How Can a Sea Cow Enhance Your Teaching?

MACUL Session: Thursday, 10:00 a.m.
Presenters: Kim Randolph, Teacher, Port Huron Area School District, and Terry Harrington, Assistant Director of Education Technology, St. Clair County RESA
Connection: Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida

First videoconferencing session at MACUL this year is a connection to Mote Marine Laboratory along with Kim Randolph, a third grade teacher, connecting from her classroom in Thomas Edison Elementary, Port Huron, MI.
The connection begins with sound checks between the three sites and welcoming greetings (big HIIIIII) between the conference participants and the students at Thomas Edison Elementary. Laughter all around.

Next the obligatory weather check. It’s 80 degrees in Florida and we all groaned with envy since we had slushy snow overnight.

07-03-15motemarine.jpgMote Marine’s programs start with a high energy visual introduction. Kasey Gaylord started us off with a gameshow about sharks: myths and facts.

Next we learned about the sea turtle session where students learn about nesting habits, adaptations, the sea turtle exhibits, and how they protect the sea turtles in Florida.

Another program, Mammals, Mammoths and Manatees focuses on the manatee exhibit and students learn about manatee training, habit, and more. An interesting part of this program is an activity where students practice training a manatee where the teacher plays the role of manatee.

A video clip showed how students from another class used their Polycom remote to control an ROV in the shark tank at Mote Marine. How cool is that for kids!! The dial tones send the ROV right, left, up and down. We all laughed when a large grouper suddenly appeared on the screen.

Each videoconference program has a PDF content unit with lesson plans, activities and background information to prepare for the videoconference. The materials are aligned to national curriculum standards.

Next, Kim Randolph, teacher at Thomas Edison, shared with us how she uses this videoconference in her curriculum. She showed an example of the math and measuring activity that helps students draw a life size manatee using a grid. She also showed an activity where students learned about adaptations. The students come up with lots of questions at the beginning of the unit. If they don’t find the answers in their reading, they ask those questions during the videoconference. Kim uses several trade books with the unit as well as non-fiction, fiction, drawing, and poetry writing projects.

This year many of the TWICE sessions feature not only the connection to the provider, but a teacher telling us how they integrate the videoconference into a unit. It’s very powerful hearing about the videoconference from the teacher’s perspective. My favorite part is when the students share what they liked about the videoconference and some of the facts they learned about manatees. We all love to hear kids talk!

New Polycom HDX 9000 at MACUL

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m in the TWICE room at the MACUL conference watching Polycom and ICI set up the videoconferencing equipment. After it’s up and running we will be doing test calls with all the places we’re connecting to on Thursday and Friday.

My inner geek is coming out! Polycom has provided their new HDX 9000 unit and I’ve been having fun checking out all the new cool features. ICI has provided an HD projector too and it looks so cool we think it’s from another planet! So here’s some pics.

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Here’s a pic of the new Polycom HDX 9000. Cool looking camera.

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Here’s a pic of the back and all the connections.

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Here’s a picture of the microphone.

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ICI provided this cool looking projector from InFocus.

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Keith Sadlier, Utica Community Schools, and TWICE Conference Committee member, switches off the lights so we can better see the new splash screen on the Polycom as it boots up.

It’s been an afternoon of sitting around waiting for everything to get set up and watching the hunt for cables and a live Ethernet jack and more. Just a peek at the behind the scenes of what it takes to bring videoconference sessions to the MACUL Conference.

While we might not all be ready for HD quite yet in our schools, it’s cool to see the latest and greatest at a conference. Stay tuned for more reports from the MACUL Conference!

Connect to Wales, UK Friday Morning @ MACUL

My Michigan friends, if you’re going to the MACUL conference, don’t miss Linda McConville’s session on Read Around the Planet on Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. in the TWICE room, W2-66. Linda’s class, back at her school, will be connecting to Bishop Gore School in Swansea, South Wales, in the United Kingdom.

I just received a CC of the emails between the two teachers, and look what a treat we’ll listen to from Wales!

Our pupils are divided in to 2 groups, one of whom will cover information and images about Swansea; the other half will explain the history and current details about our school. We have just held our patron Saint’s day at school ( St. David’s Day on 1st March) when we celebrate with an ‘Eisteddfod‘ which is a cultural presentation of music, song, dance, poetry and literature. My class, 7S, won the category of Welsh song, and they will perform this on Friday to conclude their presentation.

Just a little taste of the exciting sessions we’ll experience in the TWICE room, W2-66, this year!

More RAP Newspaper Articles

Thanks to Google Alerts I can share with you some more newspaper articles on Read Around the Planet.

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

One use of videoconferencing that I don’t write about too often is meetings! This week in three days we have 6 meetings totaling 30 hours of VC time here at the ISD. We are located 2 hours away from Lansing, where most meetings happen. Who wants to drive 2 hours to Lansing, sit in a 2 hour meeting, and drive 2 hours home??

Our superintendent has been strongly encouraging staff to participate in meetings via videoconferencing to save time and money.

It takes some time for people to get used to meeting over videoconferencing, so encouragement certainly helps. But after they’ve had a few successful meetings, they are hooked! Our staff are also getting to the point where they can run the camera and mute button themselves, so I just get them started and they are ready to go.

We have so many this week that I’ve been scrambling to get rooms set up for all the meetings. I’m starting to think it would be nice to have an office dedicated to one person meetings. Another item for my wish list!

Newspaper Articles about RAP

Thank you to Ruth Blankenbaker, CILC, for sending me this article from Morinville, Alberta on a Read Around the Planet connection with one of my schools, Sylvester Elementary. It’s a cute write up and the teachers decided to be pen pals after the connection. A common response to Read Around the Planet.

Do you know of any published news articles about RAP connections in your area? Please comment and share!

The Eye of the Storm

I feel like I’m in the eye of a storm. Today, March 8, is the day between the Read Around the Planet and the RAP World Language Connections. And for once in this year, I have NO videoconferences scheduled. Silence in my office. I can’t believe it! So I’m catching up and part of that is cleaning up my clippings of things to blog about. So here are some odds and ends.

Muskingum Valley ESC
In February, one of our schools tried a program from Muskingum Valley ESC. I didn’t get to see it because I was running a MysteryQuest. However, here’s the evaluation comments from the teacher:

The presenter was excellent, she used lots of different mediums, and she was wonderful with our students (positive, calling them by name, etc.). We have an anti-bullying program in our weekly LifeSkills Classes so I would recommend this to schools without a program in place; perhaps for 3rd grade level (we had 4th). The presentation was long…75 minutes, but our kids enjoyed being taught by a long distance teacher.

They have several interesting programs for all the grade levels. Check them out!

VC Used in Congressional Hearings
In a quiet moment of catching up on reading a while ago, I found this article from Eutopia intriguing because of the picture! The caption reads:

Alvin Toffler appears on a television monitor as he testifies before a Congressional Economic Committee in June on Capitol Hill. This is the first time that interactive video and teleconferencing technology has been used during congressional hearings.

Nice to know Congress is using VC to get work done too!

Albany Institute of Art
This little snippet is pretty cool. The Albany Institute of Art put together a little promo video about their programs. Check it out!

Cool Stuff Paul is Doing
Are you reading Paul Hieronymous’ blog? Here are some project ideas I saved for future reference:

Thanks, Paul, for documenting all these good ideas!

Reading Around the Planet with Taiwan

This evening I took a rare trip out of my office to St. Joseph High School to watch them connect to Kuo Kwang High School in Taiwan, yet another Read Around the Planet connection. St. Joseph High School is one of my newly independent schools. This year they are coordinating, testing and connecting all of their own RAP connections. I’m so proud of them, but letting go is hard! 🙂

The connection began with laughter and waves between the classes. St. Joseph High School started by showing a music video of the snow and ice on the beach of Lake Michigan. Each student introduced themselves and told a little about their interests.

It’s highly entertaining to watch kids interact with each other. Lots of nervous laughter.

After introductions, the students asked each other questions.

  • How old are you?
  • Do you have a school band?
  • Do you have boyfriends?
  • Do you like to go shopping?
  • What languages do you learn in your school?
  • Do you have school uniforms?
  • How long is your school day?
  • What kind of classes do you take?

Even high school students need coaching in the types of questions to ask to get an interesting answer other than yes or no. With international connections, learning to frame questions without colloquialisms or local jargon is also important.

Next the Taiwan students shared their video explaining Taiwan. They took a camera out on the town and taped shots of their school, shrines and temples, waterways, shopping, and more. Each video clip featured a teddy bear dressed up taking the tour. The video clips also included text at the bottom to make it easier to understand the students. While videos don’t always come through clearly on videoconferencing, it is one of the best ways for the other school to see what it’s like to live in your area.

The students in Taiwan are part of a videoconferencing club. Isn’t that a cool idea?

After watching their video, the students here had more thoughtful questions. Here’s an example:

  • When we watched the movie, we noticed a lot of scenery is along the water. How do you value water?

The classes are going to write articles about their experience and then share them via email.

Unfortunately for you, this connection wasn’t on my bridge, so I couldn’t get any pictures. It was a real treat! Hope your RAP connections are going really well too!

RAP: Educators Make It Happen

Wow! I hope your Read Around the Planet connections are going as well as mine. Of course there are glitches along the way (bad cables, fog days, etc.), but overall the student exchanges are top notch quality learning experiences.

This morning I was moved almost to tears listening to kindergarten students in Dowagiac, MI sing to students in NY. “We will lift up this world, higher and higher; light up this world brighter and brighter, we will plant gardens, we lift up this world to peace!”

Last Friday I chuckled at some alliterations shared between one of our classes and another in Texas. The student teacher on our end walked the students in TX through the process of writing an alliteration. This alliteration helps you realize the effect of state testing on students:

Today Tierra tackled the TAKS test.

Seeing students smiling, singing and laughing is the reward of hours and hours of behind-the-scenes labor on the part of coordinators and techs. Emails, test calls, coordinating details, helping teachers prepare, and smoothing the way. Teachers have stepped in to do their presentation twice when another teacher was in need. Coordinators have stepped in to solve problems created by the computer match this year. So many people have gone the extra mile to make RAP successful. As Sue Porter, TWICE RAP Coordinator, said to me last week, “All these kids are going to have wonderful connections, and they’ll never know that the rest of us don’t have hair anymore!!”

For more RAP stories, check out these reports from Paul Hieronymous, Andrea Israeli, and Roxanne Glaser.

I’m amazed and delighted and thrilled to see the efforts of so many educators (4000+?) who have put in hours and hours to make sure kids aren’t disappointed. The flexibility, patience, and enthusiasm of everyone is wonderful to behold. Our kids are in good hands!

Thanks Roxanne for the Cat in the Hat picture.

Math: Batter Up

This morning Ottawa Elementary is connecting to the Baseball Hall of Fame for their Math: Batter Up program.

The program starts with a short video tour of the Baseball Hall of Fame. There’s lots of conversation right at the beginning to get the students thinking about baseball and how math is used in baseball. Next, the presenter gives the students several math problems to solve. Students are sitting at their desks calculating. With each problem, they hear stories about that player/scenario and are walked through step by step in how the answer is found. Students are working mostly with percentages and averages.

Next, the students play a game called Batter Up. Students choose the type of question they want to answer. “The mics are pretty sensitive so if I hear anyone helping the batter up, this will be an automatic out.” The questions come up with nice visuals and clear instructions so students can solve it.

This program is jam packed with math and works the students hard throughout the program. Doing the math within the context of baseball makes it more fun for everyone involved.

We love the Baseball Hall of Fame programs, and this one definitely was worth our time!