ASK: The Wall

Today we had 11 classes from Michigan, New York and Texas interview a panel of our Vietnam Veterans as part of the ASK program. Students had read the books The Wall and Patrol, and prepared questions ahead of time.

We’ve done this program before, so I didn’t write down as many questions as I have on past ASK program posts. Plus I got so interested in the answers that I forgot to hook up another school with the Buffalo Zoo! Oops!

Our veterans answered 134 questions in the whole day, and in the session after lunch we hit a record for questions answered by a panel of veterans – 39 questions!! Two of the questions that stood out for me today were

  • Would you rather have fought in Vietnam or Iraq?
  • Were you the first person in your family to go to war and how did you feel about it?

While the topic is often very serious, we had some funny moments too. Today’s funniest moment was when a student from Killeen, TX, ask the veterans if they had ever “interacted with domestic animals.” One of our veterans had a very funny story on how one of his buddies, incidentally from Killeen, had an encounter with a water buffalo. Everyone was laughing. It was a neat moment.

I really like it when the students prepare special expressions of thanks for our veterans. Note this poster from last year. Today we had a couple classes give a standing ovation at the end. And Lee Elementary from El Paso TX had all the students wave flags as they said thank at the end. The veterans really liked that and appreciated it!

In addition, a few of the classes really decorated the area where the students were asking questions. Our veterans enjoyed this expression of patriotism too.

Thank you to all the classes who prepared such excellent questions & took time to learn about the Vietnam War.

Stun Server

While installing the latest version of XMeeting on my Mac a couple weeks ago, I started learning about stun servers.

First, a reminder that XMeeting is the open source H.323 desktop videoconferencing software for the Mac.

The new version allows you to select a stun server to get your H.323 software to work through a firewall.

I was very intrigued by this and here’s what I’ve found out so far. Mind you, I’m not a techie – so this is just my understanding so far. Please comment and correct me if I’m wrong!!

STUN stands for “simple traversal of UDP over NATs.” A NAT is network address translation, which is where you get those “outside/public” IPs and the internal ones that usually start with 10.something or 172.something. UDP is generally the streaming traffic of the videoconferencing – the audio and the video. Have you ever connected to a site and either you’re getting just a black screen or they’re getting just a black screen. Classic firewall symptoms!

You can read more about STUN on this VOIP (voice over IP) site. The basic gist tho’ is this:

  • It’s was new in 2005, and according to the comments on the VOIP site, it’s commonly supported by VOIP devices.
  • It doesn’t work through all types of firewalls. It works through all of them except those that use symmetric NAT (see the wikipedia article).

I tried it out in three situations. Behind our firewall at work (Novell Border Manager), worked like a charm! In one of my districts (I’m pretty sure behind a CISCO firewall), no luck. Behind my brother’s cable modem/wireless router combination at home, no luck – but it was a weird old router and he’s upgrading it.

I’m really curious if the vendors like Polycom and Tandberg will include this in their new versions of endpoint software, or if they have a good reason not to support it.

If H.323 VC could be as easy as installing software on your computer, adding some classroom quality audio tools, and working through a firewall as quick as stun server did at my work, I think H.323 VC could become more mainstream…..

What do you think? Have you experimented with any of this?

Have You Thanked Your Favorite Content Provider Lately?

A few weeks ago, a teacher shared with me the student learning from a videoconference in January. She still remembers and the students keep talking about the videoconference they had with The Cleveland Museum of Art. So I forwarded it on to Dale Hilton.

Do you know how much the content providers appreciate hearing from us? You remember that they aren’t making money on us, right?! Even for the content providers that are breaking even, they still aren’t able to use the funds to pay the staff who run it.

So, that bring me to today’s question. Have you thanked your favorite content provider(s) lately? Have you let them know the difference they are making for your students? They can use that information to keep their program going, to let their boards & decision makers know the value of the programming. So, thank them!!

zwani.com myspace graphic comments
Graphics for Thank You Comments

Survey Status Update

Thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to either take my research survey or forward/promote it with your local videoconference coordinators/site managers. The survey has been open for two weeks now. I’m hoping for at least 400 responses to achieve statistical significance. At the moment I have 229, so we’re a little over half way there.

For this week’s status report, I thought I’d share how the respondents are answering question 13 – what is the name of the educational service agency that gives you support. It’s interesting that many states have responses that don’t identify *which* service agency. I think it’s interesting to see the wide variety of organizations that support VC too. The results seem to confirm my sense that NY, MI, and TX are the big states that videoconference out of state often. Maybe other states use VC a lot in other ways, but my sense from Read Around the Planet participation is that these three states are the biggest users of VC in a broad curriculum VC way.

Canada

  • 1 ABEL
  • 4 EPSB (Thanks Nurit!!)
  • 1 Alberta Ed
  • 1 VCRLN

UK

  • 1 JVCS

AZ

  • 2 Pinal ITV Consortium

CA

  • 1 Marin County Office of Education
  • 1 Shasta County Office of Education

IN

  • 1 ACELINK
  • 1 CIESC

KS

  • 2 South Central Kansas Education Service Center

MI

  • 21 Berrien County ISD
  • 1 Genesee ISD
  • 2 ISD, 1 REMC
  • 3 Macomb ISD
  • 2 Ottawa Area ISD
  • 2 REMC 2
  • 1 REMC 7

MN

  • 2 TIES

MO

  • 1 CSD

NJ

  • 1 Garden State Distance Learning Consortium
  • 1 Rutgers University

NY

  • 7 BOCES but we don’t know which one
  • 1 EEZ NYIT
  • 2 Genesee Valley BOCES
  • 1 GST BOCES
  • 1 Jefferson-Lewis BOCES
  • 1 NYCDOE
  • 1 OU BOCES

OH

  • 1 ETECH
  • 1 SOITA; eTech; MDECA
  • 1 SEOVEC

PA

  • 1 IU
  • 1 IU 1
  • 2 IU 13
  • 1 IU 21
  • 1 Chester County IU
  • 1 Montgomery County IU

TX

  • 1 Dallas ISD
  • 3 ESC, we don’t know which one
  • 6 Region 1 ESC
  • 4 Region 4 ESC
  • 3 Region 5 ESC
  • 1 Region 6 ESC
  • 1 Region 7 ESC
  • 2 Region 8 ESC
  • 5 Region 10 ESC
  • 4 Region 11 ESC
  • 4 Region 12 ESC
  • 3 Region 13 ESC
  • 1 Region 18 ESC

WA

  • 1 ESD 112
  • 1 ESD 113
  • 1 ESD 189

WI

  • 2 CESA 11
  • 3 ERVING

And some odd ones that I’m not sure where they fit:

  • 1 BOE
  • 1 CREC

Thank you again! My target audience is school level videoconference coordinators who support one videoconference unit. So please take the survey if you haven’t already, or share the information with your school level coordinators.

Videoconference Sessions at NECC

I’ve been searching the NECC 2008 schedule to see what’s going on in the videoconferencing arena, and here’s what I found after some creative searches on the NECC program site. Did I miss any sessions that you know of?

Fast Track Your Videoconference Implementation with Collaborative Staff Development
Saturday, 6/28/2008, 8:30am–11:30am
by VC Blogger Roxanne Glaser

Videoconferencing for K-12 Classrooms: A Program Development Workshop
Saturday, 6/28/2008, 8:30am–3:30pm
SIG IVC’s Official Workshop

Designing Quality Interactive Classroom Projects for Videoconferencing
Sunday, 6/29/2008, 8:30am–3:30pm
Best of the Best NECC Workshop 2007 by yours truly

SIGIVC Forum: Connecting Your Students to the World
Sunday, 6/29/2008, 10:00am–1:00pm
The official SIG IVC event at NECC

Collaborative Project Work in Ireland
Poster Global Gallery: Sunday, 6/29/2008, 7:00pm–9:00pm

The International Teddy Bear Writing Collaboration Project
Poster Global Gallery: Sunday, 6/29/2008, 7:00pm–9:00pm
(This is the hyper-mirror group. If you haven’t seen it, you have got to!!!)

Free Online Tools for Timely, Meaningful, and Memorable Projects
Monday, 6/30/2008, 8:30am–9:30am
(This is the 2Learn.ca crew. Can’t miss this session either!)

The Great Race: A Virtual Race Across America
Monday, 6/30/2008, 8:30am–9:00am

On The Road with the Rock Hall
Monday, 6/30/2008, 9:30am–10:00am
Featuring the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Teachers Without Borders: Collaborating Across State Lines
Monday, 6/30/2008, 10:30am–11:00am

Kansas Goes Mandarin: IVC Makes It Possible
Monday, 6/30/2008, 11:30am–12:00pm

Two MCUs and a Sense of Humor: Supporting K–12 Videoconferencing
Monday, 6/30/2008, 12:30pm–1:00pm
by the amazing musician and MCU guy Shane Howard, facilitated by VC Blogger Roxanne Glaser

Collaborations Around the Planet: Social Networking for Educational Videoconferencing
Monday, 6/30/2008, 12:30pm–1:30pm
(by yours truly)

Cooking “Bytes”: Interactive Cooking Presentations for All Subjects
Monday, 6/30/2008, 1:30pm–2:00pm
Featuring NYIT Culinary Arts Center

Student as Content Provider: Programs by Students for Students
Monday, 6/30/2008, 2:30pm–3:00pm
Featuring CILC’s KC3 Program

The Art and Science of Natural Dyes: Making Your Mark
Monday, 6/30/2008, 3:30pm–4:00pm
Featuring The Cleveland Museum of Art

Synchronous at a Distance: Bridging the Gap
Tuesday, 7/1/2008, 1:00pm–3:00pm

Videoconferencing in the Curriculum: ASAP Implementation
Tuesday, 7/1/2008, 2:00pm–3:00pm
by VC Blogger Roxanne Glaser, Ken Conn, and yours truly

SIGIVC Annual Meeting
Tuesday, 7/1/2008, 3:30pm–4:30pm
Don’t miss this!!

Shaping Global Citizens: The Millennium Development Goals in Action
Wednesday, 7/2/2008, 8:30am–9:30am
By the famous Jody Kennedy

Transform Learning through High-Level Video Conference Partnerships
Wednesday, 7/2/2008, 8:30am–9:30am
By the amazing Linda McDonald

A Tale of Three Cities: Poetry, Performance, Teamwork, Technology, Learning
Wednesday, 7/2/2008, 12:00pm–1:00pm

Are you going to NECC? Hope to see you there!

Pausing for Posters

I’ve been seeing a lot of posters in the last several MysteryQuest USA session. They are still really hard to do well. In today’s afternoon session, Washington Elem, California did an excellent job. I think it was their first time too.

The students had very clear posters with big writing and just the short bit of information that had to be written down. The students came up, held up the poster, waited a bit. Then they read the information from the back of the poster. Reading from the back helps the student hold the poster still and straight to the camera. After reading the clues, they paused again! It was wonderful that they didn’t run off so quickly! Made note taking much easier. Great job, Washington Elementary!

My Research Survey Status

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to either take my research survey or forward/promote it with your local videoconference coordinators/site managers. After the first week of the survey being open, I thought I’d share the status of responses. I’m hoping for at least 400 responses to achieve statistical significance. We’re about 40% of the way there. Here’s who has responded so far:

Countries

  • 11 from Canada; 1 Ontario, 10 Alberta
  • 1 from Greece
  • 1 from Honduras
  • 1 from Pakistan
  • 2 from the United Kingdom
  • 140 from the United States

States

  • 1 Alaska
  • 1 Alabama
  • 2 Arizona
  • 3 California
  • 1 Connecticut
  • 1 Florida
  • 1 Georgia
  • 10 Indiana
  • 2 Kansas
  • 1 Kentucky
  • 1 Maryland
  • 23 Michigan
  • 4 Minnesota
  • 1 Missouri
  • 2 North Carolina
  • 7 New Jersey
  • 14 New York
  • 4 Ohio
  • 1 Oklahoma
  • 5 Pennsylvania
  • 2 South Carolina
  • 2 Tennessee
  • 38 Texas!!!
  • 5 Virginia
  • 3 Washington
  • 5 Wisconsin

Thank you again! My target audience is school level videoconference coordinators who support one videoconference unit. So please take the survey if you haven’t already, or share the information with your school level coordinators.

Several of you have asked me about results. I definitely plan to share as soon as I can. However it won’t be really quick because this is for my dissertation and I have to defend it before I can share results. But you’ll hear about it for sure!!

Snippets from MysteryQuest USA

I’ve been running a bunch of MysteryQuest USA sessions in the last couple weeks, and more coming. Here are a few snippets from what’s been happening so far.

Intros
After the introductions in the session today, the first class was unmuted for a bit before they started their presentation. I heard a student ask, “Are we going to see her?” I laughed and said, “I know you don’t want to see me; I’ll be muting my video.” That’s why I like to control the bridge at the same time I’m running a MysteryQuest. I can “hide” when I want to. And now I know the kids want me to hide too! 🙂 It was pretty funny. I could see the student who said it squirm in her seat as I chuckled about it.

Presentations


This screen shot is from a presentation that was organized around the game, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Very fun!


News shows are always fun, especially when complemented by visuals to review the clues. This class, from Western Hills, El Paso, did a news show. In this shot, the announcer is in a helicopter!!! How cool is that?!


This is an example from New York State of a background that gives clues at the same time as providing a set for a new show.

Clarifying Questions
In the clarifying questions section, we’ve had some interesting questions. I think my favorite so far this year was, “Is your city colorful?” The class wasn’t sure, so they said “no.” But we all still wonder what city they had in mind!

Sharing Guesses

This clue is on the document camera and is a great example of sharing a guess. This class did well because they had time to make and print these before we shared guesses!

As usual, MysteryQuest USA is a lot of fun and full of engaging learning experiences!

Survey of Coordinators in K12 Schools Implementing Curriculum Videoconferencing

Dear blog readers! I know you have probably been able to learn and use resources from my posts and projects. I hope now that you can do me a return favor and promote my research survey in your service area.

Note for regional coordinators: There is one question that asks if they are supported by an educational service agency and if so, what is the name of it. I can use this to pull just your region’s data if you are interested in it. If so, when you send it out, please encourage your coordinators to name your educational service agency in the survey (question 13). Send me an email to let you know you’re interested and then give me over the summer months to pull it together for you. Also, if you want to look through the survey, write “delete” in all the open ended fields so I’ll know to delete your entry since it won’t be valid. Thanks!!

Here’s the official announcement:

Dear Videoconferencing Colleague,

Please take a moment to complete this anonymous web based survey for videoconference coordinators at the district or school level and are responsible for one videoconference unit. If you coordinate videoconferencing at a regional level, please forward this notice to your local videoconference coordinators.

The focus of this study is the videoconference coordinator and their influence on the utilization of videoconferencing in the school. The purpose of this research is to investigate the coordinator’s support of videoconferencing, and the technical and administrative issues that may affect the school’s use of videoconferencing. This study will analyze how these factors may predict the utilization videoconferencing in the school and will assist in providing knowledge on the most effective ways to support the implementation of videoconferencing in schools.

The survey is anonymous and your answers are confidential. Completion of the survey serves as a form of implied consent. Participation is voluntary, and refusal to participate involves no penalty. You may discontinue participation at any time without penalty.

Please click here to take the survey:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227RTY7Y6M7

I appreciate your time and support of this research. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you,

Janine Lim
Instructional Technology Consultant
Read Around the Planet Coordinator 2006-2008
Berrien County ISD
(269) 471-7725×101
jlim@remc11.k12.mi.us
Graduate Student in the Leadership Program in the School of Education at Andrews University

If you have questions you wish to address to an impartial third party, you may contact the advisor for this research, Erich Baumgartner, baumgart@andrews.edu or (269) 471-2523.