Tag Archives: Collaborations

MacBeth High School Collaboration

Today I watched two classes interact in an amazing celebration of the study of Macbeth. Both classes had divided students into groups to prepare presentations and skits. We had a RAP, an mini-opera, as well as posters and skits. One of the skits included light saber swords, which the students really enjoyed seeing! Another group had prepared quiz questions for the partner class to answer, testing their knowledge. Our class even mailed a DVD of their Macbeth performance to our partner class in Louisiana.

Students asked each other several questions, including:

  • How many of you are moving up to the next level, i.e. college?
  • When do you graduate?
  • How many seniors do you have?

This was a great collaboration! Students were clearly engaged in their presentations, and the content of the story was reinforced by seeing the presentations by the other classes.

Regarding high school scheduling challenges, both schools rearranged schedules and brought two classes to the connection so that everyone could be involved. It seemed to work out great!

International VCs and Service Learning

Today we have several amazing videoconferences for our rural students in Berrien County.

EcoConversations

Reed Middle School, in Bridgman, is connecting to a class in the UK to discuss environmental issues. The class in the UK shared with us information about carbon emissions, including some great posters and a RAP that started with:

hey hey, we’re here today, to tell our friends in the USA about CO2

Our students shared the issues around bottled water including health, media advertising, costs, public water supplies and more. After the thorough presentations, students asked each other questions about the weather, their school systems, uniforms. The students clearly enjoyed the interaction and learned from the other class.

Stand Up, Speak Out with MAGPI

Lakeshore Middle School has been participating in a unique serving learning program with MAGPI. In the kick-off conference, students interviewed holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann Klein. As a follow-up, they participated in service learning projects and reported on the results on the project wiki. In today’s session the schools at each site are reflecting on their experiences with service learning and the impact of the program on their understanding.

Talking to Students in Haiti with Global Nomads Group

Upton Middle School and St. Joseph High School are participating in the Global Nomads Group program with students in Haiti. You can read more about it here. The program was a two part connection, starting the conversation with the students in Haiti on Monday and continuing today. The participating classes are also raising money for Haiti through StudentsRebuild.org. You can see part of the action: watch the live webcast on Friday, March 26 at 12:00 Eastern. More details on the GNG home page. These are incredibly powerful experiences, as students hear the stories of the students in Haiti, building empathy and understanding. We also were moved by the interaction of between Haitian students in Florida and the students in Haiti. GNG’s programs are always incredible!

Seems like these VCs are a great way to celebrate this blog’s 5th anniversary! 5 Years since that first post!

Videoconference Food Shows!

One of our local culinary arts classes is participating in a collaboration today with a school in Pennsylvania. Both classes are culinary arts classes and each class prepared a food demonstration. Teachers negotiated ahead of time what all would be included in the videoconference.

Our class made pretzels:

Their class made doughnuts:

Afterwards, the students asked each other questions about what they are learning in class; their school life; etc.

A simple collaboration; but another great way to apply the videoconference exchange format to a career tech class!

Videoconferencing with India

Cross-blogged with the Official MACUL Conference Blog.

This morning I had a nice turn out for my session on Instructional Strategies That Work with Videoconferencing: Global Interactive Collaborations. The main feature of our session was a connection to students in India who shared information and pictures about the famous temple in their town. I thought you all might enjoy some of the pictures from the students’ presentations and the interaction. The group had some excellent questions for the students. I had them do a KWL before the connection so we’d get higher quality questions. We also talked about Marzano’s strategies and how to use them to increase interactive in videoconferencing; and talked about logistics of videoconferencing and other resources.

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Monster Match with Roxanne Glaser

Cross-blogged with the Official MACUL Conference Blog.

Last session of Thursday, and we’re interacting with Roxanne Glaser from Whirlidurb, telling us about the Monster Match videoconference project format.

It’s a matching project. Classes make monsters and describe them, send the descriptions to each other; make each other’s monsters; and then VC to see how well they match.
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Roxanne started by having all the participants work together to draw a monster and write descriptions.

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Participants drawing monsters.

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Two of the session participants try to match Roxanne’s descriptions.

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Roxanne shows her drawing from the directions from two of the participants; leading a discussion of similarities and differences.

Finally, Roxanne had us watch a video of a Monster Match connection with 3rd grade students; and play eye spy – look for best practice, collaboration and 21st century skills, and curriculum skills.

There are several iterations of this project that have been posted on CAPspace, which is a great place to find partners for these types of videoconference projects.

Be sure to read Roxanne’s write-up and resources too!

Do L.A.P.'s for Michigan!

Cross-blogged with the Official MACUL Conference Blog.

Blogging the first videoconferencing session in the TWICE room. Arnie Comer is presenting; and we are videoconferencing with Eagle Lake Elementary in Edwardsburg, MI and Great Oaks Elementary in the Anchor Bay district.

The session is about LAPS: LAPS focuses on selected state parks of Michigan, and each class presents part of the lesson. Macomb ISD offers this program in conjunction with Edco Publishing to statewide schools. Read more here.

February covers Waterloo State Park, and these two classes we’re connected to – are sharing their classroom presentation to us.

Eagle Lake presented first – they told us about the petosky stones and other stones with a venn diagram.

Great Oaks students presented to us about paleontology and the study of bones. Their presentation included flashing lights to travel back in time. Very cute, students were the dinosaurs back in time.

Afterwards, the audience asked the teachers and students questions.

  • How long did you take to prepare? About three class periods.
  • What materials do you use to prepare? The LAPS materials and other online and print materials.
  • What do the students enjoy best about participating in LAPS? We like everything about it. It’s fun to do. I like it because we work together to learn and we get to teach other people about what we learned.

After we disconnected, Arnie told us more about what each session includes:

  • Class introductions
  • Video of the state park
  • Classroom presents
  • Drawing lesson
  • Goodbyes

The materials for LAPS are all on the Macomb ISD Blackboard site. The program is open to all students; free; funded by Edco and Macomb ISD.

Here are some pictures from the session:

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Before the session started, a view of the two presenting classes and the PPT set up, etc.

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Anchor Bay kids doing a cool skit.

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Another shot of the skit….

Thanks Arnie for a great presentation!

Don’t forget to fit a TWICE session into your MACUL conference. We’re in Gallery Overlook G and page 14 in your conference booklet has an overview of all the TWICE sessions!

MACUL's Phenomenal Support of Videoconferencing

Cross-blogged with the Official MACUL Conference Blog.

Today as I was riding up to the 2010 MACUL Conference, I was thinking how lucky we are in Michigan to have consistent support for the TWICE videoconferencing sessions at our ed tech conference, year after year after year…

Sometimes I listen to VC buddies in other states and I can’t think of very many (any?) that consistently and annually plan to have a videoconference session at every single breakout time slot during the conference.

So this is a thank you from a long time TWICE board member, and videoconferencing fan, who loves to see this particular technology supported and promoted every year. Thank you MACUL!! And thank you to the MACUL support staff and volunteers who sometimes stand on their heads to make VC work on the conference network!

A MACUL Conference Success Story

Selection from Read Around the Planet Image Gallery
A selection from the Read Around the Planet photo gallery.

Sometimes it’s nice to know the results of the conference. And once in a while, it even gets in the paper! Here’s a story from Owosso, MI:

  • Computer teacher attends MACUL conference.
  • Stops by the TWICE room, learns about videoconferencing and CAPspace (TWICE’s social networking site for videoconferencing).
  • Gets access to videoconferencing (Polycom PVX)
  • Signs up for Read Around the Planet
  • Luckily gets one of the 13 (out of 1950) UK partners
  • Gets written up in the paper.

And it all started at the MACUL conference!

Cool, huh?!

If you’re at MACUL this week, don’t forget to stop by the TWICE room for a videoconference session! Gallery Overlook G!

Read Around the Planet Day 10

Rural Hall kids teach their partner class in MI about the rainforest. Photo Credit: Linda McDermon.

Well, it’s the last official day of Read Around the Planet, a bitter sweet ending. I’m sad because RAP is an amazing two weeks, but I’m glad because now I can rest a bit!

As usual, it’s not really over! I had 70 Read Around the Planet sessions, and 56 of them are finished successfully. But I still have the reschedules:

  • 9 between now and the end of March (remember March is Reading Month!)
  • 5 that are still working on rescheduling

Here are some tips for rescheduling:

  • Reply to everyone involved!
  • Start by suggesting some dates and times.
  • Texas has spring break March 15-19 (I only mention because there are 400+ classes from TX doing RAP this year, so your odds of having a RAP with TX are pretty high.)
  • If you have a UK connection, don’t forget about daylight savings time! During March 14-28, US EST is only 4 hours off of UK time; not the usual 5!
  • Be patient and persistent! March is Reading Month! We’ve even had some RAP connections all the way into May! It’s ok. Just follow through with your partner!

And of course, don’t forget to do the evaluation!

Read Around the Planet Day 9

Day 9 of Read Around the Planet and I had 13 connections today – we went to NY, TX, PA, VA, and Alberta, Canada.

Pictures

Here are a few snapshots from today’s connections.


A skit about red riding hood. Lots of great props and costumes in the VCs today.

I love this background. It says: We (heart) Michigan.

One of our partner classes couldn’t hear us. So I switched to my computer (which was hooked up from MysteryQuest last week) and started writing to them to trouble shoot. It got solved in time!

Evaluation

Did you get the email about the RAP 2010 Evaluation form? Please make sure you complete it! This data helps provide continued support for the project!

Preliminary Report

The final RAP report will include the evaluation data, but an initial report of numbers is now posted on the TWICE Read Around the Planet website. Check it out here.

Read Around the Planet Day 8: Evaluation Strategies

RAP picture posted on Flickr and tagged RAP2010 by Linda McDermon (also in the Kid2Kid class).

So, how are you evaluating your Read Around the Planet connections?

One of my RAP teachers is also taking the Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections class. In this class, participants end by evaluating the experience. The teachers tell how they evaluated the students’ learning, and how they evaluated the VC with the students. Here is an answer from Nichole Dohm, Eagle Lake Elementary:

Monday morning was my videoconference with Moorhead Minnesota. The conference went well and the students really enjoyed themselves. Today I passed out a quiz on the information presented at the videoconference to evaluate what exactly my students learned from the videoconference experience.

The second activity I gave my students was a self evaluation rubric. We had discussed during our planning the expectations I had of each group before and during the videoconference. This rubric went along with the expectations discussed. My student did very well on the quiz that I gave them with simple recall of facts presented by the other school. A large part of my preparation was focused on “active listening”, so the recall of facts was a quick way to check if they were engaged.

I also asked students what they would like to do next for a videoconference. I was amazed by the enormous amount of feedback this question elicited. I had suggestions ranging from author studies, monster books, Tall Tales, and connecting with new and different schools. I was so excited to see their enthusiasm shine through the project.

Are you evaluating your RAP connections? In what ways?