Tag Archives: Collaborations

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I’m working on moving our old distance learning website into my videoconferencing section in new Berrien RESA content management system. It’s a great opportunity to clean up old files. So you’ll see some of these resources get posted here over the next few days as I do some cleaning.

This page was from the collaborative projects we did in 2000-2001, the second year of our videoconferencing program. I find it quite interesting that this list basically has about 10 events. Now we’re doing about 400 a year! (The other half of our 800/year are content providers and PD/meetings.)

Collaboration/Project Events from 2000-2001

  1. July 2001: Summer Literacy K-3 classes shared presentations on what they’d been learning.
  2. March 2001: Galien Spanish students meet with a native Spanish speaking teacher from Eau Claire. Several meetings planned.
  3. Student Career Interviews: Spring, 2001.
  4. Nov. 15, 2000 A Creative Arts Academy class and a Bridgman Elementary class who are pen pals met via videoconferencing, introduced themselves, and share writing, songs, and more.
  5. Sept. 26, 27, 28, 2000 Iowa Underground Railroad Quest. Cassopolis and Benton Harbor classes participating.
  6. Collaboration Planning Sept. 14, 2000, 4-6p.m., ISD DL room. Four projects for the school year were planned during this meeting.
  7. March 2, 2000 St. Joseph High School students read Seuss books to students at Blossomland Learning Center for Read Across America day.
  8. May 22, 2000: 4th grade students share presentations across the state for Michigan Week. This event happens yearly. If you’re interested, email Janine at janine.lim@berrienresa.org.
  9. May 30, 2000: Service Learning Project Sharing Time with Bridgman and Benton Harbor at BCISD, and Coloma, and New Buffalo at their home sites. Students shared an overview of their projects.
  10. July 7, 13, 14, 2000: Summer Literacy K-3 classes shared presentations on what they’d been learning. Benton Harbor, Brandywine, Countryside, Coloma, and Galien. See pictures below.

Collaboration Pictures

Viewing the front of the DL room. Note the second monitor on a cart!
Students from Countryside Charter read stories to the other classes.
Galien students listen attentively.

Other Project Possibilities

Following are some examples of projects and short learning experiences that we could share between sites. Some schools have offered to share the following units/projects. Email their contact person to set up a collaboration.

  • Social studies teachers from Eau Claire and Coloma hope to do a project in October 2000 on election issues
  • A Brandywine English teacher would like to do a project (or more) on Shakespeare where students discuss or share readings and one with drama students sharing their work
  • A Spanish teacher would like to have a game show or quiz bowl
  • A Berrien Springs ESL teacher would like to have her students read to K-2 classes and/or give cultural presentations to classes that are studying the countries the students are from
  • A Cassopolis teacher has a 4 week unit on genetics that he would like to share with another high school
  • Lakeshore HS could share a unit on research skills.
  • Edwardsburg HS could share a unit or two on ACT, SAT prep
  • Marcellus HS could possibly offer a unit on hydroponics with their greenhouse
  • Galien has someone who could possibly do a small unit on Civil War, Military History, Persian Gulf War
  • elementary space camp project
  • financial aid sessions for parents/students
  • Other Ideas include:
  • Special guest speakers for various classes such as career information
  • Quiz bowls
  • Geography Bee
  • Spelling Bee
  • Practice sessions for speeches or presentations
  • Academic Challenge
  • Defensive Driving (a 6 hour training)
  • Plays
  • Professional performers for demonstrations
  • Competitions after school – chess, debate club, etc.
  • Exchange programs – sharing ideas and comparing information
  • Science fair prep sessions
  • Financial aid sessions for parents and seniors
  • Prep sessions for SAT, study skills, etc.
  • Diversity training/experiences
  • Language learning
  • Cultural exchanges
  • Debates between schools
  • Projects across schools such as the GM project where students at a high school in Detroit collaborated to construct a car and asked advice from GM engineers
  • Communicate with authors

Nice list of ideas, isn’t it?! Did you learn anything new?

Evaluation Strategies for Videoconferencing

Here are some strategies for evaluating your videoconferences.

Evaluation with Students

Discuss the following questions after the videoconference.

  • What did we learn from the other school (content, process, and culture)?
  • What did we do well in the videoconference?
  • What can we improve next time?
  • What did we learn about videoconferencing from the partner school?

Content Evaluation

  • Evaluate the students’ understanding of the content in traditional ways (tests, quizzes, etc.)
  • Discuss with students how content knowledge was used in the videoconference and how their understanding was refined or extended.

Presentation Evaluation

  • Use rubrics from http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ or other sources to evaluate the students’ presentations.
  • Discuss what worked well with students in presenting via videoconferencing and what could be improved.

Teacher Reflection

  • Consider the following questions.
  • How did the videoconference enhance or extend the students’ understanding of the topic?
  • Was the videoconference technology transparent or did it interfere with the learning?
  • What could make the interaction more effective?

A Novel in an Hour

Are you subscribed to Roxanne Glaser’s blog? If not, you missed a great write-up of her workshop on Sunday morning of the ISTE 10 conference.

Unfortunately I was flying, so I missed it!

Roxanne is a master at using collaborative asynchronous tools to support the videoconference project. Here’s the description of her workshop to convince you to check out her blog and wiki.

This session will model social constructivist learning theory using videoconferencing and supportive technologies. It will be an experience where participants will actually take chapters from the novel, create presentations using wikis, webcams, cameras, etc, and then share and connect to experts and others via video conference. This session is designed for teachers and technologists who would like to engage reluctant intermediate and middle school students to read and write. The mixing of Skype/video conferencing and Web 2.0 technologies is a fundamental principal to increasing and improving the learning opportunities afforded students participating in a distance-learning, “virtual field trip,” style learning event.

Blended Learning for the 21st-Century Classroom

SIG IVC Showcase: Elaine Shuck, Polycom, Inc.

Elaine started with a cute video clip about a student waking up in the morning to get engaged.

Polycom Special Events

She described the Polycom Special Event with blind author Jim Stovall, as well as other events: Dr. Ben Carson, Evelyn Coleman, Laurie Keller, Sarah Miller, Elizabeth Raum, Sue Stauffacher, Susan Thoms, Margaret Willey, Amy Young, Janie Panagopoulos; and other events for Black History Month, Women’s History Month.

Registration opens on September 1st inside CAPspace: Collaborations Around the Planet, where also registration happens for Read Around the Planet and teachers can post their own collaborations as well.

The programs are popular and fill up in a few hours, so get ready to register!

They also described a partnership with Global Nomads Group and showed how the lesson plans etc. are posted on the Polycom Special Events wiki.

The Polycom Special Events are free for Polycom customers, and there are only 5 slots for each session. They ask that only one school per district register for each event to make room for everyone.

The ASK Process

Sue Porter explained the ASK process: Ask, Specialist, Knowledge, where the students read a book, journal, write good questions, and then interview an author or a specialist. The video shown during the session is linked here at the top of the page.

Sessions in the Polycom Booth

Also FYI, there are a whole bunch of 30 min sessions throughout the conference at the Polycom booth – on CAPspace, with Global Nomads, with Andy Campbell at LearnNCO, and CMA Desktop, the new desktop videoconferencing tool; among other things.

Attendance: This session was JAM PACKED – it was great to see the large number of people interested in videoconferencing!

Video Conferencing to Promote Global Learning

Global Poster Session: Diane Midness, iEARN-USA with Tonya Muro Phillips, Global Nomads Group.

Last night in the poster sessions, Diane and Tonya explained how GNG and iEARN partnered to extend the learning in the GNG videoconferences. Global Nomads does amazing programs by taking videoconferencing equipment onsite to remote locations throughout the world.

Featured programs included Haiti and Uganda, and you can see more clips of their programs online here.

Tonya and Diane talk to interested poster session participants.

It was great to see how GNG and iEARN have partnered. GNG is good at videoconferencing, and iEARN is good at the asynchronous online community. The iEARN sites provide follow-up and continued conversations between the schools that participated in the kick-off videoconferencing.  A great model!

Learning Beyond the Horizon: Global Learning through Videoconferencing

Sunday ISTE Global Poster Session: Presenter: Carol Scott, Mustang Public Schools with Lynn Tilley
Videoconference ideas, examples, and success that empower students to become integrated 21st-century learners with global travel and collaborative projects.

Carol Scott had a sweet poster session last night with lots of interested people attending. Her online resources and links should be online here soon (but isn’t there yet).

Note all the cool VCs represented by Carol’s poster:

The poster session was well attended. See the crowd gathered around:

A few pics of Carol enthusiastically sharing with the attendees:

This was a great poster session, and I was so happy to see videoconferencing represented so well!

Looking back to Jazz; Looking forward to ISTE

June has been crazy for me – hence the quietness on this blog! I sure have a list of things to post though. Maybe in July you’ll get to hear about them!

June 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing.

Shane Howard, of Whirlidurb, gives VC etiquette tips in a very entertaining format!

The June session of Jazz was again an amazingly stellar experience! Take a few moments to browse some of the resources used and generated during the workshop:

TWICE Retreat
The rest of this week I’m off to the TWICE retreat – watch for an announcement of Read Around the Planet dates for next year. (The calendar is a little weird. Not sure how it’s going to shake out yet!)

ISTE SIG IVC Playground

Next week I’ll be at ISTE – hanging out in the showcases on Monday (look for the brunette pirate); presenting a cool new CAPspace feature in the Polycom booth on Tuesday, and helping with the SIG IVC Pirate playground on Wednesday. If you’re going to be at ISTE, don’t miss the playground! We’re giving away $4000 worth of free programs from content providers, plus other cool pirate treasure.

Also, be sure to review this list of ISTE videoconferencing happenings.

I’ll be blogging the conference of course, so prepare to be inundated with what I’m learning. Particularly I’m hoping to write about what I learn about the 4 desktop VC tools featured at the playground.

Finally, Google Ads.

Lastly, it has come to my attention that wordpress is putting GoogleAds on my blog. It costs $30 a year to get rid of them. I never see them because I’m logged in! Do you see them? Are they annoying? Do they come in your RSS reader / email? I am just wondering what you, my readers, think of them and if I should do something different. Thanks for your feedback!

Hope your summer is going well and stay tuned for news from ISTE!!

4th Grade Videoconference Recommendations

This morning I opened up early bird registration for my schools for next year’s videoconferences. I always offer to give advice on selecting programs. My first request came from a 7th grade science teacher who loves videoconferencing, and is moving to fourth grade. I thought I’d share here what I told her.

Preview Calendar

I always make a preview calendar for my schools that is by month and grade level. The information on this page applies only to my schools, but you might find it interesting as an example. I don’t have it done for 2010-2011 yet, but my teachers can still use it as a guide right now to plan for next year.

Social Studies

The fourth grade social studies curriculum covers: “Using the context of the United States, fourth grade students learn significant social studies concepts within an increasingly complex social environment. They examine fundamental concepts in geography, civics and government, and economics through the lens of Michigan history and the United States.”

My top four for this area are:

Language Arts

The top choice here is:

Science

This is what I said to my teacher: “Plus you might want to do a science content provider program. Other fourth grade classes this year did mini-grants for these programs. (My schools apply for mini-grants for our assistance in paying for content providers. Districts must contribute at least $25 towards the cost of the program.)

Those are the only science content provider programs my 4th grade teachers did this year. I know there are many others; and have on my todo list to update our GLCE guides to videoconferencing for the new curriculum. But it isn’t done yet. Feel free to comment if you have other recommendations for 4th grade science.

Compare this list to the 4th grade Best VCs List I did in 2005. The 4th grade social studies curriculum has changed since then, but the science recommendations are still great.

Light and Shadows with Wales, UK

Today we have a 2nd grade class connecting to Wales to share what they’ve been learning about light and shadows, via puppet shows.

First the students in the UK told us about some of the light-related vocabulary and facts they learned. Then they told a story about a worm with rhyme and shadow puppets, as well as the story of Goldilocks and the three bears and other fairy tales.

Then Calvin Britain students shared their shadow puppet stories, using their bodies to create the visuals. The effect was very neat, but is hard to capture in a still image:

Afterwards the students asked each other questions and learned about their communities! This was a very visually creative videoconference! Great work on the part of teachers and students!

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, Do You Match?

Today we had another videoconference with a class in Wales, UK. This collaboration is a result of the Jazz workshop and is a spin-off of the Monster Match format. Both classes created teddy bears, wrote descriptions, and emailed them to the partner classes. Then they made each other’s teddy bears. Today’s videoconference was to see how well they matched. The students in this videoconference were preschool 5/6 year olds.

Teddy Bear

Each child from both classes had brought a teddy bear from home to show on camera.

The classes enjoyed comparing the teddy bears and seeing what was the same and where they had challenges. We found out that students in Wales don’t use the term “curly cues” and weren’t sure how to draw that on the teddy bear they made to match ours.

The classes also spent some time asking each other questions, such as:

  • Do you watch TV and what programs do you watch?
  • What time is it there?

They also compared how their countries address chicken pox – in the UK several students were off because they had chicken pox. None of our students have had it since they had a shot for it.

Our partner class in the UK also showed us a teddy bear they made with recycled materials that will be the mascot for their Eco Committee.

The students in Wales also sang a song to our students in Welsh, along with fun actions to say goodbye.

This format is so easy and enjoyable for young students. They learn so much from the program – speaking and listening skills, as well as drawing, describing, comparing, and of course what children are like in another country.