HEC-TV Live! Connecting Classrooms with the World

SIG IVC Showcase: Helen Headrick, Higher Education Channel-Television with Tim Gore

HEC-TV’s programs are not available on demand – because they take videoconferencing onsite live to a location. The programs are also live on television and streamed through HEC-TV. Their programs are also archived on their website, and also in iTunes University. You can be view only in the session, or you can be interactive. Each session has only 4 interactive sites. These are television shows, and hosted by a producer and includes “b-roll” video clips to include in the program.

While their funding is from St. Louis and they do their programs free; they welcome participation from other areas and states.

Sweet – they have a Tricaster for their programs -and they gave a great overview of how it works.

Your students are interacting with a LIVE TELEVISION program – in terms of videoconference and production quality of the session.

We watched a clips where they went onsite to Shakespeare in the Park; an explosion in a quarry actually onsite (The Science Behind Explosions) – and an artist in a contemporary art museum. Students are interacting with the experts onsite.

Tim Gore and his team did a by request program for us a couple years ago where we needed a judicial program – and they went onsite and we talked to the judge and court reporter and saw a bit of an actual trial. You can email live@hectv.org for requests too. A few years ago Tim was involved in the Lewis and Clark re-enactment and VCed live from the trip. Amazing programs!

They totally allow bridges to dial in and connect to a whole bunch of schools behind it.

They are doing a program on Sept 17 for Constitution Day and they are doing it on the Supreme Court selection process. Sweet! Gotta sign up for that! Sign up for their e-list here. Registrations open up about a month before the program. They are doing a The Giver program next year! They are starting a new series of programs on The Civil War. They also have a series of Holocaust survivors.

Their programs are an hour long; and they don’t mind – you just need to let Tim, the host know that’s what you are doing.

A nice ending to the session was a comment to Tim from the audience: “you retired after 29 years of teaching and landed the most awesome job in the world. Thank you for staying passionate about education, as this is exactly what we need in our schools.” Awesome!!

Interactive Videoconferencing with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

SIG IVC Showcase: John Goehrke, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

John is giving an overview of the programs that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame offers. The room is again jam packed with a great group of educators.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does point to point connections because they believe in the interactive engagement. They use rock and roll to teach about social studies, language arts, and other curriculum areas. Their programs are correlated to national standards. All the lessons are an hour long and include lessons and units to prepare the students and extend the lesson after the videoconference.

Their most popular program is Ball of Confusion: Rock and Roll and Social Change in the 60s and 70s – which is great for social studies classes – especially those that study the decades.

Clips from Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are awesome – everyone in the room really enjoying them. (There’s another thing you really couldn’t do with Skype!)

This program is so popular and so requested, that they have added another program on the decade of the 80s.

One of the best programs that I know of out there for computer/technology classes is the Hip-Hop Technology: From Turntables to Computers – where students learn how the technology has changed through time. Very cool – we’ve had several middle school computer classes do this…. John showed the turntable used in the program, and described how the students produce a song that is sent to the class as an MP3 afterwards.

One of the activities they use is the Rock and Roll Jukebox – and participants get to choose the song to be played. The audience really got into that too!

Another great showcase – if you haven’t visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, be sure to schedule with them for next year!!

Elephant in the Room: Students Learning Science through Exhibit Design

IVC Showcase: Cathy Ryan-Smith, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo with Jason Schafer

In this session, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo gave an overview of their videoconference programs, specifically a session on exhibit design. They are redesigning their elephant exhibit, so they brought the students at Springmill Intermediate in Mansfield, OH to participate in the design.

With this program, the Springmill Intermediate principal approached the Cleveland Zoo to integrate their changes with the math, science and technology curriculum for their students. The project they created included students designing their own exhibit.

The program included:

  • a proposal and approval from everyone
  • a Professor Wylde Animal Presentation (a traveling animal show)
  • 5 videoconference sessions: Exhibit Design, Animal Care, Horticulture, Education, Guest  Relations
  • and a field trip to the zoo

I really like the combination of on site visit at school, on site visit at the zoo, and the videoconference sessions; along with the inquiry learning and student designed projects/exhibits.

Students asked some great questions during the programs:

  • What tools are used to trim an animal’s feet?
  • How do zoo keepers handle elephants when they get scared?

Students had to take notes during the sessions so they could use the information later as they designed their exhibits.

How awesome – the Cleveland Zoo got a picture of the ISTE Blue Bear during one of their videoconferences.

Then we got to talk to one of the teachers involved in the program – and she told about her students’ reaction and engagement in the project and showed examples of the student work.

Cleveland Zoo programs are FREE!!

Note also that their registration opens on August 2, and their programs fill up very quickly, so make plans to get in!

Problem-Based Instruction and 21st-Century Classrooms

SIG IVC Showcase: Jill Dingman, Pinal County ITv Consortium with Bev Mattocks and Nick Trakas

Description: Videoconference with junior high students and their teachers to learn how problem-based instruction and videoconferencing have helped create 21st-century classrooms in rural Arizona.

From the handout for the session:

This five-year project was originally funded by Enhancing Education Through Technology, The Pinal County ITv Partnership. Currently in its third year, the project uses videoconferencing for teacher professional development and student collaboration and instruction. Teams of seventh and eighth grade students and their teachers work to solve a complex community problem. Subjects including English, Social Studies, Science, Math, the Arts, Physical Education and Technology are used in real-world context. Students are required to present their findings and solutions to the community each year.

The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) has provided teacher professional development through its Vistas project. Interdisciplinary teacher teams trained intensively for 30 hours at the beginning of the project and meet monthly with their trainer, Bev Mattocks, throughout the school year.

Check out the pictures of the bee project here.

Virtual Visit Professional Development

SIG IVC Showcase: Anthony Negron, New York Hall of Science with Chris Lawrence

This showcase was jam packed as well; with an actual experience of a content provider showcase videoconference with the New York Hall of Science. They showcased their program: Journey Inside the Eye with an actual cow’s eye dissection.

Photo by Paul Hieronymus.

NY Hall of Science has great programs and everyone enjoyed getting to experience the programs just as students do.

Blended Learning for the 21st-Century Classroom

SIG IVC Showcase: Elaine Shuck, Polycom, Inc.

Elaine started with a cute video clip about a student waking up in the morning to get engaged.

Polycom Special Events

She described the Polycom Special Event with blind author Jim Stovall, as well as other events: Dr. Ben Carson, Evelyn Coleman, Laurie Keller, Sarah Miller, Elizabeth Raum, Sue Stauffacher, Susan Thoms, Margaret Willey, Amy Young, Janie Panagopoulos; and other events for Black History Month, Women’s History Month.

Registration opens on September 1st inside CAPspace: Collaborations Around the Planet, where also registration happens for Read Around the Planet and teachers can post their own collaborations as well.

The programs are popular and fill up in a few hours, so get ready to register!

They also described a partnership with Global Nomads Group and showed how the lesson plans etc. are posted on the Polycom Special Events wiki.

The Polycom Special Events are free for Polycom customers, and there are only 5 slots for each session. They ask that only one school per district register for each event to make room for everyone.

The ASK Process

Sue Porter explained the ASK process: Ask, Specialist, Knowledge, where the students read a book, journal, write good questions, and then interview an author or a specialist. The video shown during the session is linked here at the top of the page.

Sessions in the Polycom Booth

Also FYI, there are a whole bunch of 30 min sessions throughout the conference at the Polycom booth – on CAPspace, with Global Nomads, with Andy Campbell at LearnNCO, and CMA Desktop, the new desktop videoconferencing tool; among other things.

Attendance: This session was JAM PACKED – it was great to see the large number of people interested in videoconferencing!

Video Conferencing to Promote Global Learning

Global Poster Session: Diane Midness, iEARN-USA with Tonya Muro Phillips, Global Nomads Group.

Last night in the poster sessions, Diane and Tonya explained how GNG and iEARN partnered to extend the learning in the GNG videoconferences. Global Nomads does amazing programs by taking videoconferencing equipment onsite to remote locations throughout the world.

Featured programs included Haiti and Uganda, and you can see more clips of their programs online here.

Tonya and Diane talk to interested poster session participants.

It was great to see how GNG and iEARN have partnered. GNG is good at videoconferencing, and iEARN is good at the asynchronous online community. The iEARN sites provide follow-up and continued conversations between the schools that participated in the kick-off videoconferencing.  A great model!

A Shared Professional Development Session: Canada and United States

ISTE IVC Showcase: Monica Cougan, CILC with Janet Barnes and Lance Ford

In this section, they described, 22 sites across the U.S. and Canada to a district that has sites across the two countries.

In the PD, the teachers were learning how to be interactive in teaching full courses over videoconferencing. Doug’s emphasis was to take the same things you do well in a face to face class and to figure out how to do that the same way with students who are learning in a full length videoconferencing class. They split the groups into two sessions – Tonia Carriger teaching one group; and Doug teaching another group. Then the groups split apart into small groups to have discussions. The presenters would pop in and out of the different rooms. This was done with Lance Ford’s Tandberg bridge. The teacher participants wrote lessons together in the small groups and presented them at the end of the week.

Cool VC Strategy Tip

  • Doug Meyer, CILC, described how he had the participants “huddle up” i.e. zoom really close in on the faces. It brought the group together and helped people feel closer to each other. After the huddle, they introduced themselves to learn more.

Building Community

Monica Cougan described how the format of the videoconference and the multiple sessions allowed a community to be created.

Lance Ford described how teachers have great strategies and lessons, and all that needs to be done is to wrap the technology around that. Teachers don’t have to change how they are teaching to teach over videoconference.

What is an MCU/Bridge?

Lance talked a bit about how each site can change their layout on the screen (Tandberg Codian MCU). Lance says: “an MCU is just a schoolhouse with a bunch of rooms” – and each site in the participants dialed in to the other rooms to do small groups or other activities.

CILC PD Marketplace

Monica explained the CILC Professional Development Marketplace and featured some of the various sessions that are listed there.

Learning Beyond the Horizon: Global Learning through Videoconferencing

Sunday ISTE Global Poster Session: Presenter: Carol Scott, Mustang Public Schools with Lynn Tilley
Videoconference ideas, examples, and success that empower students to become integrated 21st-century learners with global travel and collaborative projects.

Carol Scott had a sweet poster session last night with lots of interested people attending. Her online resources and links should be online here soon (but isn’t there yet).

Note all the cool VCs represented by Carol’s poster:

The poster session was well attended. See the crowd gathered around:

A few pics of Carol enthusiastically sharing with the attendees:

This was a great poster session, and I was so happy to see videoconferencing represented so well!

VC Sessions at ISTE

I’m at ISTE now and here’s a list of interesting sessions related to videoconferencing (posted earlier). Some are SIG IVC sponsored / promoted and others are additional videoconferencing sessions.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Monday, June 28, 2010

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Are there any that I missed? Hope to see you at a VC session at ISTE! (or stay tuned for blog reports here!)