New Time Change Date!!!

Today I’m starting to tackle the nightmare of the fact that the time zone changes next week instead of in April as it has done before. I knew this was coming, but hadn’t really thought about it yet due to too many RAP connections!

First, I downloaded the latest version of Qlock, my trusty desktop reference.

Then I checked my other favorite site, TimeandDate.com to see if they had updated their tools. They have of course!

Finally, I checked my schedule of VCs to see which ones are affected (those with Arizona and the UK so far) and sent notes to my schools who are rescheduling RAP connections to remind them to pay attention to the times.

Whew! Time zones are something we can’t stop paying attention to!

Snapshots of Read Around the Planet

First day of Read Around the Planet. Snapshots of student learning and excitement make all the preparation work worth it!

Backgrounds and signs with the name of the school.

Students dressed up in orange and black, McKinley Elementary’s school colors.

Children smiling, laughing, waving, and cheering when meeting each other.

Throwing snowballs with a class in Texas. Loved that idea from last year!

Listening to fun songs.

“Roll, roll, roll the snow, roll it round and round. Make a great big snow ball, and lay it on the ground.” To the tune of Row Row Row Your Boat. Scroll down on this page for the full words.

And to the tune of London Bridges Falling Down: “The sun gives us light and heat, light and heat, light and heat, the sun gives us light and heat, we learned from NASA.” A song about a previous videoconference to NASA.

Cat in the Hat helping to make the connections work. On the phone fixing one connection, while waving at the kids waiting for their partner class. Playing copycat with actions.

A school in upstate New York sharing pictures of huge piles of snow.

Seeing a live class pet lizard.

Today we had 17 Read Around the Planet connections, plus a trip to COSI Toledo. I helped connect six of them. Three of them are being rescheduled due to sick teachers. The rest my new coordinators connected on their own. I’m so proud of them! Day 1 done. 61 more connections to go.

VCs at the MACUL Conference

To my Michigan friends! Are you attending the MACUL conference this year? March 14-16, 2007.

If so, don’t miss the TWICE sessions in room W2-66.

This year we have a special treat! Merit is providing 1M bandwidth (with QoS) and Polycom is providing one of the new HD units – the HDX 9002. So we’ll all get a chance to experience HD and see what it’s like. I’ve heard you get a better experience even if you are connecting to a regular unit. So that should be interesting to learn about.

Be sure to stop by the TWICE room and say hi to your VC friends.

Read Around the Planet 2007 Report

I know most of you reading this blog are also involved in Read Around the Planet. Wow, this project has grown this year!! I think we’re all feeling the growing pains. I thought you might be interested in some of the stats on the project.

People who made it happen
Read Around the Planet would not be successful without support from many organizations.

  • TWICE, Michigan’s K12 videoconferencing organization, started this project in 2002 and continues to invest volunteer time and funding to make the project sustainable.
  • This is the first year of corporate sponsorship from Polycom. This funding allowed TWICE to contract with Sue Porter to be our RAP coordinator, otherwise known as the TWICE RAP Star. 🙂 The project has grown so large that it isn’t sustainable without sponsorship, so we really appreciate Polycom‘s support.
  • The Verification Partners laid the foundation for this project in the fall with all the test calls and assistance getting buildings entered into the system and connected correctly to their coordinators. Many of them have been involved through February in helping with test calls and fixing connections.
  • Building, district, and regional level coordinators and techs have worked so hard coordinating, dealing with tech problems, encouraging teachers, following up on communication problems, and generally smoothing the way for successful connections.
  • And of course, the teachers who plan creative interesting presentations for their partner classes and who weather all the little glitches and quirks that can happen in classroom-to-classroom connections.

A big thank you to EVERYONE who makes this project a success!

So here are the stats.

People
2537 people in the registration system.
Buildings
1424 buildings in the registration system
IP & ISDN
398 buildings could do ISDN
1395 buildings could do IP
24 Match Requests for ISDN only

Read Around the Planet
Match Requests
1274 English

4 Participating Countries: English
Canada 117
Taiwan 1
United Kingdom 22
United States 1121

US States: English (24 states)
Sessions by state
AL 1
AZ 44
CA 13
CT 15
IN 2
IL 1
KS 18
MI 373
MN 11
MO 3
NC 4
ND 29
NH 1
NJ 5
NV 4
NY 171
OH 65
OK 2
OR 6
PA 55
TX 262
VA 32
WA 1
WI 3

RAP World Language Day
78 Match Requests

5 Participating Countries: WLD
Canada 23
Nicaragua 3
Taiwan 2
United Kingdom 6
United States 42

US States: WLD (8 states)
IN 1
MI 24
NY 5
OH 2
OK 1
PA 3
TX 5
WA 1

Total Match Requests: 1350
In 2006 there were 842 class registrations; 201 in building registrations; 1043 total.
This year, 2007, there were 1350 class registrations for both events. Wow!

Impacting Approximately 40,000 kids
Estimating 30 students per class (some are smaller and some double up), RAP impacted about 40,000 kids.

Wow! It’s all about the kids and the great learning experiences that we can bring to them via videoconferencing. Good luck with your connections starting tomorrow!

Last MysteryQuest World of 2007

Today is the last session of MysteryQuest World Geography of 2007. No more MysteryQuests until MysteryQuest USA in April (still room to sign up if you want!)

Today’s MysteryQuest treat is having Grafton Elementary, Ontario, participate in our session on Europe. It did my heart good to see the huge Canadian flag in their introduction. Yes, I’m Canadian. It’s always a treat to have a non U.S. school in our MysteryQuest sessions, so we took time at the end to ask each other questions.

The Grafton Elementary class did a Lost simulation of the students on a class trip to Europe. The clues were woven into the skit story with what they had found about the country where they were lost. This is the first skit I’ve heard where the students really verbally and visually emphasized the clues within the skit. They had nice pauses after the important clues to write down as well. Great job Grafton!

Mata Intermediate, TX, also had a visual that worked well. Along with their news show was an easel with the category for that set of clues.

This session had the most technical difficulties of the MysteryQuests we ran this month, but the students weathered it well.

So that’s the end of this year’s world geography MysteryQuests. We have another set of U.S. geography sessions coming up in April. The slots aren’t full yet, so we’d love to have you participate!

The Ultimate Gift Movie Interview

Today we have a special videoconference on the book and movie The Ultimate Gift, organized and sponsored by Polycom. Students from California, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas interviewed the author, Jim Stovall; the screen writer Cheryl McKay; and the lead actor, Drew Fuller. Macomb ISD provided the bridging and facilitation. Thank you for Jim Wenzloff, Macomb ISD, and Elaine Shuck, Polycom for the behind the scenes work that made this event possible.

The program started with introductions from the panel, and then students took turns asking questions. Here are some of them.

  • For Drew: Did you find it difficult to play the part of Jason in the movie?
  • For Jim: What impact has this movie had on your life?
  • For Jim: What was it like for you to be in the movie?
  • For Cheryl: Did you change any parts of the story and why?
  • For Cheryl: Did you find that you emphasized some gifts more than others?
  • For Jim: Did you get to have any say over which actors would be in the movie?
  • For Drew: Which was the most difficult scene to act?
  • For Cheryl: Was it hard to transition from the book to the movie?
  • For Jim: Are any of the scenes in the book things that happened to you in your life?
  • For Cheryl: What made you want to add characters that weren’t in the book?
  • For Drew: What inspired you to be an actor at such a young age?
  • For Jim: Since you are blind, do you find it hard to not be able to see the movie?
  • For Jim & Cheryl: Which parts do you wish you could have changed in the movie and which parts do you think changed for the best?
  • For Drew: What was it like playing Jason and how do you relate to the character?
  • For Jim: Did they use any actual quotes from the book in the movie?
  • For Drew: If you were actually in Jason’s position, what would you do with the inheritance?
  • For Drew: Do you think you’ve been impacted by the 12 gifts and changed in any way?

Students learned about the process of writing a book, writing a script based on the book, and then making it into a movie. They learned about how the book impacted the lives of each panelist. One interesting note is that in the credits at the end of the movie, there are little clips that show all 12 of the gifts from the book and how they were woven into the movie.

This event was live streamed and is now archived on the Polycom RSS 2000 we have on loan for these events. You can access it at streaming.bcisd.org; login (polycom) and password (special).

MysteryQuest: Revealing the Answer

Here’s a neat visual from today’s MysteryQuest Western Hemisphere. Troy Intermediate, from Avon Lake, OH, used this creative background to reveal their correct answer at the end.

Here’s how their background looked during their presentation:

And here’s how the background looked after they revealed their answer.

Another great example of sharing information visually in a MysteryQuest session!

Beyond Virtual Field Trips

Did you miss Marci Powell and Jan Zanetis’s webinar on February 21? I did because I was running a MysteryQuest. Well the archive has been posted online and now you can still watch it. Here’s the full blurb about the webinar.

Beyond Virtual Field Trips: Extending Video Communication in the Classroom
This presentation will be available to audience members until May 23, 2007 at 02:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
Blended learning works – are we surprised? Of course not – combining multiple modes of delivery, addressing varying learning styles and adapting by skill, attitude and competency are just good teaching strategies. Successful educators are embracing the power of video communications in the classroom to facilitate blended and more effective learning. Join us for this webinar and learn how video technologies are helping teachers make today’s Net Generation Learners into lifelong learners. Marci Powell, Executive Vice President/ President-Elect at the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) and past president of Texas Distance Learning Association (TxDLA), and TANDBERG market development manager for Education, Jan Zanetis, a career educator, will discuss how you can bring a higher level of collaboration and content access to your students, colleagues and administrators.

Take some time to watch it if you haven’t already!

CBS Features VC Field Trips

Just received this tip from Bob Dixon via several listservs. CBS did a story on virtual field trips that is nice and concise and features several content providers we’re familiar with. Great student quotes too.

The clip also features Jody Kennedy, who has written several articles about videoconferencing. These are the ones I know of.

Content providers featured include Mote Marine, Reef HQ in Australia, and the Center for Puppetry Arts. The clip is only three minutes long and perfect for workshops and training sessions. Check it out!

Interviewing Congressman Fred Upton

This morning Coloma Jr. High, Marcellus Middle School, New Buffalo High School, River Valley High School, Ross Beatty High School, and St. Joseph High School participated in an interview with Congressman Fred Upton. Students had prepared questions ahead of time.

The discussion covered a myriad of topics including stem cell research, global warming, illegal immigration which affects our congressional district with farms depending on migrant workers, what its like to be in a minority in congress, social security, gas prices and the likelihood of a draft coming back.

Two questions really caught my attention:

  • As a high school student I’ve noticed more students who don’t value their education. What would you say to them?
  • We spend a lot of time taking very long tests. Some kids are not good test takers, but they know the material. What can we do about this problem?

We used the Polycom RSS to record this session and you can watch the streaming if you wish. This will allow the schools that weren’t able to participate the ability to still benefit from the interview.

Thank you to all the coordinators and especially Congressman Fred Upton and his staff for making this another successful videoconference!