Tag Archives: iste10

Problem-Based Instruction and 21st-Century Classrooms

SIG IVC Showcase: Jill Dingman, Pinal County ITv Consortium with Bev Mattocks and Nick Trakas

Description: Videoconference with junior high students and their teachers to learn how problem-based instruction and videoconferencing have helped create 21st-century classrooms in rural Arizona.

From the handout for the session:

This five-year project was originally funded by Enhancing Education Through Technology, The Pinal County ITv Partnership. Currently in its third year, the project uses videoconferencing for teacher professional development and student collaboration and instruction. Teams of seventh and eighth grade students and their teachers work to solve a complex community problem. Subjects including English, Social Studies, Science, Math, the Arts, Physical Education and Technology are used in real-world context. Students are required to present their findings and solutions to the community each year.

The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) has provided teacher professional development through its Vistas project. Interdisciplinary teacher teams trained intensively for 30 hours at the beginning of the project and meet monthly with their trainer, Bev Mattocks, throughout the school year.

Check out the pictures of the bee project here.

Virtual Visit Professional Development

SIG IVC Showcase: Anthony Negron, New York Hall of Science with Chris Lawrence

This showcase was jam packed as well; with an actual experience of a content provider showcase videoconference with the New York Hall of Science. They showcased their program: Journey Inside the Eye with an actual cow’s eye dissection.

Photo by Paul Hieronymus.

NY Hall of Science has great programs and everyone enjoyed getting to experience the programs just as students do.

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!

A Shared Professional Development Session: Canada and United States

ISTE IVC Showcase: Monica Cougan, CILC with Janet Barnes and Lance Ford

In this section, they described, 22 sites across the U.S. and Canada to a district that has sites across the two countries.

In the PD, the teachers were learning how to be interactive in teaching full courses over videoconferencing. Doug’s emphasis was to take the same things you do well in a face to face class and to figure out how to do that the same way with students who are learning in a full length videoconferencing class. They split the groups into two sessions – Tonia Carriger teaching one group; and Doug teaching another group. Then the groups split apart into small groups to have discussions. The presenters would pop in and out of the different rooms. This was done with Lance Ford’s Tandberg bridge. The teacher participants wrote lessons together in the small groups and presented them at the end of the week.

Cool VC Strategy Tip

  • Doug Meyer, CILC, described how he had the participants “huddle up” i.e. zoom really close in on the faces. It brought the group together and helped people feel closer to each other. After the huddle, they introduced themselves to learn more.

Building Community

Monica Cougan described how the format of the videoconference and the multiple sessions allowed a community to be created.

Lance Ford described how teachers have great strategies and lessons, and all that needs to be done is to wrap the technology around that. Teachers don’t have to change how they are teaching to teach over videoconference.

What is an MCU/Bridge?

Lance talked a bit about how each site can change their layout on the screen (Tandberg Codian MCU). Lance says: “an MCU is just a schoolhouse with a bunch of rooms” – and each site in the participants dialed in to the other rooms to do small groups or other activities.

CILC PD Marketplace

Monica explained the CILC Professional Development Marketplace and featured some of the various sessions that are listed there.

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!