Tag Archives: Collaborations

Model Lesson with Linda McDonald

Wednesday morning at NECC. I’m at Linda McDonald‘s model lesson session. Before the session started, Linda gave the students a lecture on how to behave on a videoconference. It was great to hear her tell them to behave as if their mom or grandma were watching.

A quality videoconference partnership includes three things:

  • higher order thinking
  • all students included and engaged
  • design based on curriculum need

Higher order thinking – focus on application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Open ended questions stems. If you push kids to the higher level thinking, they will master the knowledge and comprehension level. Teacher as facilitator – don’t answer for the kids.

All students engaged – students in small groups, think time for small group discussion (just mute & talk in groups!!), “learnin’ ain’t quiet”. Keeping a fast pace. Addressing multiple modalities.

Curriculum need – math marvels came from weaknesses on the standardized tests. Timely – has to fit the time that they are doing the book or content. Aligned to how the teachers teach the skills, but still pushing them to the higher level thinking skills.

After the intro, we did several little examples of projects.

I Have, Who Has game. The group is in charge of the clues. The cards have an answer at the top and a question on the bottom. The answer and questions don’t match. The first student reads what they have, and then reads the question. I.e. I have Ulysses S. Grant. Who has the turning point in the Civil War? If you google “I have who has,” you can find examples of how this works. The cards are mixed up amongst the two sites. The answers bounced back and forth between the sites so it’s really easy and really interactive. This is great for a test review.

For Math Marvels
A challenging problem is given to both sites. Both sites mute and small groups try to solve the problems. Then a hint is shared. Then the groups share their problem solving strategies.

Collaborative Writing
The ABCs of writing. Have words that start with a letter, and then write it into a sentence. Here’s an example.

  • America
  • Against taxation without representation
  • Armed
  • Anti-monarchy

Americans armed themselves against taxation without representation and afterwards set up an anti-monarchy government.

Then both classes supply B words, and together write a sentence – one site writes the first phrase, and the other site writes the second phrase. Then, does it match what you know about the topic? Did it stretch your time?

Novel Projects
Kickoff session is before we start reading. The book for this model lesson is Number the Stars. While you’re watching the video clip, make a list of words that come to mind. They activate students schema, make lists of vocab words, etc. to prep for reading the book. After the video, the two sites create a group word wall and share all the words they came up with. Since this class is 8th grade, Linda pushed them to come up with more 8th grade words vs. just sad. So they came up with disheartening, overwhelming, depression.

In the example of the after session, students then work on a story map together. A shared file is created with the two classes.

More Info
See the NECC page to see the resources that go with this presentation.

Components of Linda’s challenge videoconferences: strong lead teacher, pushing the content and instruction to a higher level. Hardly any “talking” or “presenting”. Instead everyone is interacting on the content, with each other at their site, with the teacher, and the students at the other site. Each one is really focused on the content.

Amy Chayefsky's Read Around the Planet Story

At NECC 2008, Amy Chayefsky about a funny sound experience with Read Around the Planet 2008 and the teachers’ reaction.

If the YouTube video below is blocked for you, try this link to the same video on TeacherTube.

Kindergarten Story from Read Around the Planet

At NECC 2008, I interviewed Sue Porter, Read Around the Planet coordinator for 2008 and she shared this cute story about a kindergartener from this year’s RAP sessions.

If the YouTube video below is blocked for you, try this link to the same video on TeacherTube.

TX – Canada Read Around the Planet Story

Still interviewing people at NECC 2008. In this video, Angela Conrad from Humble ISD, TX tells about a Read Around the Planet connection with Alberta, Canada.

If the YouTube video below is blocked for you, try this link to the same video on TeacherTube.

The International Teddy Bear Writing Project

Sunday night during the global poster gallery at NECC, I thought I’d interview the presenters and post the interview online. Yes, I asked them for permission!

The presenters were Cathy Timpone, Park Ridge Public Schools with Agnes Zaorski.

The Teddy Bear project is described online, and this Moodle site is used to support the project.

If the YouTube video below doesn’t load, try it from TeacherTube.

Is it just my computer or my hotel Internet connection or did YouTube pull a lot of frames out of this video? This is my first try with this idea and I may need to tweak the process a bit.

Lit Review: The Use of Videoconferencing as a Medium for Collaboration of Experiences and Dialogue Among Graduate Students

Lit Review: This is a post in a series focusing on the research studies on videoconferencing.

Berson, M. J., Carano, K., Carlson, L. A., Mixon, N. K., Rodriguez, P., Sheffield, C. C., et al. (2006). The use of videoconferencing as a medium for collaboration of experiences and dialogue among graduate students: A case study from two southeastern universities. Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2006, 262-267.  Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/

My Codes: VCProjects

Main Point: The authors are part of a collaboration between the teacher education programs at two universities connecting via Internet2. The article describes the semester long team-teaching course, advantages and disadvantages of the team-teaching videoconference format, and discusses some of the content covered during the joint sessions. The class used blogging as an asynchronous method to connect the classes and allow for additional reflective thinking.

Theoretical Framework/References:
The article references Vygotsky to show the importance of “cultural exchange, social interaction, and peer collaboration” for the learning process.

Methods, Sample, Variables/Case:
This article is a conference paper so it doesn’t have a clear description of method. The study is called a case study (p. 2), but methods of data collection and analysis are not described.

Findings:
It seems mostly a discussion format was used for the videoconferences, and the two professors team-facilitated the discussions.

The participants learned from each other’s different perspectives. One class was comprised of mainly graduate students who were already teaching; while the other class had mainly graduate students who had not yet taught or were not teaching at the same time as taking the class. These different perspectives added to the quality of the discussion and learning from both sides.

The students were able to gain the advantage of having two professors without putting a strain on either university’s resources.

The double class size due to the videoconference afforded a wider perspective and more interesting discussions.

There were some challenges including some audio problems, one night one site had a blue screen the whole time (even universities have firewall problems!) A few times one university would “take over” the conversation and they had to adjust procedures to make sure the conversation was well rounded from both sides. Some mic issues included hearing side conversations and fidgeting noises, so muting the microphone was used to resolve that.

Author/Audience:
The authors are university education professors and they were presenting to an educational technology conference of K-20 educators.

Questions/Thoughts/Implications:

We can’t say that higher education isn’t trying to expose teacher education students to technology, that’s for sure. You may have your doubts about the university close to you, but there are definitely professors trying to expose pre-service teachers to current educational technologies. Yeah for them!!

I wonder if they experimented with any specific pedagogical techniques to make the instruction and discussion varied and interesting between the sites. I’m thinking of strategies by Carol Fleck and Kim Perry who presented at the Keystone Conference in 2004.

This is a great example of collaboration at the university level, and a model for team-teaching as a specific type of collaborative videoconferences.

VC Promotes Better Speaking Skills

Well, I’m done with MysteryQuest USA for the year, and the last ASK programs are finished as well. One thing that I’ve noticed is that videoconferencing really does promote/encourage/require/give practice for speaking skills.

When students share a clue in MysteryQuest, and then have to repeat them again and again because the other students couldn’t hear them, they learn to speak up and slow down! And they gain more confidence and poise because of their practice being on camera.

As Cifuentes and Murphy (2000) found in their study of a long term collaboration between Texan and Mexican students: “The students became more confident in their speaking, poise, and behavior on camera.”

I think also of Rusty, of Weather with Rusty fame. If the students ask their question too fast or they mumble, he makes them do it again! He mentors students so they catch some of his “on camera” professionalism.

What do you think? How did you see students learn and grow in their speaking skills this past year?

Learning about Australia from Students in Sydney

Classroom Exchange
Our Upton Middle School students just finished connecting to the Reef HQ. Now, they are talking to middle school students at Scots College in Sydney.

We had 3 girls from our school, because everyone else is at soccer practice or other activities. The school we connected to was an all boys school, so it was a fun exchange.

Our students started by telling a little about our town, St. Joseph and the schools in the district. Then they shared a presentation about their area, including their beaches. We learned all about rugby and cricket, and some of the best Aussie sites to see. Another presentation from the Australian students covered the flora and fauna in their area.

Here are some questions we asked each the Australian students. Our students had used CultureGrams to compare the countries and prepare questions.

  • What brands do you usually wear?
  • Australians live longer than Americans, so why do you think that is? Our students think it’s because of smoking in the U.S. Do people smoke a lot in Australia?
  • How many of you have cell phones?
  • What are some of the popular books around your school?
  • When you think of Americans, what do you think of? (loud, “out there”)
  • What do you think is most important for us to learn about Australia?
  • What TV shows do you watch and what bands do you listen to?
  • What do you have for pets?

Some of the funny word differences that we really laughed about were:

  • thongs in Australia, flip flops in the U.S. (lots of red faces on both sides with this one)
  • “heaps” in Australia, “lots” in the U.S.

Some of the questions they asked us were:

  • What are popular sports in Michigan?
  • What do you do in an average day?
  • Is basketball big in your area?
  • Do you travel around the U.S. a lot?
  • Do you have South Park on TV?
  • When you think of Australians, what do you think of? (surfers, kangaroos)
  • Have you ever heard of Steve Irwin?
  • Do you play rugby?

A funny line from Australia was “we’re the only country that eats our emblem.”

These two experiences were part of a unit on Australia and turned out to be a great experience. We learned some lessons about scheduling and hopefully will have more students on our end next time.

Around the World: Misconceptions Resolved

This afternoon Coloma Middle School, one of our RUS grant schools, is participating in a 3 hour Around the World session with countries in Central and South America. The sessions focus on “misconceptions resolved” as misconceptions are part of the 7th grade language arts curriculum for Coloma.

Costa Rica
Lincoln School, Costa Rica started with a presentation with an overview of their country and their school and daily life. Next they presented their game show to quiz our students on their culture. Many of the questions were taken from their presentation. Some of the questions were:

  • What is the capital of Costa Rica?
  • What is the most popular sport in Costa Rica?
  • What countries neighbor Costa Rica?

Next, our class presented about Coloma, Michigan, and misconceptions about America. They created humorous skits about the misconceptions. We started the game show, and then ran out of time. Clearly, though the students were having a great time!

Nicaragua
Soon the American Nicaraguan School connected and we checked audio and video. Their students weren’t quite ready, so we played the “small town America” game for a few more minutes.

Then Nicaragua shared their humorous skits about misconceptions about Nicaragua. They were video clips liked the ones from Coloma. Both sets of video clips were a little hard to understand due to soft voices and background noise. We certainly learned a few lessons with those skits!

Then we played a Jeopardy game about Nicaragua Physical Geography, History and Culture, and Human Geography. We rotated between American and Costa Rica to compete in the game. Questions included the largest lake, types of food, etc. We just finished the Nicaragua game show in time.

We took a 20 min break for our Michigan students to eat since it was 5:00 p.m. here.

Guatemala
Soon Guatemala connected in. We started with quick intros from the participating classes, and then they started their presentation. They showed many pictures. Then we played their jeopardy game with American and Nicaragua competing. Guatemala had trouble with their skit video clips, so we played the jeopardy game about rural America with Nicaragua and Guatemala competing. This was a really fun format and the students in each class were really involved.

Finally at the end, we were able to watch the skits from Guatemala with misconceptions about their country.

Lessons Learned
We learned again that it’s important to slow down and speak clearly! It’s so easy to get excited and talk so fast! Laughing while talking makes it even harder to understand. We also had trouble with all of the video clips for the skits. They were very difficult to hear. We’ll have to think more about what could make these work better! I think that video clips probably can’t work unless there is a mic on the presentation. In a live skit, you can have the students come closer to the mic and speak slower. However in a taped skit, it’s hard to make it easier to hear.

Due to a comedy of scheduling problems, we didn’t connect to a country every hour for 12 hours as we originally planned. However we had a great connection with these three schools. We appreciate the hard work from all the students who participated in this set of videoconferences!