MysteryQuest with Nicaragua

Today we have a special treat for MysteryQuest Western Hemisphere. We have a class from Nicaragua participating!

We are also using the Polycom RSS in a unique way. My local school’s system went on the fritz this week. We don’t know why it quit working and the problem seems to be network related. MysteryQuests are impossible to reschedule, so we connected them in via a speakerphone for interaction, and then put the streaming up on a projector with the sound turned down so they could get the visuals. Maybe the most unique way a recording device has been used so far, but it did allow my school to participate successfully in MysteryQuest today.

Since we recorded it, this is one MysteryQuest that you could watch if you want. (Schools participating in MysteryQuest have collected parent permission forms before hand.) The program will play in Windows Media Player.

At the end we had 20 minutes of Q&A with the American Nicaraguan School. It was their first videoconference and one of the questions they asked the other schools was, “do you like videoconferencing with us?” Of course everyone shouted out YES!! Other questions were:

  • What do you do for fun?
  • What is your home like?
  • How far do you live from school?
  • Some questions were asked in Spanish by students in the Michigan schools. That was really neat for both classes.
  • What is your school day like?
  • If we were to visit Nicaragua where should we go?

It was a great connection and everyone enjoyed the research and interaction with the other classes at the end.

By the way, registration is open for MysteryQuest USA in April. We’d love to have you participate.

MysteryQuest World with Alaska

Today’s MysteryQuest: Western Hemisphere has two classes from Michigan, one from Missouri, and one from Alaska. Unfortunately we had trouble with the Alaska connection at the beginning, so we brought their class in via speakerphone. Sometimes you go with whatever method you can use to get the students to participate.

Another unique thing about today’s connection was that we had a group from an all girls school in Michigan.

Most of the schools had PowerPoints today, so while the presentations weren’t really exciting, they were easy to take notes on and that makes it less stressful for the students participating, especially when we have quirky technology problems.

The real highlight of today’s MysteryQuest was the conversation we had at the end with the students in Alaska. We talked about when it gets dark during the winter, school times, snow days, the reindeer herds, what the students eat normally, and many other things. It is always great to connect to places far away and Alaska is on our favorites list for sure!

Operation Montserrat

The excitement in the room is palpable. Students are organized into groups and sitting on the edge of their seats. Today Chikaming Elementary, River Valley, is connecting to the Challenger Learning Center in West Virginia for their stellar program, Operation Montserrat.

While a bit on the expensive side, the CLC e-missions are the coolest, most interactive programs available out there. The e-missions were developed by the CLC in West Virginia, but the CLC in Kentucky also offers them, as well as the National Space Centre in the UK.

The program starts with students getting settled into their roles and learning about the island, the wind speeds, and the readings coming from the volcano. Things start getting hectic for the students as the hurricane starts coming in towards the island and the volcano starts erupting. Students carefully review maps to understand where the volcano flow was coming down.

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Well, that connection was going great until the connection to CLC started dropping. So I switched the connection so the school was calling them directly and could quickly redial instead of waiting for me to redial for them. Because at the same time, a project connection with Canada couldn’t connect on their own and had to be moved to my bridge to work. And another school that was supposed to be connecting to the Alaska SeaLife Center on their own couldn’t make it work and we tried a ton of things that never worked. Rachel Simon in Alaska is so patient! She said, “Technology is our friend, but sometimes we fight with our friends.” Whew!

But the E-Mission kept going and after touching base with the building coordinator, I learned that the program was wonderful and the teacher and students loved it. Yeah!

International MysteryQuest

Well, here I am at work again on a snow day making a videoconference happen! All my schools are closed, including our admin building, and one of my local classes in particular is probably disappointed. I know the teacher is. Today was our day for MysteryQuest International, a special version of MysteryQuest where we have only one classroom per country.

We had 5 countries lined up, but due to weather and sickness, we ended up with only 3. Our Canadian school had a snow day too, but the kids came to school anyway and I was very glad we had at least one North American school participate. Those rugged Canadians!! 🙂

Our classroom in India lost power in the whole city for the first few minutes of the connection. They must have had UPS backup, because I typed the clues in Yahoo IM to the coordinator so they could get the first presentation.


Students in India gather in a conference room with maps, globes, and notetaking worksheets.


Students in Pakistan carefully listening to a presentation.


Students in Ontario, Canada present a skit with their clues. The class is lined up as a group of people on an airplane making an emergency landing in a mystery country. Notice the stewardess in the middle.

With international MysteryQuest, I also let the classes ask for as many clues repeated as possible. The different accents and fast speaking make it hard for the students to understand each other’s clues.

Also usually I prefer to keep the connection up during the research sections, but because two of the schools had to connect in via ISDN, they disconnected during the research sections.

Then at the end of the session, we always take time for question and answers between the classes. It’s always wonderful to hear the students interact with each other. Here’s a sampling of their conversation:

  • What kind of animals do you have in your country? (From Canada to India)
  • The Canadian students showed the snow out the window. It was -39C in Canada and 30C in India.
  • What time is it there? (8 p.m. in India, 7:30 p.m. in Pakistan, and 9;30 a.m. in Canada).
  • Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day? yes! They wished each other Happy Valentine’s Day.
  • How do you survive the cold? (From India to Canada)
  • Do you have snowball fights?
  • Do you wear a school uniform? Both classes in India and Pakistan had uniforms.
  • What do you do in your spare time?

What a fun connection and a warm way to start my snow day!

Pick Up the Phone!

Phone Is anyone else besides me running into problems with projects due to email not getting through? Here’s some examples.

1. I’ve been working on a project with a local high school British Literature teacher and a partner school in Wales since October. It’s been derailed because both schools seem to be catching each other’s emails in their spam filters. What’s the chance of that?

Solution? After the Wales teacher gets back to school after being sick, we’re setting up a VC so they can talk and plan this for once and for all!

2. February 14 we’re running a MysteryQuest International. A MQ International is a special MQ with only one U.S. school and everyone else from different locations in the world. I have emailed one of the coordinators the numbers to call for the videoconference from four different email addresses (don’t ask why I have so many) and still I don’t know if they’ve received the information yet.

Solution? Four emails from four different addresses to two different addresses at the school. Not sure if it worked yet.

3. Read Around the Planet. How can so many school spam filters catch those crucial match emails?

Solution? Login to the TWICE registration system and look for the big match reports to find all your partner details.

4. Read Around the Planet. “My partner hasn’t replied to my email.” Are you hearing this from your local coordinators or teachers yet? I am.

Solution? Call them! Maybe the school is on winter break. Maybe their spam filter caught your email. Maybe they are home sick with the flu. Maybe their school had a snow day. Call them! Pick up the phone! Find out why they haven’t answered yet! Patiently and graciously of course.

Next time you wonder why someone hasn’t emailed you back, pick up the phone! Here I must admit that I’m 120 emails behind. Back to work to catch up!

Something About Nothing

This has nothing to do with anything, but I finally found a template on WordPress (Greenery) that allows me to put up my own header with my favorite picture of a limb. So if you’ve been reading my blog in a reader, check out the new look. Yes, I love trees and green!

Trust the Expertise Around You

Today I learned a really important leadership lesson. Trust the expertise around you.

I’m going to try to be careful not to give too many details about experiences here, but here’s a general summary. On a particular project, I was too scared of what I couldn’t control to let another person suggest a different way. So I spent the last 8 months suffering through this project not going very well. This time when the suggestion came up again, I realized the wisdom of it. I wished that way back when, I had listened and taken the time to find out which way was really the better choice. That I had trusted the expertise around me.

To trust the expertise around you, you have to realize it’s there. It takes time to know people. To stop and think about who might be able to help. To not be in such a hurry to follow a great idea that there’s no room for others’ wisdom.

It’s a lesson I want to remember. So I’m writing it down here. Stay tuned for more!

Welcome to Out on a Leadership Lim

This blog, my second, is dedicated to my learning about service and leadership at Andrews University. I’m starting the Leadership PhD this summer. In the meantime, I’m starting this blog now because I learned an important lesson today and I want to record it. Maybe it will come in handy for future assignments!

directPacket Update

Last summer I muttered on a NECC blog about dialing problems and firewall traversal systems. Yes, I think, mutter is the right verb. I find the current state of IP dialing to be a maze at best, a frustration for my schools at worst.But, there is good news! I said in January, with hope, that the vendors are working on these dialing problems. And just a few weeks later I get an email from directPacket Research, following up from my visit to their exhibit at NECC. Today we talked on the phone. They have a new feature called the Auto Attendant. You can read more about their whole firewall traversal system online, but here’s the snippets of what was most interesting to me.

  • Two ways a call can come in.  The first is using DTMF tones. I’m still learning how this works, and I hear that the new endpoints and MCUs can do DTMF tones. More experimentation needed there for me to be comfortable with how that works. However it’s the second option that really perked up my ears. If a call coming in can’t use DTMF tones, you can enter the incoming IP address on the directPacket firewall traversal unit, and point it to the right e.164 alias of the endpoint behind it, and voila, the call goes to the right place. Now how cool is that! Kind of like how on the Polycom MGC you can enter the IP address and get into the right conference.
  • All the H323 traffic is condensed into just one port.
  • They say it’s non manufacturer specific (yeah!!) and it works with legacy units.

Of course I really want to see this in action and if I get some time after RAP to test one out I’ll definitely report it here. I was really glad to hear about this because it means the vendors are hearing our feedback and working on solutions so that we can call each other.