Tag Archives: Collaborations

Read Around the Planet 2007 Report

I know most of you reading this blog are also involved in Read Around the Planet. Wow, this project has grown this year!! I think we’re all feeling the growing pains. I thought you might be interested in some of the stats on the project.

People who made it happen
Read Around the Planet would not be successful without support from many organizations.

  • TWICE, Michigan’s K12 videoconferencing organization, started this project in 2002 and continues to invest volunteer time and funding to make the project sustainable.
  • This is the first year of corporate sponsorship from Polycom. This funding allowed TWICE to contract with Sue Porter to be our RAP coordinator, otherwise known as the TWICE RAP Star. 🙂 The project has grown so large that it isn’t sustainable without sponsorship, so we really appreciate Polycom‘s support.
  • The Verification Partners laid the foundation for this project in the fall with all the test calls and assistance getting buildings entered into the system and connected correctly to their coordinators. Many of them have been involved through February in helping with test calls and fixing connections.
  • Building, district, and regional level coordinators and techs have worked so hard coordinating, dealing with tech problems, encouraging teachers, following up on communication problems, and generally smoothing the way for successful connections.
  • And of course, the teachers who plan creative interesting presentations for their partner classes and who weather all the little glitches and quirks that can happen in classroom-to-classroom connections.

A big thank you to EVERYONE who makes this project a success!

So here are the stats.

People
2537 people in the registration system.
Buildings
1424 buildings in the registration system
IP & ISDN
398 buildings could do ISDN
1395 buildings could do IP
24 Match Requests for ISDN only

Read Around the Planet
Match Requests
1274 English

4 Participating Countries: English
Canada 117
Taiwan 1
United Kingdom 22
United States 1121

US States: English (24 states)
Sessions by state
AL 1
AZ 44
CA 13
CT 15
IN 2
IL 1
KS 18
MI 373
MN 11
MO 3
NC 4
ND 29
NH 1
NJ 5
NV 4
NY 171
OH 65
OK 2
OR 6
PA 55
TX 262
VA 32
WA 1
WI 3

RAP World Language Day
78 Match Requests

5 Participating Countries: WLD
Canada 23
Nicaragua 3
Taiwan 2
United Kingdom 6
United States 42

US States: WLD (8 states)
IN 1
MI 24
NY 5
OH 2
OK 1
PA 3
TX 5
WA 1

Total Match Requests: 1350
In 2006 there were 842 class registrations; 201 in building registrations; 1043 total.
This year, 2007, there were 1350 class registrations for both events. Wow!

Impacting Approximately 40,000 kids
Estimating 30 students per class (some are smaller and some double up), RAP impacted about 40,000 kids.

Wow! It’s all about the kids and the great learning experiences that we can bring to them via videoconferencing. Good luck with your connections starting tomorrow!

Last MysteryQuest World of 2007

Today is the last session of MysteryQuest World Geography of 2007. No more MysteryQuests until MysteryQuest USA in April (still room to sign up if you want!)

Today’s MysteryQuest treat is having Grafton Elementary, Ontario, participate in our session on Europe. It did my heart good to see the huge Canadian flag in their introduction. Yes, I’m Canadian. It’s always a treat to have a non U.S. school in our MysteryQuest sessions, so we took time at the end to ask each other questions.

The Grafton Elementary class did a Lost simulation of the students on a class trip to Europe. The clues were woven into the skit story with what they had found about the country where they were lost. This is the first skit I’ve heard where the students really verbally and visually emphasized the clues within the skit. They had nice pauses after the important clues to write down as well. Great job Grafton!

Mata Intermediate, TX, also had a visual that worked well. Along with their news show was an easel with the category for that set of clues.

This session had the most technical difficulties of the MysteryQuests we ran this month, but the students weathered it well.

So that’s the end of this year’s world geography MysteryQuests. We have another set of U.S. geography sessions coming up in April. The slots aren’t full yet, so we’d love to have you participate!

MysteryQuest: Revealing the Answer

Here’s a neat visual from today’s MysteryQuest Western Hemisphere. Troy Intermediate, from Avon Lake, OH, used this creative background to reveal their correct answer at the end.

Here’s how their background looked during their presentation:

And here’s how the background looked after they revealed their answer.

Another great example of sharing information visually in a MysteryQuest session!

Pick Up the Phone!

Phone Is anyone else besides me running into problems with projects due to email not getting through? Here’s some examples.

1. I’ve been working on a project with a local high school British Literature teacher and a partner school in Wales since October. It’s been derailed because both schools seem to be catching each other’s emails in their spam filters. What’s the chance of that?

Solution? After the Wales teacher gets back to school after being sick, we’re setting up a VC so they can talk and plan this for once and for all!

2. February 14 we’re running a MysteryQuest International. A MQ International is a special MQ with only one U.S. school and everyone else from different locations in the world. I have emailed one of the coordinators the numbers to call for the videoconference from four different email addresses (don’t ask why I have so many) and still I don’t know if they’ve received the information yet.

Solution? Four emails from four different addresses to two different addresses at the school. Not sure if it worked yet.

3. Read Around the Planet. How can so many school spam filters catch those crucial match emails?

Solution? Login to the TWICE registration system and look for the big match reports to find all your partner details.

4. Read Around the Planet. “My partner hasn’t replied to my email.” Are you hearing this from your local coordinators or teachers yet? I am.

Solution? Call them! Maybe the school is on winter break. Maybe their spam filter caught your email. Maybe they are home sick with the flu. Maybe their school had a snow day. Call them! Pick up the phone! Find out why they haven’t answered yet! Patiently and graciously of course.

Next time you wonder why someone hasn’t emailed you back, pick up the phone! Here I must admit that I’m 120 emails behind. Back to work to catch up!

Visiting Peace River Alberta

After lots of work scheduling and coordination, the first of seven connections with Canada happened today. It’s been my dream for a while to get class to class connections for our Michigan students who study Canada. In these 7 connections we’ll be visiting Alberta, Ontario and New Brunswick. The sessions with Peace River are the result of trading PD for projects, which is another model that seems to be working well for our kid to kid project videoconferences.

Today’s session started with Berrien Springs Middle School students listening to the Peace River students start their day with O Canada and announcements.

Next the Peace River students presented a PowerPoint with pictures of their town and school, some of their village history, a day in the life of a Hines Creek student, myths about Canada, and a presentation on each of the provinces.

Next the Berrien Springs Middle School students presented about the 6 regions of the United States and also about their local community.

Finally, the students asked each other questions. The questions started on topics and ideas that were presented by the two classes.  Towards the end, students asked questions about daily life, length of recess and bus rides, and favorite sports teams and more.

We look forward to more connections with Canadian students in the future.

I Have a RAP Partner, Now What?

So now that you have a Read Around the Planet partner*, what will you do next? I’m working on some materials for my teachers and also a few of you have emailed this question. So here’s some tips. If you have any more, please share them!

  1. First, of course you should review the RAP Teacher Packet, or the World Languages Teacher Packet.
  2. Look over the Ideas List on the TWICE page.
  3. The photo gallery from past years is another place to get ideas for fun visuals and how to organize students.
  4. Use this student job list to involve all your students. (Thanks to Kim Pearce, Gatesville ISD, TX.)
  5. Plan for a way to celebrate the geography of your connection (even if you’re connecting within state). Show a map. Tell a bit about your area. If you have lots of connections in your building, make a school map for all the connections you’re doing. Take the opportunity to teach geography skills!
  6. Ideas from last year’s RAA blog entries: snow ball fights and books, stretching half way through, acting out books, share the weather & poetry, hats are fun, Spanish songs & poems, and songs.
  7. Still need more ideas? Check out lesson plans written in my online classes and the Jazz workshops, especially the Language Arts and Foreign Language lessons.
  8. Most importantly, talk to your partner teacher via email or phone. Just a few conversations will make your connection smoother. But don’t stress if you can’t get ahold of them either. We’ve had successful connections when the teachers meet for the first time in the connection and negotiate right then who is going first. It’s just better if you can talk to each other.

If you run into any scheduling issues (which almost always happens with this project), be sure to review the tips for resolving scheduling conflicts. One year some of our RAP connections in MI finally happened in May!! So hang in there with your partner until you make it happen! If you need encouragement in your misery of rescheduling, review these previous posts: Top Ten Reasons a VC Gets Cancelled, and When Things Go Wrong.

Feel free to share these tips with your teachers!

Snow Day Etiquette

I’m reminded today of the importance of snow day etiquette. Today was yet another snow day (got some cross country skiing in!) with some of my schools closed again tomorrow.

Today we were supposed to have a full session with the Columbus Zoo for some pre-service teachers. When I emailed Carrie to let her know, she replied,

“Thanks so much for the heads up! We really really appreciate that…otherwise we’re just standing down there waiting!”

I also spent some of today rescheduling a MysteryQuest session. Due to that shuffle I have a few openings again.

And tonight, checking school closings for tomorrow, I discovered that two of our connections with Peace River, Alberta, will be affected. Thankfully I was able to email our Albertan friends tonight. This response from the coordinator reminds us of the seriousness of rescheduling VCs.

They will have to switch classes, rebook a sub, rebook the bus, and give the VC teacher time to find space for her students.

Yet more reminders of the importance of informing the person on the other side of any schedule changes.

Finally, as I put my 78 RAP connections on my calendar, I’m really praying for no snow days in March!

The Future of Collaborations

After reading Andrea’s report on the NY & TX Mini-Jazz second session from this past weekend, I was inspired yet again with the power of collaboration.

Yes, collaborations are the third wave of videoconferencing. But to make those collaborations sustained, frequent, and high-quality, it takes training, planning, and nurturing. The best training is also done in collaboration, models the experiences we expect for students, and provides opportunities and support for teachers to create and implement their own project ideas.

This Jazz idea is brilliant (not my idea originally, so I can say that!). The way it is morphing to additional during-the-school year formats is wonderful to behold. I really do believe that if you want to have sustained collaborative projects with others, you need to begin a collaboration with another organization like yours, preferably out of state. I certainly am beginning to have plans simmering in my brain for additional trainings like this for 2007-2008.

What do you have in the works? How will you promote collaborative projects beyond just telling teachers about the possibilities??

Getting Organized for RAP

Now that most of the match emails are out, it’s time to get organized for all our Read Around the Planet connections this year. (I say “most” of the match emails because some get caught in spam filters, and the world language ones haven’t been sent out yet.) Locally last year I had 30ish connections and this year I have 76!

Stats
I thought you might be interested in some quick stats on the whole project. More detailed ones later. There are 1251 match requests for the regular English event. 30ish are still in the leftover/working on it pile. For World Languages there are 70 requests and 26 are still in the leftover pile with progress coming along for most of them except the ones I mentioned yesterday. Estimating 30 students per class (some are smaller and some double up), we’re looking at an estimate of 40,000 students impacted by this project. Pretty amazing, really! It would not be possible without the sponsorship of Polycom, the hard work of TWICE board members, the huge assistance from our verification partners, the coordinators at all levels supporting teachers, and of course the teachers who prepare the students and make it all happen.

Organization Tips
This morning I sent some tips to my local building coordinators for keeping organized with RAP and I thought you might be able to use some of this too. I’m posting it how I sent it out; but feel free to copy & paste and tweak this to use with your own coordinators.

  • Copy the data into Word. You can login to the TWICE registration system now http://treg.remc11.k12.mi.us/rap/ – and go to Big Match Reports at the bottom. This will give you a nice list with a place for notes of all your connections. I like to copy & paste this into a big Word file that I can work on. Or you can print and highlight etc. Note: You may want to wait a day or two as many buildings are updating their building data (coordinator info, IP addresses, etc. so that the match info is more accurate). This can be updated by logging into the system and editing the building. If contact people information is listed with no name or phone number, it’s because that person hasn’t logged into the system yet.
  • Test Calls. I’d recommend setting aside a few afternoons or whatever works for your schedule, and try to convince your partners to do the test calls all at the same time. If you have a lot this makes it easier because you’re just working on one thing at a time.
  • Directory. Now is the time to get to know the directory feature on your Polycom VSX 7000s. Especially for those of you with a lot of connections. Here’s how it works:

From the front screen of the Polycom go to Directory.
On the left choose New.
Enter the name of the site at the top using the keypad like a cell phone.
Put in the IP number. The rest of the fields you don’t have to worry about.
Then Save.
Then to dial, just select that site from the directory.

  • Leftovers. There are only a few match requests that are in the leftover pile that the TWICE team is still working on. Other than that you should all have a match.
  • Keeping Sane. This project is crazy and can seem overwhelming, but we’ll just work through these connections one at a time. It’s so worth it for the kids – I keep reminding myself of that!

If you have any other tips you are sharing with your schools, please comment!

RAP World Language Leftovers

As you probably know, I’m helping Sue Porter, TWICE’s Read Around the Planet Coordinator, with some the RAP work. We’re trying to finish up the leftovers. The World Language event this year had 66 requests and 53 of them ended up in the leftover pile (i.e. no perfect matches). We’re making progress on dealing with these, but there are a few areas where we can’t get anyone at all.

So here’s my list. If you have a teacher who could do any of these connections, please email Sue at twicerap@comcast.net with teacher name, email, building phone number and which one you can do. Reference the # please. Also we much prefer buildings already verified if at all possible.

  • German, Alberta, March 9, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, or 2:00 Mountain Time. (Add1 for CST; add 2 for EST).
  • Ukrainian, Alberta, March 9, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, 12:30, 1:00, or 1:30 Mountain Time. (Add1 for CST; add 2 for EST).
  • Ukrainian, Alberta, March 9, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, or 2:00 Mountain Time. (Add1 for CST; add 2 for EST).
  • Hebrew, Alberta, March 9, 12:30, 1:00, or 1:30 Mountain Time. (Add1 for CST; add 2 for EST). (I’m sure they’d be flexible if morning is better for you.)
  • Latin, Michigan, anyday, 10:00 Eastern. (Subtract 1 for CST; subtract 2 for MT).

Thank you in advance if you can help us with any of these!!!!!

For next year we need a lot more classes to make this idea work!