Tag Archives: Collaborations

Dream Factory VC Idea

In August I read an article in Wired Magazine titled The Dream Factory where the author designed his own guitar, sent the design to a “fab lab” and for about $1000 received his own guitar back in the mail. Very intriguing in the possibilities!

Of course I’m always thinking of the videoconferencing possibilities! Wouldn’t it be neat to somehow find around $500 for two classes to work together to solve a problem with an invention. You could have one of the classes be a class in New Jersey close to the fab lab mentioned in the article so they could go pick it up and avoid shipping costs. A middle school technology/computer class would work, as well as a high school design/manufacturing class. If the two classes met at the same time, they could easily connect to each other. The two classes could decide together on a program and/or design the problem together. Then they could have teams of students design solutions. A panel of student judges from both classes could pick the winning design. After they send it in, the class in NJ could pick it up, get a tour of the “fab lab” and make an iMovie about it to share with the other class. Maybe they could then ship the “invention” to the partner class?

Just some wild ideas that I thought of when reading that article….

Metablog (thinking about blogging): The cool thing about a blog is you have a place to keep your wild and crazy ideas!

Neighboring District VC Project

Last year, two of my local elementary buildings took on a wonderful project to study the local history between their two cities. With a Rotary Grant, they bought Polycoms for the two buildings, and used the distance learning technology to bridge across the river that is often said to divide their two communities. I encourage you to read more about the Voices of the Twin Cities Past project and do a similar project with a partner class this year!

Exciting New Class!

I’m just today filling out the paperwork for an exciting new class we’ll be offering starting November 1. Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections or K2K VC. 2 graduate credits. 5 months (November to March) with one week of readings/discussion and one K2K videoconference with a partner class each month. Stay tuned for more details. Registration will open sometime after Labor Day.

Here’s the description to tantalize you….

 

Videoconference (VC) connections between classes open up a whole new world of collaborative learning for students! Immerse yourself in videoconference connections with partner classes. Do one kid-to-kid (K2K) videoconference each month during this class. Learn about structures/templates for projects with other classes and implement them with your students and a partner classroom. During the class you’ll reflect on exemplary student-to-student projects, receive support during your own project connections, and apply your learning in your classroom. This class is best for teachers with easy access to videoconference technology. Interested distance learning coordinators or media specialists are strongly encouraged to sign up with a local teacher. 

Constructing Support & Analyzing Errors

I’ve been in a workshop yesterday and today with Diane Paynter, learning about Classroom Instruction That Works. Today we delved deeper into the Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers strategy to look at complex reasoning strategies such as Constructing Support and Analyzing Errors. See Dimensions of Learning p. 162-179 or so.

As always, I’m thinking about videoconference applications to what I’m learning. It seems that these ideas could be used to refine the “debate” videoconference template. One class could present something using the specific Constructing Support complex reasoning process and the viewing class could be Analyzing Errors. (It’s analyzing errors in thinking, that is, not the steps in the skill.) Then the classes could swap and the other class presents. This template could be used on many issues, especially in social studies and science.

There’s also the Analyzing Perspectives method of complex reasoning. In the class we took the issue of cloning, and brainstormed all the people who would have a perspective on the issue. We came up with 10-12 different groups of people and then wrote what they group of people might think for a “yes” position or a “no” position. It’d be interesting to have two classes present four perspectives each on an issue that is as convoluted and controversial as cloning, and then discuss it further after the presentations.

The Best VC Demo Ever!

I’ve been at the Macomb Summer Technology Academy for the last three days presenting The World is Your Classroom with my good VC friend Arnie Comer. We’ve done the usual demo with a content provider to show teachers how videoconferencing works.

We’re also talking about collaborative connections, and another great VC colleague, Ken Conn from Lamar Consolidated ISD, has been giving clues about his location to help teachers see how collaborative projects such as MysteryQuest can happen. Well today we are lucky enough that the students are back in school. So today the clues came from students at Navarro Middle School. The teachers here loved it! It was also amazing and impressive to see how the students were able to remember VCs they did last year and tell our teachers about them. Nothing like hearing about videoconferences from the students’ perspective!

So the next time you do a VC demo, try to include kids if you can!! It’s a wonderful experience for the teachers to see!!

The Next MysteryQuest: Science??

Yes, I’m still reading The World is Flat and thinking about implications for my work in videoconferencing. Consider this!

If President Bush is looking for a similar legacy project, there is one just crying out — a national science initiative that would be our generation’s moon shot: a crash program for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in ten years. (p. 283). 

Could the MysteryQuest format be adapted to a big problem like this? It’s certainly engaging and one that affects high school students who are driving! Whenever we do VC interviews with our senators and representatives, our high school students always ask the gas price question. So they certainly care — and caring about the problem is the first step towards being motivated to work on a solution, right?!

What would this look like for a high school class? The World Environment Day project by Global Leap seems like a good start on this issue. But we need more of these videoconferences! We need them more often! We need them to be global – or at least with two countries participating in each one.

On p. 380-381 are several more “big problems” that might be possibilities for high school science VCs. The Grand Challenges in Global Health project addresses big problems such as

creating effective single-dose vaccines that can be used soon after birth, how to prepare vaccines that do not require refrigeration, how to develop needle-free delivery systems for vaccines, … how to create a full range of optimal bioavailable nutrients in a single staple plant species, how to create immunological methods that can cure chronic infections.

Rick Klausner, who runs these programs for the Gates Foundation, explained the goals of the program,

 

…to make a moral appeal to the scientific imagination …We wanted the Grand Challenges to say these are the most exciting, scientific things that anyone in the world could work on right now… and to actually direct some of the foundation’s resources to see if we could do it.

And finally chapter 12 describes how the author’s Dell computer was made. Very fascinating picture of the supply chain and work flow process around the world.

 

The basic design of the motherboard and case … was designed by an original design manufacturer in Taiwan. We put our engineers in their facilities and they come to Austin and we actually codesign these systems. This global teamwork brings an added benefit – a globally distributed virtually twenty-four-hour-per-day development cycle.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a partner class 12 hours away and do a smaller scale design project like this together?! What a learning experience for all the students involved!

I think I need to talk to our science consultant and some of our high school science teachers….. This won’t be an easily developed format, but will be worth it I think. Do you have any ideas??!! Share a comment!

I’ve finished the book now, so this is the last of the “Flat World and VC” blog entries. In August I’m spending quite a bit of time on the BCISD Field Trip Database, so I’ll be writing about what’s new in the VC content provider arena. It won’t be long before school starts and we start scheduling VCs like crazy!

Group Work at a Distance

Ever since the Keystone Conference last year, I’ve wanted to try out an idea I learned from Carol Fleck and Kim Perry, two teachers who videoconference together on a regular basis to team teach a class. Their presentation at Keystone was titled, Together in the Trenches: Two Teachers Share the REAL Story of Daily Videoconferencing. One thing they shared was how their students work together in groups. To make the two classes into one class, they have groups that are made up of students from both sites. They rotate through using VC, phone, and web communication tools to communicate for group work.

This week with the workshop we’re doing with Lamar and Paris ISD in Texas, most of the groups consist of teachers from each of the three sites. We’ve been rotating between using VC and chat/discussion group spaces. I highly recommend this format! It was certainly challenging for the participants to meet via a chat after doing a VC, but the incredible value of planning a project with teachers that you can actually do the project with! Here’s quote from one of the reflection blogs:

I think that the best part is that you can actually implement what you are planning, because you are already partnered with people from other areas. 🙂

The participants have been great and flexible in using the various technologies to work with each other – even to the point of giving up some of their VC time to another group who needed it more!

So I encourage others of you doing PD to partner up with another site like we did because of the amazing value for the participants in the class.

MysteryQuest Beaches

So this week I’ve also been team teaching a workshop with Bennie Tschoerner, Paris ISD, and Ken Conn, Lamar Consolidated ISD in Texas.

Today we learned about the MysteryQuest project – and did the first professional development version of MysteryQuest…… MQ Beaches! Each of the three sites was assigned two areas of the world and shared two presentations with clues about a beach in that area of the world. It was a lot of fun! We had very creative presentations pulled together in just under an hour – with visuals, props such as towels, sunscreen, and flowers!

Feel free to use this same format and materials in PD you are doing at your site! The websites for the student versions of the MQ formats are: MysteryQuest: World Geography, MysteryQuest USA, and TWICE’s Where in Michigan?

International Gems

So today I went back to the Poster Sessions and the Global Gallery, and found a couple more great VC projects!

The first was Professor Dr. Reima Sado Al-Jarf from King Saud University in Saudia Arabia. She is a professor of ELT and Translation. She shared pictures of their videoconference classrooms and how they are connecting three campuses of the university together in maximize access to instructors. Two of the campuses are for female students and the other one is for male students. I’m so intrigued by how the technology is partially breaking down a traditional barrier, in a way that extends access to instruction to all students, while keeping within the cultural distinction between men & women. It’s very interesting to see how different cultures adapt a technology or communication tool to their specific needs. We had a wonderful conversation about the various uses of videoconferencing in the curriculum.

Next I came around the other side of the table to see videoconferencing from Alberta, presented by Karen Andrews, VC Program Coordinator for the Alberta Education department. Clearly Alberta is doing some very creative things with videoconferencing! Check out their province VC website at VCAlberta.ca. Some stories included:

  • Connecting students with the Ontario Science Center, where students sent their DNA (with permission) to a scientist who discussed the various aspects of DNA related science.
  • Two social studies teachers in Alberta and Ontario connected to Gwen Dyer (sp?) a famous British journalist to discuss the origins of the Mid East conflict so they could help their students understand current events.
  • Connecting 5th grade students, along with their high school mentors, to a famous Canadian artist, Robert Bateman, to learn drawing tips & tricks.
  • Connecting students to a Mars scientist from the Canadian Space Agency.
  • Connecting Calgary students to an expert on Ancient Greece in Toronto with the 12th grade students at her site and discussing the content.
  • Doing “Math Improv” with two high schools and two college math professors. The high school students give each other real-world problems and try to solve them with tips from the professors.

In addition, in the fall they will publish a series of videos on their website to teach VC etiquette etc. This will be a great addition to the VC community.

Plus, best of all, they are doing a huge research project on VC using the Community of Practice Research Model and the results will also be published in the fall.

What a lot I learned from this little poster session!!!!

Now off to fly home. A great conference and I learned lots!

Tag:

Year Long VC Project Format

Sometimes at a conference, you run across the best examples in tucked away in an unlikely place! This morning I went to the Poster Sessions in Grand Hall looking for a specific one on videoconferencing that wasn’t there! But in looking for that poster session, I found another, even better example of creative use of videoconferencing and cross school collaborations.

The project is called Bridges Across the Atlantic, and has been going on for 6 years. Two fourth grade classes, one in Rhode Island, and one in Sweden, connect regularly for projects and curriculum activities throughout the year. This was the first year that they incorporated videoconferencing using a new Polycom.

I need to study their links and projects more to see how this format could be used with many other schools and duplicated….

Tag: