Day 1: 20 Days to Better VC Projects

This year for our 20-day challenge we are again writing for anyone who is supporting videoconferencing in their building or their district. 20 Days to Better Videoconference Projects will focus on how to increase your videoconference usage by scaling projects and managing your time. During this challenge we will share specific examples to get your 2010 off to a great start.

Schools that are using videoconferencing to enhance and support curriculum begin by connecting with content providers and participating in managed projects to introduce the technology to their teachers and students. Those are both highly structured and supported avenues to implementation. Two challenging aspects to them are content providers cost money and if someone else is running a project, it might not meet your timeline as you need it to. In addition, you may have more classes that want to participate in a project than the available spots.

A solution can be to scale a collaboration so that it can meet your teachers’ timeline and curriculum. How can you assist with this with all of the other responsibilities in a timely manner?

Our plan is to create posts around weekly themes and walk you through a step-by-step plan. To get the most out of this challenge, we invite you to share tips and management that you have found effective so that we can learn together. If you are unclear about anything that we share, be sure to ask questions.

  • Week 1: Getting Your Feet Wet with Read Around the Planet
  • Week 2: Managing Exploding Projects and Collaborations
  • Week 3: Designing and Scaling Your Own Projects
  • Week 4: Time Tips and Tune-Ups

We’re targeting school level coordinators as our primary audience, but we know district and regional level VC coordinators will benefit from this exercise too. We will be collaborating and cross-posting each day’s challenge on our respective blogs as we did last year.

Task

  • If you missed last year’s 20 Days Challenge, be sure to review it!
  • Make sure you have an account in Collaborations Around the Planet (CAPspace), and that you have filled everything in under My Settings. Review this blog challenge from last year if you need more information.
  • Subscribe to either of our blogs in your favorite reader (Roxanne or Janine ), or via email. You can also follow both of us on Twitter: Roxanne and Janine.

Your turn:

  • What do you think is the best benefit of collaborative videoconference projects with other schools?
  • What do you think is hardest about making collaborative videoconference projects happen?

We’re glad you are joining us for another 20 Day Challenge!
– Roxanne and Janine

If you are totally new to collaborative projects and/or would like step by step assistance making a collaborative project happen, from start to finish, sign up for Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections, a six week online course beginning January 25.

Balance Your Screen Time with Green Time

I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds and the crystal waters of the mountains… – John Muir

Over the Christmas and New Year’s Break, I read an interesting book, Last Child in the Woods, which advocates for more unstructured free play time in nature for children. Think dreaming, imagining, playing, building, collecting… all in the “woods” or backyard corners that are natural.

Did you know:

  • that “studies suggest that exposure to nature may reduce the symptoms of ADHD” (p. 35)?
  • that “the quality of our exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level” (p. 43)?
  • that “patients with a view of trees” out their window “went home sooner” (p. 46)?
  • that “the obesity epidemic coincides with the greatest increase in organized children’s sports in history?” (p. 48) and that children need more unorganized play for their physical health?
  • “joggers who exercise in a natural green setting with trees, foliage, and landscape views feel more restored and less anxious, angry, and depressed than people who burn the same amount of calories in gyms?” (p. 49)?
  • “children with more nature near their homes” “rated themselves higher than their corresponding peers on a global measure of self-worth“? (p. 51)
  • children who live in “places that allow for outside access have twice as many friends” as those who have restricted access due to traffic. (p. 51)
  • Nature, freedom, natural space, is a gift that has inspired American creativity, recognized by others, such as the Japanese (p. 97).
  • in an interesting study, participants who walked in a local nature preserve did better on a standard proofreading task than those who walked in an urban area or sat quietly reading magazines and listening to music (p. 105).

So, YOU, technology lover, just like me. I challenge you to consider:

  • how you are balancing your own screen time with green time (time in nature; seeing real green things; at least weekly if not daily…)
  • how you are making more green time for your own children
  • how you are balancing your technology time and advocacy at school with advocacy for children to be outdoors: real science, real collecting of specimens and data, real unstructured natural play areas for recess, etc.

I challenge you to make this your goal in 2010!

Holiday Videoconferences

Well, I for one am glad for a two week vacation coming up. We had 70 videoconferences this week. The last two weeks have been full of holiday videoconferences. I thought I would share with you just a few links for your inspiration and planning for next year.

Holiday VCs We Did

  • Several classes participated with ESC Region 12’s Holiday Extravaganza. In the picture you can see one of the holiday math story problems that students presented for the other classes to solve. Holiday math problems are a great way to celebrate the season and practice math facts. I hope to have even more classes do this next year.
  • One of my teachers created a Holiday Christmas Classics collaboration to share classic stories and books with each other.
  • We were scheduled for TWICE ASK Winter’s First Snowflake, but due to a snow day it’s rescheduled for January.
  • We had 58 local classes videoconference with our Mrs. Claus, which was written up in the local newspaper.
  • A class participated in the holiday storytelling with Vanderbilt Virtual School.
  • We had several Gingerbread Boy VCs with the Center for Puppetry Arts. Love those programs!

Other Great Possibilities

There are some other great holiday programs as well that others shared via Twitter in the last few weeks. 

How did YOU celebrate the season with videoconferences this year? Feel free to share & comment (even if if it’s after the holiday!). See you in the new year!

Going Global

Are you following the K12 Online Conference? If not, at least take a moment to review Kim Cofino’s keynote presentation and the resources for “going global” that she has posted on her wiki. Great stuff, including many videoconferencing resources!

After you get your feet wet with that, browse through all the other great presentations posted this week and the ones that are coming next week!

Resources for My K12 Online Conference Presentation

Instructional Strategies That Work with Videoconferencing

Videoconferencing can bring the world to your classroom. It allows educators to bridge the divide by bringing experiences to rural students; by engaging conversations and interactions between urban and rural students and by connecting students globally. Whether using desktop videoconferencing or room based videoconferencing, educators can bridge the divide between “dabbling” in videoconferencing to fully integrating with solid classroom instructional strategies.

Links are shared in the order referred to in the presentation video.

Curriculum Videoconferencing

Top VC-Using Teachers Study

Resources

Projects Mentioned

Final Slide Links: More to Explore

Be sure to enjoy the rest of the K12 Online Conference 2010!

Experimenting with Desktop VC Part 2

Last Wednesday Craig Mollerstuen from GCI Alaska hosted another experimentation session for desktop videoconferencing options. We keep talking about ways these tools can be used to bring VC to the classroom and to bring outside experts to the classroom.

I’m a little slow writing this up, but the need continues. I had a small private school call me on Friday with a request to get VC. They had a donation for $500. For now we are seeing if Polycom PVX will run on the older computers that the school has.

So on Wednesday, we had a group of people connected on the Vidyo side:

And another set of people connected on the H323 side:

Just like hooking two bridges together, it’s not possible to have all the sides in all the squares.

Notice the great quality of the picture on both sides of the VC (from the Region 12 perspective).

The Vidyo sites are connected through a Vidyo H323 router which was connected to a Polycom MGC which connected the H323 sites.

Audio & Video Gear
One of the things we talked about was different types of mics and video cameras that work well for making desktop VC work in the classroom:

  • Clearone Chat 50: Some liked it, some didn’t. The audio was a little low.
  • Phoenix Duet: This had more recommendations from the people attending; the Phoenix Quattro also was recommended but is in the $500 range.
  • The Logitech 9000 also had high recommendations, but isn’t easily mounted for classroom use. It’s designed for the laptop of course.

Some issues with Vidyo
Issues with Vidyo that came up during the discussion included:

  • You can’t change your audio settings during the call – you have to disconnect and reconnect after changing the audio source/settings.
  • Another issue is the regular updates that are required – something that can be problematic for schools that can’t upgrade constantly because of computers locked down. This raised another question for me – do all the sites in a Vidyo call have to be on the same version? That could potentially be an issue doing Vidyo across installations of it like we do with H323 between schools.
  • Sharing content (h239) doesn’t cross Vidyo to H323. For me, this doesn’t matter as H239 drives me crazy anyway. I prefer AverMedia QuickPlay to connect the computer to H323 unit; and I don’t expect to have h239 on my desktop/classroom VC rigged setup.

Potential Applications
Some ideas we discussed of how to use this included:

  • Bringing in remote sites without VC
  • Bringing in guest speakers, authors, lawyers, any single person who doesn’t have easy access to full VC

Issues with Rigging Desktop VC for Classroom Use
We also talked about some of the challenges of trying this.

  • The web camera doesn’t have pan, tilt, zoom. On the other hand, if we’re competing against Skype and/or trying to bring H323 VC content to schools that are using Skype, they don’t really need pan, tilt, zoom.
  • USB cables would be good to extend the length of the mic and webcam so that there is more flexibility to classroom use.
  • An appliance is simple and easy for the teacher to use; it is much more complex to get all this working. It potentially could take more tech support and tinkering to make this work for cheaper. Is that totally true? One of my district techs called last week for help – the SVideo cable for the main camera was in the wrong place. Even the appliance still needs VC support. Both would need support, I think.
  • Mic quality is definitely an issue. Nothing’s going to work as nice as my favorite Polycom VSX 7000 mic or Viewstation mic. The person speaking has to be right in front of the mic to work.
  • Integrated sound on an interactive whiteboard could really cause problems – echo – cancellation is an issue too. Vidyo is supposed to have echo cancellation soon.
  • Another issue is having a powerful enough computer in the classroom. Schools tend have older computers.

InPerson

We talked a wee bit about Creative’s InPerson.

  • It’s H323.
  • It has a fixed camera.
  • Costs about $800 ish.
  • People on a browser can connect to it.

Some Concluding Thoughts
Some thoughts from the group….

  • It’s possible to do this, but could be challenging to make it work. Could take a lot of tinkering.
  • If I missed anything that you found important from the meeting, please add comments below!

By the way, this was a pretty cool little meeting. When does it happen that someone sets up a videoconference to continue a discussion that started on a blog? Thanks Craig for making this possible!

Remembering Pearl Harbor

It’s December 7, and we’re remembering Pearl Harbor by having three sessions interviewing panels of our local World War II veterans. Here are some of the questions the students asked:

  • What was your inspiration or motivation during the war?
  • Which front do you think was the most difficult?
  • Do you think it made a difference in your experience if you were drafted or volunteered?
  • Do you think the U.S. did anything to provoke the Pearl Harbor attack?
  • What did you miss besides family? (Coke & milk)
  • What do you think was your greatest accomplishment during the war?
  • How many pounds of equipment did you carry and what all was part of your gear?
  • How did Hitler’s decision to invade Poland affect your life?
  • Have you ever been back to Europe and what were your impressions when you went back?
  • How did the war affect you & your family economically?
  • Did 9/11 affect you the same way Pearl Harbor did?

We had three panels participate today:

9:30 session

Arden Pridgeon, Army; Frank Smith, Army; Don Sprung, Army; Frank Cupp, Air Corp.

10:45 sessions

Ray Sreboth, Army; Jimmy Butt, Army; Rich Ziebart, Air Corp.; Bob Ziebart, Army

12:30 – 1:30 pm

Rich Ziebart, Air Corp.; Bob Ziebart, Army; Val Ripsco, Women’s Army Corp

What a great set of panels and students asking questions! Another excellent day of learning!

TWICE ASK: Alexander Jefferson

Today we have four classes participating in the TWICE ASK program with Tuskegee Airman Alexander Jefferson on his book Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free. Wayne RESA hosted, bridged, and facilitated this videoconference for TWICE.

Some of the questions students have asked are:

  • What was the food like in prison?
  • What went through your mind as you ejected from your plane?
  • How was your mental and physical health affected by being in the war and being a prisoner?
  • What were some of the major battles that you participated in?
  • What did you do to help young people, other than teaching, after you got out the war?
  • Were you happy that you wrote about your experience as a Tuskegee Airman?
  • What was it like to experience segregation?
  • What was it like seeing war from above rather than on the ground?
  • If you had a chance to fly again would you? “Oh heck, yeah, in a minute!”
  • How did you feel when you had done so much for America and then you had to come back and fight for your rights?

Our World War II veterans are always adamant to tell students that the Holocaust did happen and don’t let anyone ever tell you that it didn’t happen?

This week we also had four days of ASK programs with author Janie Panagopoulos. There is still room in upcoming spring semester TWICE ASK programs.

Eco Conversations: Carbon Emissions

This morning we have another EcoConversations connection with Dowagiac Middle School and Westcliff High School for Girls in the UK.

The first presentation was from a group of students in the UK who shared how McDonalds (eating burgers) is making a negative impact on the rainforest and the environment: no recycling, litter, impact on health, and where the rainforest is cut down for raising cattle, etc…

Next our class presented about our community and what the students do for fun. They shared about the agriculture grown in our area. Then our class shared our the invasive species in our area.

Next another group in the UK shared about recycling and impact on environment.

Then, as Mr. Tsang said, “the business over”, the students asked each other questions. Here are some of them:

  • How many McDonalds do you have?
  • What kind of music do you listen to?
  • Two of the students in the UK sang to our students! That was a hit!
  • What kinds of food do you eat? What is your favorite food?
  • What’s your favorite subject?
  • What are you getting Christmas?
  • Are you on Facebook?
  • What grade are you in?
  • What’s your favorite sweets?
  • What time is it there? (This question never gets old in a videoconference!)
  • How many students are in your school? (1000 UK / 600 MI)
  • Do you guys think we have funny accents?

The students had a great time chatting and we are talking about setting up some more collaborations between our schools.

Experimenting with Desktop VC

Last Wednesday afternoon, just before the early close for Thanksgiving, I VCed with Craig in Alaska, and Janet & Rachel in New Zealand to experiment with desktop VC.

Rachel beat me to it, with a great write up of our little experiment. I totally agree with her, that the big issue is accessibility with VC. How can we make this accessible to more students & classes?! Take a moment to read Rachel’s review!