Tag Archives: Collaborations

ESL Exchange

Today we have two ESL classes, one from Lakeshore Middle School, and one from Edmonton Public Schools practicing their English skills with each other.

The classes started with introductions. First the students each introduced themselves and told where they were from, their native language, their favorite food and movie.

Then the classes asked each other questions. Here are some of them:

  • Why did you move to Canada?
  • How many brothers and sisters do you have?
  • Where is your country?
  • Would you like to go back to your country?
  • How do you feel living in Canada?
  • What were the teachers like in your home country to compared to how they are here?
  • What are some differences between America and your home country?
  • How do the other students in the school treat you?

The classes discussed hockey (Edmonton beat Detroit last night) and weather (it is currently snowing in Alberta). This was a great project and clearly was a great experience for the students. Not only did they practice their English skills, but they realized they are not alone in their experience integrating into another society.

Facilitating a Teacher-Generated Project

Lately I've been facilitating a few project connections between teachers. Here are some tips based on what I've learned.

It starts by one of my teachers generating an idea for a videoconference project. Then I submit the idea to various places: the Collaboration Collage listserv, the K12IVC listserv, and the CILC Collaboration Center. Lately I've been getting the fastest response from the K12IVC listserv.

After we get a response (or sort through a whole bunch of responses), I send an email to all the people involved: teachers, techs, media specialists, etc. on both ends of the project. Here's what I include:

Introductions
I give both teachers all the information I can find on each other. Sometimes I google to fill in the details. School name, city, state/province/country, phone number, email. This way they can talk to each other directly.

Dates
Then, since most of the connections currently go through me, I suggest some dates & times based on my knowledge of our teacher's request, their distance learning schedule, and my distance learning schedule. I try to include the information in both time zones (checking TimeandDate.com to make sure I'm right). That way we are all on the same page for the time.

Format
For my teachers new to videoconferencing, if they don't already have a suggested schedule or format, I suggest one for them. Here's an example of my wording. Feel free to copy & paste. 🙂

Here are some suggestions for format. Hopefully, teachers, this will give you an idea to work from and you can tweak it however you want.

Use the Read Across America Format:
5 min. Introductions (be sure to prepare a map for each other)
15 min. One class presents
15 min. The other class presents.
10 min. Ask each other questions.

Or some classes like to rotate:
5 min. Introductions (be sure to prepare a map for each other)
30 min. Classes rotate sharing something (poems, stories, choral reading, song).
One class shares one thing, then the next class shares, back & forth for the time.
10 min. Q&A.

Here's a lesson plan on preparing questions:
http://www.remc11.k12.mi.us/dl/QsLessonPlan.htm
It's a good idea to plan questions for your partner class ahead of time. Or at least have the students think of categories – recess, school subjects, favorite activities, info about the local community, home countries, etc.

Action Items
Finally I end with a reminder of what to do next. Test calls, nailing the dates, teachers working out the details. These are all things that need to be done to get the connection scheduled.

After this, I make sure the test call happens, the teachers get in touch with each other, and the dates are set. After that I leave it to the teachers and enjoy watching the connection when it happens! 

Culture Exchange with Pakistan

This morning a group of high school students from Decatur High School talked to high school students in Pakistan. After a bit of a rough start with technology, the classes started the discussion.

The discussion ranged from cultural questions like sports, favorite music, to more politically sensitive issues like what the students think of their presidents and the Iraq War. Some interesting notes from the conversation:

  1. When asked about the practice of covering women, one of their girls asked our students about nuns wearing the habit. This was just one example of the students in Pakistan communicating articulately and understanding the broader examples of an issue. I enjoyed hearing their responses to our students’ questions.
  2. They asked us some tough questions about obesity, drug use, and casinos in our country and area.
  3. One of their students asked us, “You aren’t wearing uniforms, but we are wearing uniforms. Do you think it makes any difference?”
  4. The classes also compared rural and urban living in their countries. The classes discovered that students in both countries enjoy surfing and chatting on the Internet, hanging out with friends at the mall, and playing computer games.
  5. The Kashmir discussion was very enlightening. The students in Pakistan explained that the real fight is over control of the water. We don’t hear that in our media and were surprised to understand the real issue. Hearing the story from someone living in the country is better than hearing it in the media.

It was an interesting conversation. Both sides had some misconceptions about each other that were cleared up in the conversation. I think a little more structure to the conversation would have been helpful. It is also crucial to get to know each other before diving into tough issues. Knowing a bit about the other participants, whether from a neighboring town, or another country, is essential for setting the tone of the conversation.

Still Reading Across America

It's the last week in March. The last week before our spring break. And we're still Reading Across America! This morning a middle school class at River Valley Middle School is reading with a class from Chesaning, Michigan. Thanks to Aaron Schippert for finding us a class to connect at the 7:45 class time! The classes are sharing jokes, poems, speeches, and choral readings. We had a bit of a glitch, losing the connection partway through. But we reconnected and kept going!

Then later this morning Brandywine Elementary connected to their partner class in Pennsylvania. This Read Across America session was rescheduled due to weather. We had a few technical issues – bandwidth on our end and audio & PowerPoint issues with Visual Concert on the other end, but the students and teachers handled it well. The class in PA shared a presentation about their reading of the book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Our class shared several stories with jokes in between.

The kids were fourth grade, and our teacher had a great idea. The students stood up half way through the session to stretch and asked the partner class to stretch too. This helped get some of the wiggles out! The classes also asked questions where they said, everyone who likes football, stand up. Students in both classes stood up. A great way to answer questions visually from both sides at the same time!

That's the end of Read Across America for my schools for 2006. Out of 35 sessions, only 2 didn't happen due to weather and the difficulties of rescheduling. Not too bad! Close to 1000 of my local kids participated this year! I think that's a record for our RAA participation!

Spanish Read Across America

This morning Brandywine Elementary is connecting to a Spanish Immersion school in Columbus Ohio for a Spanish version of Read Across America. Our classes have Spanish only once a week, so they aren’t quite as fluent. The classes shared poetry, short statements, and choral readings together, mostly in Spanish. The question and answer part they did in English.

This was the first connection for Brandywine with their new Polycom VSX7000 mobile in the district. This connection was our first over a wireless Internet connection between the elementary school and the high school where the T1 comes in. The quality was amazingly good! Nice to know that this model is going to work well for us!

The other neat thing for my school is that the students in Columbus had done several videoconferences. So they told our students all about the different programs. Great for my school to hear about all the possibilities from students! I love it when schools learn from each other this way!

The Columbus students asked my school what they hope to do with videoconferencing. One of our students said, “I want to connect to you again because it’s very fun to talk to you guys.” Then our students asked them if they wanted to do Flat Stanley together and be pen pals. What a great partnership and first VC for my school!

Some Great RAA Stories

I’ve really enjoyed hearing stories from participants in Read Across America. I loved these entries from my colleagues about their RAA connections. If you’re not reading their blogs – check out these entries: Toilet Paper, Regis & Kelly Show, Henny Penny, The Foolish Little Hare, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
Also Arnie Comer sent me a newspaper clipping from the Fraser-Clinton Township Chronicle. This great story shares how Salk Elementary students shared the joy of snow with their partner class in Paris, Texas.

The Texans opened a package sent from the Michiganders to find snowman cookies, handmade snowflakes, and a collection of paper snowballs, each with a message inside.
Amicucci [the teacher] encouraged the kids to throw the [paper] snowballs toward the camera, prompting a virtual snowball fight between both sets of students.

“We thought we could have the world’s first video snowball fight,” she said, as the room erupted into a flurry of white paper.

….  “I just thought this was an awesome experience,” said Amicucci. “They were truly ‘Reading Across America.’ Most of them have never been outside of Michigan. This is one of the best things we’ve ever done.”

MACUL Magic

Another great MACUL conference is over. All of the TWICE sessions worked so we’re all very happy! Here are a few highlights.

The Voices of the Twin Cities Past presentation was phenomenal. We connected back to the two classes at E. P. Clarke Elementary, St. Joseph; and Sorter Elementary, Benton Harbor. The students presented to us about the project, and also answered questions from the presenters. One of the questions asked of the students was, “if you were to give advice to other 4th graders doing videoconferencing, what would you say?” Here’s a few of their tips:

  • “Speak loudly and clearly and enunciate.” Rachel, age 10. (Clarke)
  • “Introduce yourself.” Brittany, age 11. (Sorter)
  • “Be patient because sometimes it looks like they are frozen.” Carey, age 9. (Clarke)

This project is packed with great teaching: the Big6 process, primary sources & documents, group work, presentation skills, writing skills and more. Clearly the quality of the project is evidences by the confidence of the students in presenting, asking, and answering questions.

Content Providers
The TWICE sessions featured two content providers. The Alaska Sea Life Center won the prize for the highest attendance for the TWICE sessions. The room was packed and the activities of analyzing scat was very popular and discussed with enthusiasm at many restaurants Thursday evening. If you haven’t connected to them, you definitely should. High quality content!

Coming in a close second was the Cleveland Institute of Music. Top notch programming in many subject areas.

Wireman Meets ASK
A low attended but high quality program was with author Sue Stuaffacher connecting to students at Hull Middle School in Benton Harbor. A powerful example of the quality questions developed in the ASK process and an inspiring example of how the Wireman Comics are reaching at-risk kids. Sue clearly has a heart for at-risk kids and writes books accordingly. Wonderful experience!
It was great also to attend the TWICE annual meeting and hear the highlights of all the various activities. Now back home to rest and integrate new knowledge into daily practice!

RAA: The Mitten

Kindergarten classes are so cute on videoconferences! This morning I enjoyed a wonderful Read Across America exchange between one of our local kindergarten classes and a class in New York.

Our local class presented the book, The Mitten by Jan Brett. They acted out the story while the teacher read it. I thought this was a great way to share reading with very young children. I had to get a snapshot. In the picture notice the colorful “mitten” in the middle of the floor. As the story progressed, more and more animals snuggled under the mitten to keep warm. It was so fun to see!

This teacher has done several videoconferences before and you can tell she understands the visual nature of the medium! What a wonderful visual! The partner class in New York state really enjoyed their presentation.

Notice also how wonderful it is to have videoconferencing come to the classroom. This district has a mobile Polycom VSX that is hooked up to power, ethernet, and the TV in the classroom. These are really powerful experiences right within the students’ learning environment!

28 RAAs down; 10 to go.

Singing Across America

10 Read Across America connections today. They all worked!!!

I didn’t get to watch them all, as I’m letting go and letting my districts connect on their own whenever possible. But I saw several and what stood out today was the singing!

At least four classes shared songs today: School songs, Suess songs, even a water cycle song from a class in Texas. Some classes had actions to go with the songs, others stood in a group to sing. The songs added a fun and celebratory element to the presentations.

Andrea Israeli and I had a conversation today about whether or not we should do these all stacked together in a few days. It’s exhausting for distance learning coordinators making it all happen. But it’s such a celebration of reading and videoconferencing. We decided it’s worth all the work. It gets teachers participating in VC who often wouldn’t get around to it otherwise. In schools where several classes participate, the teachers participate in a shared experience and compare what they learned and experienced in the connections. This increases the buzz for videoconferencing and increases the enthusiasm all round. Is this true for you too?

25 down, 13 to go.

RAA Day Two

12 videoconferences today: 10 RAA, 1 field trip, and 1 statewide videoconference on the MEAP test, our state test. 3 connections didn’t happen, 1 due to the teachers involved rescheduling, 2 due to snow/ice storms in Pennsylvania.

Here’s a few lessons and observations from today’s VCs.

1. Friends are awesome! I had trouble with my first connection at 7:30 this morning and ended up begging bridging from my VC colleague Arnie Comer, at Macomb ISD. Having someone to call when you’re desperate is really helpful!

2. It’s time to let go. I had trouble with two RAA calls yesterday that I tried to bridge on my Polycom VSX7000. Ended up that they worked much better when my school connected directly. This fits well with what I’ve noticed about IP calls – the fewer things – bridges, gateways, firewalls, – that are in between the endpoints, the better the connection works. So it’s time for me to let go of watching all my connections and start letting my districts connect on their own. Hard to let go. I love to watch these! And blog about them! But it’s necessary to let go as our programming and usage grows by leaps and bounds.

3. Switched calls to the UK. I helped out a colleague, Dan Finnigan, at Saginaw ISD with their RAA test call with the United Kingdom. They were connecting to a switched ISDN site. I knew it needed to be switched, but I don’t have ISDN connected directly to an endpoint so I didn’t know how to make it work. Dan figured out that the call types in the settings had to include 2×56 and 2×64. Once that was checked, when setting up a call you can enter the number two times after selecting the correct switched speed.

4. Comic Relief during Stressful Moments. Since the TWICE-organized Read Across America celebration started in 2001, I’ve worn a full Cat in the Hat suit for our RAA connections. My philosophy is, it gives the students something fun to look at if their connection doesn’t work. And sometimes I end up being the audience for their presentation when the partner school can’t connect. Today a colleague gave me whiskers and a cat nose too. Sometimes you have to be creative to really enjoy all the connections!

5. High school level poetry makes fascinating listening. Only 27 of the 1042 Read Across America connections were high school classes. Several of them connected to my classes and most of them shared student written poetry. Having the audience class give comments and feedback on the poetry enhances this type of exchange even more.

6. What’s the weather? Every VC, with every age, includes a conversation about the weather! We connected with a class in Texas today that had 94 degrees yesterday. Here, 28 degrees and snow. That conversation and comparison always comes up. It’s important, I think! It helps everyone feel connected.

7. Don’t put VC equipment in the computer lab.  This picture shows a class we connected to that had their videoconference equipment in the computer lab. Notice how the computers get in the way and you can hardly see the students. There isn’t a good place to have the students present and hardly any room to set up the display board you can see on the far right. Something to consider with new installations.
15 RAAs down, 23 to go.