Tag Archives: Content Providers

Monster Match and Other Halloween Themed VCs

This has been a Halloween themed week of videoconferences. It was our first busy week since October state testing ended. Here are the programs we enjoyed:

Monster Match

09-10-30blob1
This monster's name is "The Blob."

09-10-30blob2We had 21 classes participate in Monster Match with Region 12, and 1 class do Monster Exchange with Dallas ISD. Be sure to read more about how Region 12 runs Monster Match here, here, and here. There are other methods of doing this project – see Dallas ISD and Humble ISD‘s pages. I noticed a lot of Monster Match copycat projects in CAPspace too.

Scary Art

We have an 8th/9th grade art teacher that annually participates in Scary Art with Arielle at The Cleveland Museum of Art. Paintings not for the faint of heart! The class that participated this year was a drawing/painting class and the program fit well with their studies.

Dia de los Muertos

A 6th grade Spanish class (teacher was a Jazz 09 grad) had 3 classes participate in the new Dia de los Muertos program with the Cleveland Museum of Art. It’s a “special request” program not even on their listing. The presentation could have been in all Spanish, but ours students weren’t ready for that. So we had partial Spanish, mostly English. The program includes an art project making a skeleton. Students really enjoyed it and learned all about the celebration.

Boo! I’m a Bat!

A preschool class connected to the Cleveland Zoo for their Boo I’m a Bat presentation, led by an educator in a witch costume. Students learned all about bats.

Day of the Dead

Tommy Bearden invited my schools to participate with his national audiences for a Day of the Dead all day celebration. I wasn’t able to get anyone to sign up soon enough to actually present, but I have 5 high schools connected all day with Spanish classes rotating in and out watching throughout the day.

halloweenslimetimeHalloween Slime Time

Finally, I have a first grade class that every year participates in Halloween Slime Time on the states of matter with the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. This is a great program with hands-on experiments for each pair of students. Highly interactive and visually appealing!

Next…

Next week we move into our ASK programs with ASK Specialist: Stellaluna, interviewing bat experts at Cranbrook.

So have you done any of these VCs or similar ones? Please share and comment on your experience/recommendations…

Links for Tech It Up 2009

Greetings to my Tech It Up International 2009 audience in British Columbia! Here are some resources we’re using in my sessions today.

Designing Quality Interactive Classroom Projects for Videoconferencing

Resources for Collaborations

Berrien RESA Collaborations

Collaborations Around the Planet

Read Around the Planet

Enriching Your Curriculum with Interactive Videoconferencing

TWICE Information
Berrien RESA Resources

More Information

Energy with LearnNCO

This morning one of our middle schools has four sessions of Energy with Andy Campbell at LearnNCO. Andy’s videoconferences are some of our favorite videoconferences. He mixes hands-on activities with lots of thinking and predicting what might happen if…

Andy has a great sense of humor and really engages the students in the conversation. For each activity, a couple volunteers come up to demonstrate the experiment. All the students are involved in predicting what might happen during that experiment.

Andy models how to set up the experiment with the tennis ball on top of the basketball.
Andy models how to set up the experiment with the tennis ball on top of the basketball.

Students are learning about kinetic energy, potential energy, sound energy, light energy, transfer of energy, chemical energy and more. One of my favorite activities involves the basketball and tennis ball to show the transfer of energy. It’s always fun to hear what students predict will happen “the tennis ball will roll off the basketball”, and their reaction with the result: “whoa, wow, ahhhh!”

What makes the bubbles in the water?
What makes the bubbles in the water?

In another experiment, batteries are hooked to pencil lead in water, which creates bubbles in the water. After hooking it up, Andy asks the students how it works. What is it doing? What makes the bubbles? Students draw on their prior knowledge to figure it out.

From the sounds in the classroom, you can tell students are engaged, enjoying the activities, and expanding their understanding of science principles. Great programs, Andy!

Animal Adaptations: San Diego Zoo

This morning New Buffalo Elementary is connecting to the San Diego Zoo for the last videoconference of the school year.

San Diego Zoo birdsThe program began with students reviewing what adaptations are and introducing students to the videoconference format. Next the students predict what animal she will bring out after giving some information, and the students saw the birds and identified the adaptations that the birds have – wings, beaks, etc.

HedgehogThe program includes other small live animals, clips of large animals like the polar bear. During the whole session the presenter is asking questions to get the students to think about the adaptations and how the adaptations help the animal.

This group of students were very well prepared with questions like:

  • What kind of habitat does this animal live in?
  • How would you feel if this animal went extinct?

Students also learned very interesting facts about the various animals. Did you know that giraffes love raw onions?

The students really enjoyed this program and learned lots about animal adaptations. This was our first time to the San Diego Zoo, and I think we’ll be going again, if we can continue to work around their policy of not taking school POs!

Some Updates: Projects Booklet & Survey Results

Just a quick little update for those of you following and using my resources.

Videoconference Project Templates Booklet 4th Edition

The 2009 version of the “projects booklet” is online as of today. I was all excited to add more templates based on my Marzano study, but I ran into a 40 page limit on booklets in Word. So now I’m thinking about some other options for publishing, and Lulu is looking good (suggested by Danny Maas!). Between Roxanne, Arnie and I, we have a lot more tips and information and lesson ideas that could be published. Lulu seems good because we could keep the cost low. If you have any thoughts on this idea, please comment!

Teachers’ Choice Content Provider Survey

We have received all the votes for this year’s content provider survey and are tallying the results to share online. They should be up online and shared on the listservs the first week of June. Thank you to over 500 people who voted!

Stay tuned for additional resources and tips starting again in June.

Green = IVC Hybrid

Several presenters from South Central Kansas Education Service Center are doing a session on videoconferencing at TxDLA. Kay Highbarger, Executive Director is doing the presentation.

They have 4 teachers on staff, including one from China who teaches full length Chinese classes as well as short Chinese culture programs.

50 daily classes daily high school over their network

Also special topics – Chinces, Spanish and Careers for middle and high school students.

Audra May, the tech support, has a PVX in her office to do test calls and connect classes.

“windshield time” is getting cut, VC is a solution for staff development. Districts don’t come in any more for training, “we will go to them”.

Early Literacy Discovery Time with Mrs. Goose is a very popular program they offer. She told the story about a class in Texas that sang happy birthday to her in the session. “Texans are just great!” It’s not just us in Michigan that love to connect to Texas!

They are working to show their schools that “are too good” to need distance learning services to help them realize their students can benefit from these full length courses as well.

They have a really cool 3D thing, but all their equipment didn’t come. They have pictures of how they put these 3D objects in both sites and it’s 3D right in the middle of you. It’s hard to visualize and know what they mean without actually seeing it. Can’t find any info on it on their website either.

The sender manipulates the object, but the receiver can’t manipulate it. They can also put the object on the server so all the classes can get it. That’s how Bill Baker described it. He’s at Navigator Development. It’s HD plus 3D. I know I’m not describing it well but linked to what I could find by Googling. It can also work with 3D glasses. Bill’s company creates content for schools as they ask for it – and then you own the content. You could then sell it to other places if you want. There are about 100 of these applications (brain, ATV, etc.) made and they are building them all the time. Another person said that you can import other 3D content – and there are thousands of those too. For example the content on Turbo Squid. They are working towards putting in this $100,000 ish room plus setting up one of their staff to create 3D content. It would be only at the education service center but not at the districts – because they are receiving it.

In addition to doing programming for schools, they reach out to the community, community colleges, higher ed, senior centers, etc.

They are the first service center for their state doing HD – they have Polycom HD carts in their schools and really enjoy it.

Featuring Texas State Aquarium

Second breakout session at TxDLA. About 40 people in this session. Wish I could also be in Angela Conrad’s Texas History Mystery session, but I wanted to learn something completely new. So here I am in a session featuring the Texas State Aquarium, which is just a few blocks from the conference center. I think every conference like this (i.e. NECC etc) ought to feature the content providers that are close by, so it’s great to see this one featured. It’s also nice to see a new provider (new to me at least)!

Texas State Aquarium programs include teacher packets and cover all grade levels and topics such as Coral Reef Under Construction, Surviving Earth’s Ecosystems, Marine Careers, Oceanography, and Alternative Energy Sources. The sessions are 50 minutes, and they use 8 real time cameras!

Adrianna, one of the VC presenters came on site to talk to us. She gave us a nice overview of their programs. One of their cameras is in the water by their coral reef exhibit. In the coral reef program the students make a coral reef out of Legos! How cool is that! In the water program, they have a kinesthetic activity where all the students act out the structure of ice, water, and gas. Their programs include video clips from the scientists onsite. The example was of one of the vets checking out a bird to see if it is healthy. The turtle program has a little puppet show. The dolphin program has nice clips of each of their dolphins and the tricks they can do. Video clips are sprinkled throughout their programs. Another program, Float Your Boat, is a design program where the students figure out how to float their boat with the cargo of marbles.

Their programs each have very specific grade levels, partly because they are targeting the Texas standards. But they are very willing to tailor the programs to another grade level or adjust as needed for teachers. They are willing to develop/tailor programs by request too.

Gulf packages are $150 for 1-40 students. In Ocean packages, they actually mail materials and those are $200 for 1-40 students.

I definitely want to try out their programs next school year. Nice variety of programming with a mix of great visuals, hands-on activities, and teacher packets. It’s also nice to have another source for these types of programs when Mote Marine fills up too fast!

Woohoo! Finally wireless Internet in a session.

Sharks, Turtles and more in Florida

This post is cross-posted at the MACUL conference blog.

Mote MarineThis morning in the TWICE room, we’re off to Florida to the SeaTrek program at the Mote Marine Laboratory. This is one of the TWICE discount providers, so if your ISD/RESA is a member, you’ll get that discount. Arnie Comer, Macomb ISD, is the facilitator for this session.

SeaTrek of course starts off with their high energy intro with video clips. When Kasey came on, the person behind me said, “Can she see me?” Yes she can! And, it’s supposed to be 80 in Florida today!

Kasey gave us a nice overview of the game show on shark myths, full of shark facts and shark myths. Lots of Mote Marinegrins and chuckles throughout the program. The game show is full of graphics and fun sounds. Did you know in 2001 60,000ish people were injured by toilets. In that same record breaking year, 55 people were injured by sharks.

We also learned about the Manatee program, the Sea Turtle program, the Coral Reefs program, and all about their programs.

They are full for the year, and this is their first year that they filled up. They filled up in October, but that was unprecedented. Still they are very popular and amazing, and you’ll want to start registering in August for next year.

Animal Behavior at the Buffalo Zoo

This post is cross-posted at the MACUL conference blog.

Last TWICE session of the day, not quite so packed but still a great group. Presenters are Linda McConville, 4th grade teacher, and Diane Nye, media specialist, at E. P. Clarke Elementary, in St. Joseph, MI.

Videoconferences their school has done are the ASK programs, the Macomb ISD LAPs programs, the Voices project, collaborations with the UK and Alberta, connections with the Columbus Zoo, LEARNnco, the Cleveland Institute of Music, ASK Stellaluna, a connection with Pakistan, Read Around the Planet to name a few.

Handouts for this session included those from the Buffalo Zoo for the Animal Behavior, the Search Help page and Region 12’s content provider review page.

Rebecca gave us a quick overview of what they do, and then gave us a feel of the Animal Behavior program.

We saw a blue tongued skink and identified behaviors it might do. In the rainforest exhibit (via a live camera), we looked for some animals that use behaviors and adaptations to attract mates. We saw many different kinds of visuals …. including a tiny hummingbird egg. “Imagine a bird hatching out of a tic-tac!”

After the program demo, then we saw some of the live exhibit cameras, including a gorrilla who was picking bird seed out of hay.

Teachers got to ask questions, and learned more about how they offer programs, cost, logistics, etc.

Thanks to the Buffalo Zoo for giving us a great overview of their programs and to all the teachers who attended so late in the afternoon!

If you want to learn more about videoconferencing, come to the sessions tomorrow in W2-66!

Visiting Wales, then MSU Museum

This post is cross-posted at the MACUL conference blog.

It’s the first session after Alan November, and the TWICE room (W2-66) is jam packed with participants anxious to learn virtual field trips. Greg Marten, Lenawee ISD is presenting How Do I Find A Virtual Field Trip? Look TWICE!

After an introduction to videoconferencing, we connected to Lynsey Russell‘s class at Woodlands Elementary in Cwmbran, Wales to hear their Read Around the Planet presentation that they did with Ohio a couple weeks ago. The class started with a little introduction of geography of the UK. Then they sang us a song. The kids were so cute in their red, white and black uniforms. Huge round of applause from the teachers in the audience. We heard a Welsh song, and then a poem about a dragon in English. The poem was about the dragon who ate the school. Complete with actions and wonderful expression! Wonderful performance poetry.

One of the participants on the front row sang all the songs with the students and did the actions. She had Welsh background so that was a nice connection!

We had a chance to ask them questions:

  • What is the weather like?
  • What kinds of things do you do on the playground? (football, cricket, and basketball)
  • Do they learn Welsh in school?

After going to Wales, we got online for a while. People with laptops went to the TWICE website. The Projects section is where you can learn about connections like we did with Wales. The rest of the session focused on videoconference programs or field trips and how to search the Berrien RESA Videoconference Program Database. Participants learned about the TWICE discounts and other features.

Next, we headed over to the Michigan State University Museum to hear about their programs.

They gave us a tour of their studio – a little closet when you look offline. They have a green screen, which is of course very neat and makes it easy to see the visuals and the presenter at the same time. We got a nice overview of their programs: evolution, adaptations, and termites. We also heard crickets, saw pictures and video clips of various creatures. MSU Museum is one of the more affordable providers, with a cost of $50 per session.

If you haven’t seen a videoconference yet, plan to stop by the TWICE room (W2-66) for one of the upcoming sessions!