Tag Archives: Collaborations

Kid 2 Kid Videoconference Connections

Yesterday I had a question in my email about one of my upcoming online classes, Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections.

I am potentially interested in your course Kid2Kid Videoconferencing Connections session. I have a couple of questions:
Would we actually be paired with another classroom to work with?
Is this appropriate for the middle school level (I teach 7th grade)?

Here’s my answer for your reading…

You will find a partner one way or another. It could be with someone else in the class depending on who signs up. We’ll also teach you how to find partners on the listservs, etc. Or I can “twist arms” of teachers in the 18 school districts I work with to find a partner for you. So yes, one way or another we’ll have a partner for you to connect with!

On the grade level, this class is definitely appropriate for middle school (all grade levels!). One of the huge challenges of using VC with middle school is the cost of programs for multiple sections; and the difficulty of scheduling programs during the class period. This class will address both of these challenges. We’ll help you design a project meeting your curriculum, one that will connect with another class (free connection!), and teach you ways to advertise so that you can get the videoconference scheduled with each section if you so desire.

Hopefully YOU can join us for the next section of this class starting on October 8!

Demand is Higher Again This Year!

Is your year starting with busy scheduling of videoconferencing? Mine sure is. I’ve been ruing the day that I taught my schools to sign up for programs early in the school year. *chuckles* I’m certainly paying for it now!!

Last year on this date, I had 85 requests; the year before 35 requests. This year we have 211 total program requests as of right now and 89 of them are scheduled already.  Whew!

It’s a great problem, and to address it, we’re continuing to work on training building coordinators to do their own scheduling when possible. I can see it’s going to be another great year of offering quality content & curriculum experiences to our local students.

How is your year starting off?

Scheduling Videoconferences

This week I offered two afternoon workshops for my local coordinators: Scheduling Videoconferences. This is the first in a new series called Supporting Videoconferences that I’m offering to my schools. It’s part of the RUS Grant training, and part of my new strategy to help my buildings become more independent so that we can sustain the current growth.

We reviewed scheduling through the ISD and how to track progress of programs we’re scheduling.

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Scheduling with Content Providers
Then we talked about tips for scheduling with the various content providers. Here are some of the tips:

  • Always check your district VC calendar to make sure you don’t schedule on top of another one. We use Filemaker Pro for our scheduling & calendars.
  • Check all your testing, event, and PD calendars.
  • Have everything ready before you register online. (Use the “Register Now” link on the record after you’ve searched our database for the program. )
  • If you are registering via email, send all the information in one email: teacher name, email, phone, school name, address, tech name, email, phone, IP address, billing information, and your range of availability.
  • Some content providers have online calendars that makes it really easy to schedule (NASA & COSI Columbus for example).
  • Some, like the Cleveland Zoo, have a register link for each program, and you can see right away if the program is full or not.
  • Sometimes it’s a challenge to figure out from the provider’s online or paper form how to make sure all the right people get the correct information. We’ve had a few times where we’re scheduling for the school & we connect & pay the bills. But the confirmation goes to the teacher and not to us. That’s always frustrating.
  • Most of the Indiana providers are in a habit of adding an extra 15 min. at the beginning for “network time” or connecting time. My schools are already in a habit of having kids ready 10 min. before and connecting 15 min. before the program start time. Sometimes we get confused on when the program actually starts and kids sit there for 30 minutes! Not good. So that’s another important detail to pay attention to.

Scheduling with Other Schools
Finally, we reviewed the various ways to find a partner school – via our local directory and the various listservs. We talked about ways to advertise the project so as to ensure success and less negotiation to arrange the videoconference.

Scheduling Test Calls
We also discussed tips for keeping sanity while doing test calls. Brandon Waggoner, district tech coordinator for Berrien Springs Public Schools, made this great suggestion to his building coordinators: Set aside one or two time slots a week for test calls, and if at all possible, schedule your test calls during that time. If you ask first, the other school or content provider usually can do the test call when you ask for it.

So, are you scheduling programs for your school? Or, educational service agency coordinators, are you letting your schools do their own scheduling yet? What tips do you have for scheduling? How are you training others to do scheduling?

International Polar Year

Catching up on previous notes & scribbles.

Did you know that it is the International Polar Year? Check out the website for the focus and research. Note this announcement from Mark on the Megaconference listserv a while back:

As some of you may be aware, the International Polar Year (see http://www.ipy.org ) officially began on March 1, 2007. It builds on prior International Polar Years (or IPY), the first being in 1882-83, the most recent being the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58. Emphasizing polar science and global impacts, this current IPY officially runs through March 2009 but will have momentum for years to come. The key themes are trends in melting snow and ice, the challenges facing Arctic residents, and the role of carbon in the Earth system. Made up of over 200 diverse international projects, with thousands of scientists, educators and enthusiasts from over sixty nations, IPY has tremendous potential to showcase state of the art technology (like I2) and help demystify how scientific research is actually conducted.

Looks like they’ll be participating in the Megaconferences this school year. I wonder what other events could tie in the use of videoconferencing & K12 education? Check out the educator’s section of the IPY site. There are some suggested activities, resources, and more. Maybe some classes could participate in some activities and then videoconference with each other to share results. Do YOU have any ideas?

Setting Up Multiple Collaborations Between Buildings

One thing that has stumped me in the last couple years is this. Someone emails me and says, “let’s have our schools do projects together.” It’s so broad and wide open and I have so many things going on already that I don’t have a good answer. It’s so much work to just begin to talk!

But, as the Jazz project has evolved, and GoogleDocs is changing my workflow, I have a new idea! Here’s how it’s working so far.

This week, a building coordinator from TX from the Jazz class last week, emailed me asking for 5 2nd grade teacher partners to do a communities project. Now instead of a flurry of emails and headaches coordinating, we’re going to use a GoogleDocs spreadsheet to coordinate the whole collaboration.

I started a spreadsheet with the following columns. (In fact I made myself a template that I can easily Save As… for the next collaboration that comes along.) I’m thinking that each row in the spreadsheet corresponds to one connection.

  • Initiating Teacher
  • Email
  • School
  • Phone
  • Topic
  • Suggested Date Range
  • Suggested Times
  • IP Address & dial direction
  • Partner Teacher
  • Email
  • School
  • Phone
  • IP Address & dial direction
  • Final Date
  • Final Time

Then I added another sheet within the spreadsheet for the facilitators & coordinators contact info.

  • Name
  • Email
  • Phone
  • Cell Phone
  • Position/Connection (i.e. building coordinator for X Elem., regional tech etc.)

So the next step will be for her to fill in the details of what her teachers want. Then I’ll fill in with my teachers, invite my building coordinators who get involved to share the spreadsheet, and off we go. I’m hoping this will make the whole process a lot smoother.  I think it’s likely that we’ll use this format for follow-up for the Mini-Jazz workshops I have scheduled with Roxanne (TX) & Nurit (AB) for next year.

I can see this working well for my 6th grade Canada exchange project too. Last year I had 9 local classes connect to three different places in Canada. One spreadsheet shared with all the interested parties would have made this so much easier!

Do you see this process working well for you too? How do YOU handle multiple collaboration videoconferences between buildings/locations/regions?

Jazz Projects

Here are the projects created in Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with VC from last week. Enjoy!

Stories from Read Around the Planet

This morning Donna Farren, Linda McDermon, and I were part of a panel discussion for the NCSSM Interactive Videoconference Workshop. We talked about projects we’re doing, how we train teachers, how we advertise programs, and how we “hook” teachers on distance learning.

I was delighted to hear Linda McDermon tell about her Read Around the Planet connections this year. They had 4 kindergarten classes participate, and one of their fourth grade classes was lucky enough to be matched with a school in the United Kingdom. Linda had brought along to the workshop a bag of items that the UK class had mailed to them. She always has her collaborative partners exchange packages. She pulled out all kinds of interesting things: a flag, a soccer jersey, a medal for the Queen’s 80th birthday, and more. Their classes emailed each other every week after their RAP connection in March. They videoconferenced every three weeks including a session in June!!

We don’t always get to hear the follow-up stories of Read Around the Planet, and this one was especially neat to hear. Thanks Linda for sharing!!

Snippets of Jazz Day 3 & 4

Still Jazzing this week. Almost done! Just group projects left for tomorrow! Don’t forget to follow Roxanne’s blog as well for the daily facilitator summaries and you can browse the whole photo collection online as well. Many of the participant sites were tagging pictures by the vocabulary words (VC, network, Web 2.0), so you can search the photos for terms like “blog”, “Skype” and “mute” to get illustrations of those concepts.

Day 3
In the morning we did MysteryQuest Beaches, the professional development version of all the MysteryQuests out there: MQ World, MQ USA, Where in Michigan, Texas History Mystery, RegionQuest, and LiteratureQuest, to name a few. The participants had a blast decorating and presenting clues. This year they were really hard on each other with clues that were too obscure to figure out. Hmmm. I wonder if that’s because I said not to give any clues that could be Googled!?!

In the afternoon we connected to GNG and enjoyed a simulation of the Pulse program. I wrote about this yesterday.

Day 4
First thing in the morning  we  were able to watch a summer school at Patrick Hamilton, Dowagiac, Michigan connect to Windhoek, Namibia, Africa for a cultural exchange. The connection was amazing and the students really enjoyed the interaction. Students discussed topics such as animals, great things about your country, apartheid, tribes, favorite subjects, and sports. We had a few echoing issues but everyone handled it well and realized there are ways to get around such issues. 

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In the morning all seven sites connected together for Jim Wenzloff’s overview of ASK and then an interview with Don Alsbro, one of our local Vietnam veterans, who also organizes our veterans here for the Lest We Forget programs. Stephan started us off with a rousing rapping roll call.

Right during the debrief of the ASK programs, we lost Internet connectivity for the whole ISD for about 10 minutes. So we soon gave up and went to lunch.

We also took last minute photos and group shots for the culminating video Shane is putting together for us. Region 12’s group had the privilege of access to Shane’s bag of hats for their photo.

During the workshop we’ve had so many Skype conversations going on – the facilitators chat, the communication specialists chats, the group chats, the participants typing to ask questions of facilitators…

I’m in our Tech Center, which isn’t set up for videoconferencing quite as well as our distance learning room. So we put a pig next to the camera to help us look at the camera. “Talk to the pig!”

Tomorrow the groups present and we end with a bang!

Snippets of Jazz Day 1 & 2

Another week of Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing. I have 4 high school people and 3 elementary people this week from 5 of my districts. Roxanne is blogging it in detail so far, so I thought I’d give you a sample of pictures to give you a flavor of the experience so far.

Day 1
In the morning we had exchange project simulations: Community based on Michigan Week Exchange, Read Around the Planet, Science Exchange, and Monster Exchange.

In the afternoon we connected to Greenbush, Kansas and learned about the rainforest and did activities with Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.

Here are some samples of how the groups are meeting together. We have 6 groups across the 4 sites in our set and I think Ken’s group has 7 groups meeting across 3 sites.

Day 2
Tuesday morning we began with a Math Marvels simulation. There were some very funny math problems, but the Cockroach one took the cake! Participants got more practice with various ways to show visuals.

In between during local time we (BCISD) did a test call with Janie Panagopoulos who just got a Polycom Viewstation last week installed in her house. She talked to our teachers about the programs she offers and her history of 8 years of videoconference experience.

After lunch Shane at Region 12 sang songs and led the participants in the Hokey Pokey, and taught us about videoconferencing etiquette.

Each site’s Word Wall is growing with videoconferencing and Web2.0 terms.

One of the groups meeting in Shane & Roxanne’s office got into the hat bag!

It takes a lot of energy to facilitate Jazz!

So that’s just a flavor of the fun and learning going on in Michigan, Ohio, and Texas this week!