Tag Archives: Collaborations

Advertising Projects

On Friday I had a chat with a colleague in Michigan whose teachers are creating lots of projects, but having challenges with scheduling. One thing we talked about was the necessity of having teachers post the times & dates they have in mind for their project. If you say exactly when you can do the project (range of dates and exact start & end times), it’s much easier to find a partner. So I thought I’d share with you my suggested format for advertising projects – on the listservs (Edvidconf, K12IVC, etc.) and CILC Collaboration Collage.

  • Project “title” or brief description line
  • Project detailed description. Describe your plans, i.e., agenda, outcomes, etc.
  • Project time frame (Be as precise as possible. For example, between February 15 and 28. Tuesdays or Wednesdays between 9:30 and 11:30 EST.)
  • How to sign up
  • Project registration deadline
  • Number of classes that can participate (i.e. will you take the first person who responds? or can more than one school participate?)
  • Type of connection (i.e. is it open only to ISDN/H.320 schools or only IP/H.323 schools?)
  • Project details website if applicable.

If you’re really specific on the dates & times you can/want to do, then the participants self select before you start your conversation with them.

If you have any other suggestions for finding partners, please comment & share them!

Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections Starts Monday Oct. 2

Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections is starting next week. This class is offered only once a year, so consider registering!

If you’re interested in free videoconferences, you need to be doing projects or class to class connections, also known as kid2kid connections. If you want to focus in depth on creating and implementing projects, this class is for you!

We’ll spend October learning the background of projects and project based learning. In October you’ll find a partner to do projects with during the year. Then in November, you’ll plan five projects, while learning about five big categories of collaborative projects. Then December through May, you’ll implement those projects with assistance from the instructor (me!) and your classmates!

You can read more about the online class here as well as how to register. We’ll take registrations all through Oct. 6 as the first week in the class is mostly introductions.

I encourage you to participate if you want to focus on collaborative projects. My local media specialists and teachers who took the class last year exponentially increased the use of VC in their buildings due to taking the class and applying what they learned. Worth the time & effort!

First VCs of the School Year

This morning I’m connecting our 3rd videoconference of the year – Open Heart Surgery with COSI Columbus. It’s my first connection. This year was a harbinger of things to come. My first two VCs in the county were coordinated and connected by one of my districts all on their own. Training a new coordinator too! Our usage is growing so much I’m starting to let go & train my schools to do connections on their own.

The first two VCs we did were with MAGPI in Pennsylvania. They have a great lineup of programs for this year – and some models of programming worth learning from.

Sept. 15 Constitution Day Celebration: America Reads the Constitution
Students around the nation read the whole constitution. This was a really neat program where each class was assigned a portion of the constitution to read.

Sept. 25 Banned Books Virtual Panel Discussion
Students participated in a discussion of banned books along with Chris Crutcher and Sonya Sones. Scott Merrick posted a video clip of the program on his blog. One of our local students commented, “This was cool. Are we going to do this again?” VC motivates learning yet again!

Other First VCs
I also enjoyed reading about Avon Schools celebration of Constitution Day – Creating Classroom Rules and It’s My Right! And Andrea Isreali has a nice list of their first VCs of the year too.

Partnerships and Project Planning

It seems I got quite a few emails this past summer from people wanting their classes to do projects with my classes. Usually from a coordinator level – county, district, or building, but rarely teachers.

So I’ve been mulling over this for the last several months. What is the best “next step” when two coordinators want to have their schools do connections? What are the starting points?

Here’s what I’ve come up with. Please comment & share your ideas too!

Starting with Enthusiastic Teachers
One way to start is to contact teachers who love VC already and see if they have any ideas for connecting to this particular location. Often they can come up with a curriculum based idea that works and that the other location woud want to do.

 

Coordinators Designing Projects
Another way to start is for the coordinators to suggest some possibilities to their teachers. For example, one of the locations I’m working with is in the United Kingdom. I know that I have high school classes studying British Literature. It seems logical that we could think of some projects the classes could do together. We can ask each other questions to start brainstorming. Things to think about are:

  • What is the curriculum locally?
  • What curriculum covers communication/presentation skills?
  • What curriculum covers information that is geographically outside your area?
  • What curriculum might be similar between our two areas?

Plan a Workshop Together
A crazier idea (logistically) is to do a VC project planning workshop together. I got this idea from the 123 Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with VC workshop from this summer. If the two locations could connect two VCs at a time – and have a group of math/science teachers and a group of language arts/social studies teacher together – they could talk to each other about projects. I haven’t done this yet so I’m just thinking out loud! An overview of VC projects could be shared with the whole group and then they could split into groups to plan. The projects workshop resources on my VC projects wiki would be helpful for doing this.

I’m still mulling this over, trying to think of how we can take advantage of the opportunities to connect with each other in a logical organized fashion. If you have any ideas, please share them by commenting.

 

Megaconferences

Do you know about the Megaconferences? If not, then you should sign up & participate this year! Here are announcements from the Megaconference listservs.

Megaconference

Everyone in the world is invited to participate in the Megaconference, 2 November 2006, from the comfort of his or her own office, classroom, or conference room. Registration is now open via the web site http://support.osc.edu/cgi-bin/veventreg/megaconf8. Like any professional conference, presenters and audience members will discuss current projects and developments. Unlike other conferences, hundreds of participants will gather simultaneously from all continents of the world using advanced networks, from universities, K-12 schools, and organizations. This year’s theme — Breaking Down the Barriers: Global Connections– focuses on improving understanding between individuals and cultures, using video conferencing tools. The event runs from morning until evening (EST) that day, to allow participation from around the world. But you can be there as long as you wish.

Megaconference Jr.

The NEW date for Megaconference Jr. 2007 has been set for February 22, 2007, and planning committees need your help to make this year’s event even more of a success than the previous Megaconference Jr. events. This year there will also be several new additions to the event – like a new Virtual Battle of the Bands where musical groups will audition to be part of the grand finale based on the highest number of votes from the international community – which will give participants the opportunity for even more interaction leading up to the event itself. Volunteers are needed in several areas. Please distribute this call for participation widely in your communities.

Also, Megaconference Jr. is looking for student VJs. You can read about how to become a VJ on the Megaconference Jr. blog. (Yet another VC blog you can follow!!)

Megaconferences are great experiences for you & your students, so I encourage you to participate this year!

HyperMirror Pictures

Thank you to Akio Yamanaka for taking pictures at the HyperMirror session at NECC and sending them to me. After the session, they opened the floor for attendees to come on camera and see what it is like. I wanted to try out the hand-clapping pattern for See See My Playmate.


First we demonstrated the pattern, as they girls in Japan hadn’t seen it before.

Here we are trying to line up our hands to “clap.”


Trying to get the timing right!

Almost have it! We only had a couple minutes. I think if we had more time to practice we could have done it.

Here is what it looked like from this end. I am facing the projector screen where I was seeing the same view as the pictures above.

See the big smiles on everyone’s faces. Clearly this technology helps us feel closer together!

Very cool. Thank you Akio for these pictures! I look forward to hearing about future projects with HyperMirror videoconferencing.

Conference Tags: necc necc06

Collaborative VC Projects are the "Third Wave"

On the plane home from NECC, I read the latest Wainhouse Research study, Taking the Wraps off Videoconferencing in the U.S. Classroom: A State-by-State Analysis. (The paper is on the Tandberg site right now because they sponsored it, but it will be on the Wainhouse site soon.)

I was most interested in the section titled, The Coming Third Wave for Videoconferencing in the Classroom.

Wave 3 will consist of increased student-to-student collaborative projects and even student creation and delivery of content. Connecting groups of students to participate in real-world, real-time learning engagements is a very powerful use of this technology and educators are just beginning to explore this application.

And we in Michigan having been leading this application of videoconferencing for almost 10 years!

  • Michigan Collaborative, now Michigan Week Exchange Projects, started in the 1997-1998 school year! This project, consisting of matching 4th grade classrooms to present to each other about their community (4th grade studies Michigan), has been a consistent success throughout the years. The model of ISDs (educational service agencies) gathering together to pool resources to provide such learning experiences served as an early precursor to TWICE, Michigan’s K12 videoconferencing organization. The model of matching classrooms for a 45 minute exchange (you present 15 min.; we present 15 min.; and 15 min. of Q&A) has proved to be a model for many other similar projects designed by teachers and curriculum people.
  • Michigan Collaborative was the model for Read Across America, started in March 2002 with 200 classrooms, expanded to 1042 classrooms in 2006, and growing to Read Around the Planet for 2007.
  • Then there are the projects like MysteryQuest: World Geography, MysteryQuest USA, RegionQuest, LAPS, and other classroom to classroom events that model the value of classroom to classroom or Kid2Kid videoconferences. These projects are being replicated in other states as well (see Wisconsin History Mystery).

So, if you haven’t already, catch the third wave of collaborative projects!

If you need some help along the way, try one of these resources:

Hyper-Mirror Videoconferencing

Experience HyperMirror Videoconferencing! Japan-LA-NJ Collaboration! Energize Hands-On Learning!
Agnes Zaorski, Eatontown Public Schools with Takanori Maesako, Osamu Morikawa and Cathy Timpone

I’m in a really cool session about HyperMirror….

Right now during introductions I’m amazed by the blue tarp on the wall and the presenters are in the screen with the remote site! You have to see this! I’ve linked to a picture – but look at the images on this page.

The curriculum focus is on using probes and doing water testing between NJ & Japan.

She’s using phrases like, “we’re sharing data in a HyperMirror with Japan…”

They started with a New Jersey pond study and sometimes an ocean study. In Japan they did a river study.

Hands-on is the best way for students to learn. Students took probes to the water, recorded the data, and brought it back to the classroom for analysis. Two scientists were available in the classroom and via online for the students to ask additional questions.

Any international project includes culture as part of the learning, even in this science collaboration.

HyperMirror makes magic so they look like they in the same room.

How did they solve the time zone! US EST classes came back to school at 6:30 p.m. The Japan kids started at 7:30 a.m. There was a 13 hour difference. Both sites were willing to adjust their learning time. This is THE MOST important part of doing international connections. Being flexible and both sides giving are really important.

They used Moodle as their online community for asynchronous discussion forums to bypass the email issues. They had forums for troubleshooting, ask the expert, general discussions, discussing the latest results, assessment and more. They also use the glossary tool in Moodle.

They went to their water sources and tested various places using litmus paper, probes and computers. “Technology was perceived as process, product and tool.”

The findings were recorded in Excel and DataStudio. Students generated questions about their data.

This is a great example of a higher level thinking project that I’ve been thinking about all week.

So, next, how does HyperMirror work?

Problems with current VC – participants in different spaces and display splits them into 2 worlds.

The development concept is that we can be in a new conversation space that is on screen in a new space together. Digital Mirror World or HyperWorld.

The inventor showed a real mirror in the PowerPoint, and then a HyperMirror. Electronic Mirror. He had a create set of short movies to explain the concept. We are in the same room. What I see is What You See. WISIWYS.

There’s a mixer in between that mixes the two together. You get a live feed where everyone is in the same room using chromakey mixing. Here’s the graphic from the page on how to make it that was in his PowerPoint.


The emergence of etiquette as if you were in the same room. People start to act as if they were in the same room.

This is just wild!!! Amazing!

They started in 2001 and have connected with China, Korea, Afghanistan, Kenya, Mongolia since then.

So now they are going to do water tests on from both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The students are doing the water tests side by side in HyperMirror.
I really wish I’d had a digital camera! Next year I’ll have to come to NECC (if I can come) with a digital camera!

Now we’re doing an origami lesson together. Everyone is folding to make a crab.

This was a really cool session. I see Dale Hilton from the Cleveland Museum of Art here in this session. They already have the chromakey, so it seems it wouldn’t take much for them to implement this. Maybe soon we’ll be “hypermirroring” with the Cleveland Museum of Art!!

Every year at NECC I see a “WOW” connection. This was it for this year!!

Oops. Nope. We might not be doing this. The unit that mixes is research at the Osaka University and isn’t a commerical product. So maybe we won’t be doing it soon.

Hmmm. this works with iChat too.

Other things: virtual dressups with other cultures. Very cool. Very fun. Bringing people together into the same room virtually. Awesome.

Ok one more thing. The switch only needs to be at one site. The blue screen is only at the room that has the mixer. Cool. So we can do this with them!!!

Conference Tags: necc necc06

Online Class Networking

Here’s another neat NECC story from talking to people.

At the fireworks party on the 4th of July I ran into Donna Farren, NY and Carol Scott, OK, who took my online class together a year or so ago – Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections. It was great to hear how they had kept in touch with each other and done projects between their classes.

I knew in my head at least that the networking in the class was a huge value to the participants, but it was wonderful to hear much later how that networking was impacting students with quality projects. Go Donna & Carol!

Conference Tags: necc necc06

Designing Quality Projects… Round Two

Just finished the one hour version of my 4th of July all day workshop – Designing Quality Interactive Projects for Videoconferencing. The room was packed again – standing room only. It was interesting to see the high level of interest! We connected to Jenny Homer (through Global Leap and JVCS) in the United Kingdom and she shared her experiences participating in the pilot international Read Across America (in this case, Read Across the Atlantic).

Then we talked about what VC is – the continuum of VC and shared lots of project stories. I did add three slides to my PowerPoint, so if you’ve downloaded it already you might want to get it again. I added them based on some of the questions people asked in the workshop on Tuesday.

I added these questions to ask before you start designing a project:

  • What is my required curriculum?
  • What can my students learn from connecting to another class?
  • How does it add value to the lesson?
  • What benefit is gained in greater curriculum understanding because the students collaborated with another class?

I added a reminder about ISTE NETS for Students Standard #4:

  • Students use telecommunications to collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences.
  • Students use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences.

And I added Bernie Dodge’s “Five Words” that intrigued me so much yesterday. I had everyone pair-share really quickly some ideas on those 5 words, but didn’t give them enough time. But I encouraged everyone (and I encourage you too!) to keep thinking about these five words!

  • Design
  • Decide
  • Create
  • Predict
  • Analyze

We had a great time! Lots of people wanted to talk afterwards and I have a badge holder bulging with business cards. People were networking with each other too. Yeah! That’s what it’s all about!!!

Conference Tags: necc necc06