ASK: Roanoke, The Lost Colony

Another ASK pilot program today. 5th grade students at E. P. Clarke Elementary are talking to a Colonial Craftsman from Historically Speaking… as a culmination to reading the book Roanoke, The Lost Colony and studying colonial times.

  • What is the most difficult part of your job?
  • If you could do it all over again, would you stay in England or would you come to the New World?
  • How much money do you make in your job?
  • How many apprentices do you usually have?
  • Did you bring your family with you to the New World?

This program was a bit of a stretch from the book to the expert. But the presenter was excellent and it went well. We’ll see how the teachers evaluate the program and then we’ll decide if we do it this way next year.

ASK: Ice Bear and Little Fox

Today we’re trying out our first ASK program on the book Ice Bear and Little Fox. E. P. Clarke Elementary and Countryside Academy 2nd grade students have read the book and prepared good questions. We started with 20 min. or so of the Indianapolis Zoo’s Polar Bear program, and the moved into the ASK question and answer portion. Here’s a sample of some of the questions:

  • How often do polar bears have to eat?
  • How many orcas would there be in a group that was hunting for food?
  • Where else do polar bears live?
  • What do polar bears eat besides seals?
  • Why don’t polar bears drink water?
  • How do seals make breathing holes in the ice?

This is an easy ASK program to do if you’re looking to start this program in your area. Just sign up for the polar bear program and ask them to give more time for students’ questions. Have the teacher follow the ASK process to prepare the students.

Top Ten Reasons a VC Gets Cancelled

I’ve been working on this list for a while. What do you think are the top reasons a videoconference gets cancelled? Here’s my top ten list.

10. The teacher didn’t feel like doing the program. This one is pretty frustrating for a coordinator, but often if you investigate and encourage, you can talk them back into doing the program. Sometimes it just takes a bit of hand-holding and encouraging words.

9. A fire at the content provider’s side. Yes, it did happen. Feb. 28, 2006! Mt. Rushmore had a fire in the park!

8. The teacher was called up for jury duty. This seems to happen most during Read Across America. I wonder why that is? Probably because they sign up so far in advance! Rescheduling usually solves this one.

7. The teacher had a family emergency. Sometimes if the teacher is experienced with VC she can have the students do the program on their own with the sub.

6. The bus didn’t show up to get the kids. This one is really frustrating. But now that we’re moving to having equipment in the buildings, this is less of a problem.

5. Someone messed up on timezones. Been there. Done that. Just last week! And before that too. Oops! Timeanddate.com is your friend!

4. School scheduled events that weren’t on the calendar when the program was scheduled. What can you do about that? Sometimes it’s testing, PD days, whatever. Hopefully rescheduling works.

3. Equipment and/or network changes that disable the codec. Argh! Someone changed the network without telling us! Disabling ISDN. Changing the firewall settings. Moving a cable or two. Etc.

2. The teacher had a health emergency. This one you definitely want to be patient and flexible with if at all possible. Some events you can’t reschedule though. Then maybe another class from the school can do it?

1. Weather. Snow days. Ice days. How many Read Across America connections have rescheduled due to snow & ice days??!!! Too many to count.

But all these reasons are outweighed by thrilled, learning, engaged students for every connection that works, right?! Think of that the next time a connection doesn’t happen!

MACUL Magic

Another great MACUL conference is over. All of the TWICE sessions worked so we’re all very happy! Here are a few highlights.

The Voices of the Twin Cities Past presentation was phenomenal. We connected back to the two classes at E. P. Clarke Elementary, St. Joseph; and Sorter Elementary, Benton Harbor. The students presented to us about the project, and also answered questions from the presenters. One of the questions asked of the students was, “if you were to give advice to other 4th graders doing videoconferencing, what would you say?” Here’s a few of their tips:

  • “Speak loudly and clearly and enunciate.” Rachel, age 10. (Clarke)
  • “Introduce yourself.” Brittany, age 11. (Sorter)
  • “Be patient because sometimes it looks like they are frozen.” Carey, age 9. (Clarke)

This project is packed with great teaching: the Big6 process, primary sources & documents, group work, presentation skills, writing skills and more. Clearly the quality of the project is evidences by the confidence of the students in presenting, asking, and answering questions.

Content Providers
The TWICE sessions featured two content providers. The Alaska Sea Life Center won the prize for the highest attendance for the TWICE sessions. The room was packed and the activities of analyzing scat was very popular and discussed with enthusiasm at many restaurants Thursday evening. If you haven’t connected to them, you definitely should. High quality content!

Coming in a close second was the Cleveland Institute of Music. Top notch programming in many subject areas.

Wireman Meets ASK
A low attended but high quality program was with author Sue Stuaffacher connecting to students at Hull Middle School in Benton Harbor. A powerful example of the quality questions developed in the ASK process and an inspiring example of how the Wireman Comics are reaching at-risk kids. Sue clearly has a heart for at-risk kids and writes books accordingly. Wonderful experience!
It was great also to attend the TWICE annual meeting and hear the highlights of all the various activities. Now back home to rest and integrate new knowledge into daily practice!

Strange Screens

Spent the day today with TWICE colleagues Arnie Comer, Sue Porter, and Connie Solis sitting in a conference room at the MACUL conference in Grand Rapids waiting for the network details to be setup for our videoconferences tomorrow. AVI Systems graciously loaned TWICE a Polycom VSX 7000 and peripherals to do videoconference sessions all day tomorrow and Friday.

We had a funny experience. Due to a scheduling glitch we couldn’t set up in the room we will be in tomorrow, so we set up temporarily in another room to do test calls this afternon. No screen though. And the wall was pin striped. Very hard to read the diagnostic settings, etc. projected on a pin stripe wall! So, resourceful Mike from ICI set up a makeshift screen: the switch we were connecting through. Not a very big screen, but it did the trick. I wish we had been able to take a picture so I could share it here!

Everytime you take equipment to a hotel or conference center to do videoconferences it’s an adventure! Today was no exception!

Now that it works, we are looking forward to a great line up of sessions for the TWICE room at the MACUL conference!

Video Ad from Manhattan School of Music

Did you get this cool email? The Manhattan School of Music sent me a video email with examples of their distance learning emails. We haven’t connected to them yet, but after getting this email, I want to find a class to connect to them. Enjoy the video. It’s nice to see a blurb from the program ahead of time!

RAA: The Mitten

Kindergarten classes are so cute on videoconferences! This morning I enjoyed a wonderful Read Across America exchange between one of our local kindergarten classes and a class in New York.

Our local class presented the book, The Mitten by Jan Brett. They acted out the story while the teacher read it. I thought this was a great way to share reading with very young children. I had to get a snapshot. In the picture notice the colorful “mitten” in the middle of the floor. As the story progressed, more and more animals snuggled under the mitten to keep warm. It was so fun to see!

This teacher has done several videoconferences before and you can tell she understands the visual nature of the medium! What a wonderful visual! The partner class in New York state really enjoyed their presentation.

Notice also how wonderful it is to have videoconferencing come to the classroom. This district has a mobile Polycom VSX that is hooked up to power, ethernet, and the TV in the classroom. These are really powerful experiences right within the students’ learning environment!

28 RAAs down; 10 to go.

Welcoming Another VC Blogger!

I’m delighted to share with you that my good VC friend Arnie Comer, from Macomb ISD, has started blogging his videoconferencing experiences! I know we’ll learn much from him as he bridges TONS of videoconferences a year and has a teacher’s heart and perspective on the programs. Be sure to check out his Virtual Views. [Nice world picture on your blog, Arnie!]

Arnie is a past president and treasurer of TWICE and still serves faithfully on the TWICE board. In the photo, Arnie presents the TWICE president’s award to Jim Wenzloff.

Interviewing Jim Stovall

Did you know that Jim Stovall “reads” books at 800 words a minute through his audio player? He reads books from the National Library Service for the Blind.
Today we are interviewing blind author Jim Stovall. Our local class participating is from New Buffalo Middle School. In addition, due to Polycom‘s sponsorship, we have classes from Utica, MI; Rapid City, SD; Kenosha, WI; Rosenberg, TX; St. Louis, MO; Osakis, MN; Sturgis, SD; and Tulsa, OK.

In preparation for this videoconference, students read the book The Ultimate Gift, and followed the ASK process to prepare quality questions. Classes were also paired for a online writing exercise where students responded to at least two of the gifts and gave feedback to each others’ responses.

Here are some of the questions that the students asked:

  • If you had one day to see, what would you like to see?
  • What is your favorite gift?
  • Did you ever think you’d be in this position 20 years ago and how has it changed you?
  • What do you think was the best thing for you that came out of writing this book?
  • If you could give an ultimate gift to someone following the same 12 month process, who would you give it to?
  • Did any of the experiences in the book happen to you?
  • If you had to had another gift or chapter to the book, what would it be?
  • Before you wrote this, were you watching society and thinking that you would change things in society to make us more courteous to each other, etc.
  • Have you worked with any celebrities who also had physical disabilities? How was the experience for you?
  • Can you tell us a little about the movie?

Jim’s story is so inspiring for students! Taking the talents you have & blessing the world as you can with them. Not giving up and living in a single little room but getting out and meeting people. Using your resources to do good things for others. Good and bad days are defined by our reaction to them, not by circumstances. A great experience for everyone involved! Hope you can join us next year!

Watch ASK Jim Stovall March 6 10:00 EST

Polycom is sponsoring an ASK program with Jim Stovall on Monday, March 6 from 10:00-11:00 EST. This is similar to the program we did in December with Jim Stovall, on his book The Ultimate Gift. See my blog entry on the Dec. event.

VBrick is providing streaming for this event on Monday. Click this URL to view the stream. If you’re interested in the ASK process, definitely view this stream. Additional dates for this event are being scheduled for the 2006-2007 school year. Registration will be open with a few weeks and I’ll announce that here.