, etc.). Hopefully by starting with more PD we can help everyone prepare for their videoconferences throughout the year.

Are you making your calendar for 2007-2008? What trends or patterns do you notice?

Setting Up Multiple Collaborations Between Buildings

One thing that has stumped me in the last couple years is this. Someone emails me and says, “let’s have our schools do projects together.” It’s so broad and wide open and I have so many things going on already that I don’t have a good answer. It’s so much work to just begin to talk!

But, as the Jazz project has evolved, and GoogleDocs is changing my workflow, I have a new idea! Here’s how it’s working so far.

This week, a building coordinator from TX from the Jazz class last week, emailed me asking for 5 2nd grade teacher partners to do a communities project. Now instead of a flurry of emails and headaches coordinating, we’re going to use a GoogleDocs spreadsheet to coordinate the whole collaboration.

I started a spreadsheet with the following columns. (In fact I made myself a template that I can easily Save As… for the next collaboration that comes along.) I’m thinking that each row in the spreadsheet corresponds to one connection.

  • Initiating Teacher
  • Email
  • School
  • Phone
  • Topic
  • Suggested Date Range
  • Suggested Times
  • IP Address & dial direction
  • Partner Teacher
  • Email
  • School
  • Phone
  • IP Address & dial direction
  • Final Date
  • Final Time

Then I added another sheet within the spreadsheet for the facilitators & coordinators contact info.

  • Name
  • Email
  • Phone
  • Cell Phone
  • Position/Connection (i.e. building coordinator for X Elem., regional tech etc.)

So the next step will be for her to fill in the details of what her teachers want. Then I’ll fill in with my teachers, invite my building coordinators who get involved to share the spreadsheet, and off we go. I’m hoping this will make the whole process a lot smoother.  I think it’s likely that we’ll use this format for follow-up for the Mini-Jazz workshops I have scheduled with Roxanne (TX) & Nurit (AB) for next year.

I can see this working well for my 6th grade Canada exchange project too. Last year I had 9 local classes connect to three different places in Canada. One spreadsheet shared with all the interested parties would have made this so much easier!

Do you see this process working well for you too? How do YOU handle multiple collaboration videoconferences between buildings/locations/regions?

Jazz Projects

Here are the projects created in Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with VC from last week. Enjoy!