Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Today 5 classes from around Michigan, including a class from Upton Middle School, St. Joseph, are interviewing Gary D. Schmidt, author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. Students have many carefully thought out questions that they prepared using the ASK process. Here is a sampling of their questions.

  • Why is it important for the sherriff to keep showing his pistol?
  • How is it that you have so much insight into being a ministers son?
  • What do you think of the cover of the book?
  • Did the sherriff mean to push the Reverend over the cliff?
  • In the book, there are lots of beautiful descriptions. Is it hard to write that way? How did you learn to write like that?
  • Why was baseball so essential to the story?
  • As a class we had a prediction that Mr. Stonecroft would burn Mrs. Cobb’s house down. Did you think of that when you were writing that part of the book?
  • I’m a pastor’s kid, so I know how Turner felt. How did you know these feelings? Are you a pastor’s kid yourself?
  • The book has a pretty dark and gloomy ending; why did you end it like that?

It’s so fun to see an author new to the ASK program be delighted with the students questions and their depth of thought on the book. The students thoroughly enjoyed the stories Gary shared that give the background of the stories in the book. Today’s ASK program was definitely a celebration of words & writing!

What do you see at the zoo?

This afternoon I had a conversation with a local media specialist regarding a teacher’s expectations for a videoconference with the zoo. I realizd that many teachers have unrealistic expectations for what they will see when they connect to the zoo. Their ideas are based on their own visits of the zoo – walking around and seeing all the animals. That is not usually what happens in a videoconference with the zoo. I think that the zoos fit into three types of categories.

I’ll list the zoos I’ve connected to. But please remember that content providers are often upgrading their equipment and updating programming, so this may not necessarily be true in a year or two.

Zoos that present from the classroom
Many of the zoos present their videoconference programs from a classroom (or sometimes a tiny room/closet) in the zoo. They will bring in live animals and show archived video footage of the animals in their zoo. These lessons are often highly focused on teaching a “concept” such as adaptations or conservation. (Which is much better instruction than just focusing on one animal – see Classroom Instruction That Works)

  • Bronx Zoo
  • Cincinnati Zoo was like this when they were offering programming.

Zoo that present from an exhibit
Then there are the zoos that have mobile equipment and can present from exhibits within the zoo. For these programs, you may be learning about a specific “concept” in the context of an exhibit (Columbus Zoo), or you might be learning about a specific animal at that exhibit (Indianapolis Zoo).

Zoos that have remote cameras
Some zoos present from a classroom but can jump to several wireless cameras located throughout the zoo. This setup is really the best of both worlds, but obviously expensive for the zoo to put in place.

There are other zoos that offer programming, but I haven’t seen their programs.

Awesome Adaptations

Today & tomorrow three middle school classes from Bridgman Middle School are connecting to the Bronx Zoo for their Awesome Adaptations program. The science classes have been studying adaptations and this program fits nicely into the curriculum. In the session, students are learning about various types of adaptations and related scientific names such as plantigrade, digitigrade, etc.
During the program, Erin, the presenter, asks the students many questions and pushes them to clarify, explain their answer, and give more details in their answer. She definitely makes them think!

The program includes demonstration of three live animals, as well as full screen text of scientific names, video clips, and still pictures. These visuals enhance students’ understanding of adaptations.

The students were able to ask many questions during the program as well. This was a great program and I’m sure we’ll be connecting to the Bronx Zoo again!

Magnificent Manatees

Today Village Adventist Elementary School is doing my all time favorite videoconference: Magnificent Manatees from the Columbus Zoo. I love this program because of all the hands-on activities students do during the videoconference.

The class measures a paper cutout of the manatee (mailed ahead of time to the class) to help them understand the full size of the manatee. You can see it on the wall in the back of the classroom.

The students also all get on a bathroom scale until they have enough students add up to the weight of a manatee at the zoo. You can see the students lined up at the scale in the picture. This is a group of 1st and 2nd graders, so they aren’t adding all the numbers. However I’ve seen this program with older students where the presenter asks all the students to add the weights of all the students.

Next the partners work with a set of pictures showing the types of food that the manatee eats. The students have to pick out the foods they eat from the pictures.

Several great activities, lots of information for the students, and wonderful live footage of the manatees swimming in their tank. These features make this program an excellent choice. The Columbus Zoo is VERY popular. This school year (2005-2006) they filled the whole year schedule by mid September. They open registration for the 2006-2007 school year on June 1. So plan ahead!

Visiting Snowy Alaska

Note: This event happened April 4. I waited to post it, hoping I’d get some pictures from the class. Here it is without the pictures.

Snow. Snow. Everywhere. White snow covered trees. This afternoon a group of students from Niles Adventist School are connected to Kiglauit Adventures participating in the Mushing Alaska program. We almost didn’t have the program because Alaska has had a big spring snowstorm and some of the mushers were snowed in.

The program started with a live dog run around the area. The dogs were so excited to run they were jumping straight up in the air. The students watched the run so intently, realizing they were watching the run live. The dogs were barking because it was so hard to pull. After one time around, Christina asked the students if they wanted to go again. The second time around the kids yelled “gee” to tell the dogs to turn right several times. (And the dogs actually heard them!) The students loved it!

Next we had a chance to ask a few questions. One of the mushers came in with one of the dogs to explain more. We learned about the fur, muscles, and the deep chest. Then the students asked many more questions. We saw pictures of puppies and the Iditarod, maps, and a live dog modeling the harness.

We ended with some interactive activities to help the students understand how the musher gets along with the dogs. It was great to get all the kids up and moving about.

It’s not too often any more that I get to watch kids new to videoconferencing participate in a videoconference. Today I realized afresh the importance of interaction. When the first student answered the first question correctly, he was ecstatic with joy! He said, “I feel so important!” Kids get a lot of affirmation from the interaction in these videoconferences! That makes it all worth it for me!

Culture Exchange with Pakistan

This morning a group of high school students from Decatur High School talked to high school students in Pakistan. After a bit of a rough start with technology, the classes started the discussion.

The discussion ranged from cultural questions like sports, favorite music, to more politically sensitive issues like what the students think of their presidents and the Iraq War. Some interesting notes from the conversation:

  1. When asked about the practice of covering women, one of their girls asked our students about nuns wearing the habit. This was just one example of the students in Pakistan communicating articulately and understanding the broader examples of an issue. I enjoyed hearing their responses to our students’ questions.
  2. They asked us some tough questions about obesity, drug use, and casinos in our country and area.
  3. One of their students asked us, “You aren’t wearing uniforms, but we are wearing uniforms. Do you think it makes any difference?”
  4. The classes also compared rural and urban living in their countries. The classes discovered that students in both countries enjoy surfing and chatting on the Internet, hanging out with friends at the mall, and playing computer games.
  5. The Kashmir discussion was very enlightening. The students in Pakistan explained that the real fight is over control of the water. We don’t hear that in our media and were surprised to understand the real issue. Hearing the story from someone living in the country is better than hearing it in the media.

It was an interesting conversation. Both sides had some misconceptions about each other that were cleared up in the conversation. I think a little more structure to the conversation would have been helpful. It is also crucial to get to know each other before diving into tough issues. Knowing a bit about the other participants, whether from a neighboring town, or another country, is essential for setting the tone of the conversation.

In Depth: Autopsy

On Monday, one of our new teachers from Bridgman High School participated COSI Columbus’ In Depth: Autopsy program. It was a health-science class. I didn’t blog it because I’ve blogged that session before. Plus it’s really hard for me to watch since it’s so graphic! But I just had to share with you (with permission) my teacher’s comments on the program:

It was such a wonderful experience.  They learned a ton in a very short period of time.  They did prepare and do the prework and autopsy plan.  Also, afterward, (today to be exact) they did solve for cause of death.  It was a heated debate, which was wonderful!  5 out of 8 students came to a correct conclusion. *Snipped a comment about the correct answer.*

Overall, it was a fabulous experience.  I highly recommend it and want to thank all of you who made this possible.

Still Reading Across America

It's the last week in March. The last week before our spring break. And we're still Reading Across America! This morning a middle school class at River Valley Middle School is reading with a class from Chesaning, Michigan. Thanks to Aaron Schippert for finding us a class to connect at the 7:45 class time! The classes are sharing jokes, poems, speeches, and choral readings. We had a bit of a glitch, losing the connection partway through. But we reconnected and kept going!

Then later this morning Brandywine Elementary connected to their partner class in Pennsylvania. This Read Across America session was rescheduled due to weather. We had a few technical issues – bandwidth on our end and audio & PowerPoint issues with Visual Concert on the other end, but the students and teachers handled it well. The class in PA shared a presentation about their reading of the book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Our class shared several stories with jokes in between.

The kids were fourth grade, and our teacher had a great idea. The students stood up half way through the session to stretch and asked the partner class to stretch too. This helped get some of the wiggles out! The classes also asked questions where they said, everyone who likes football, stand up. Students in both classes stood up. A great way to answer questions visually from both sides at the same time!

That's the end of Read Across America for my schools for 2006. Out of 35 sessions, only 2 didn't happen due to weather and the difficulties of rescheduling. Not too bad! Close to 1000 of my local kids participated this year! I think that's a record for our RAA participation!

Tips for International VC Calls

I've been working on test calls with Pakistan, Peru, and Costa Rica in the last couple days. Here are some resources that I've found helpful!

  1. International Country Calling Codes. This neat little site is great for figuring out dialing strings for ISDN calls. Enter your country and the country you're connecting to, and you get the info you need! Very cool.
  2. Timeanddate.com. I've also been working on my NECC sessions, getting some international partners to connect to during my sessions. I've found the Meeting Planner very helpful to figure out which of my international contacts are sleeping during a session and which ones might be available. You just pick the date and the cities and you get a nice spread of times color coded to whcih times will probably work best.

Another thing that is very helpful is to be willing to do test calls and connections at odd times. It's not very fair or gracious for us in the U.S. to expect international sites to accommodate us by coming in outside of school hours to connect. We are connecting to Pakistan for a videoconference on Thursday, and due to the 10 hour time difference, we have to connect early our time and it's still after school late afternoon for them. So when we needed to do a test call, we connected late last night so the test was during the school day their time. That way to make the connection work, both sides have compromised a bit on the time.

I heard this message loud and clear in the international sessions at the Keystone Conference last October. It really is important to work as hard as possible to make the connection as easy as possible for all sides involved. So when planning your international videoconferences, be considerate and thoughtful of your partner school!

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!