Tag Archives: RUS Grant

Gingerbread Boy

This morning we have the second class from Marcellus Elementary participating in The Gingerbread Boy from the Center for Puppetry Arts. This wildly popular program is getting to be as hard as the heart surgery programs to get into!! In late September we thought we’d schedule this for December. But the closest we could get to December was this week (November 8)! So if you want to do the Gingerbread Boy during December next year, you’d better plan ahead!

I love the intro the Center for Puppetry Arts does to help students learn etiquette and how to behave in a VC. It helps students know how to talk, ask questions, and “put on their listening ears”.

Students learn about all the different books with different gingerbread stories. They see puppet shows with the gingerbread story. Students get involved verbally in the story, making the sound of the animals in the story. They learn about what goes in the bowl to make gingerbread, and other information about gingerbread ingredients. Students also make a gingerbread boy puppet during the program. Another great hands-on program from the Center for Puppetry Arts!

Feedback from a RUS Grant Building

Today in reading the discussion in my online class, Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections, I found a quote from Jeanne Carter, Three Oaks Elementary, one of the RUS Grant buildings. I’m sharing it here with permission.

I feel like the VC equipment we got was like a life ring thrown out to us. I’m thrilled to be on the receiving end of some great VC equipment.

This building of 11 teachers already has 17 programs requested/scheduled for the year and are quickly taking advantage of the ability to bring quality learning experiences to their rural students. Thank you USDA!!

Animals in Jeopardy

This morning another RUS grant building, Marcellus Middle School, is doing their first videoconference with the Columbus Zoo. This program, Animals in Jeopardy, is about endangered species. The program begins with a review of terms such as endangered, extinct, poaching, etc. Then students select a statement about cheetahs and arrange themselves around the room based on the statements they most identify themselves with.

Next students watch gorillas live at the zoo and learn about various issues affect the gorillas habitat. They also learn about elephants, ferrets, the Mexican wolf, the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon, and other animals. Students learn how the zoo is involved in conservation activities and reintroduction of animals back into the wild.

Another excellent program from the Columbus Zoo, our all time favorite zoo!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Kid advertising for VC is the best there is! I’ve blogged already about how students advertise VCs to teachers. How about to administrators too? I just learned that one of our local administrators got excited about videoconferencing after hearing his child talk about bats at the dinner table. The child had participated in the ASK: Stellaluna program that I’ve blogged about before. The child excitedly described all the things they learned in the conference. Now the administrator realizes even more the benefits of “bringing the world to the classroom” via videoconferencing.

I Survived the Onslaught

Every year I can tell when MEAP, our state testing, is over. All of a sudden I have an onslaught of videoconferences. Most of you know I’m the tech and the coordinator in our service area, so it can get crazy. Today was one of those days! Last week’s ASK Ice Bear & Little Fox program got rescheduled to today, the same day I did ASK Stellaluna. Plus I had three schools connected to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for their Live From the Heart program this morning. I’m also starting to finally get the hang of making gatekeeper calls work within my districts and to my bridge. Today’s videoconferences impacted 20 classrooms and about 570 students. Plus 8 RUS Grant buildings did their first VCs.

Of course with that many sessions, there’s always oopses. We had a timezone oops for one of the sessions. And I accidentally connected the wrong building for another. But other than that all the connections worked & the kids and teachers are happy with the learning.

Now that these connections are done, I can breathe again. Whew. I made it!

Principal Support of VC

Last night when testing with one of my new RUS grant buildings, I found out an interesting way one principal is encouraging VC. At the school board meeting, each principal shared their 3 goals for their building. This particular principal set one building goal that each teacher would do a videoconference! Imagine the support and encouragement those teachers get from that principal!

In another of our successful buildings, the principal encourages teachers who don’t use VC to write it into their professional development plan for the school year.

So there are two ways principals strongly encourage VC in their buildings: setting PD goals with individual teachers, and setting building goals.

What did it take for these two principals to decide to require use of VC for all teachers? In one building, the principal came with a teacher to our week-long summer workshop 123 Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with VC. This experience cleared up the concerns about VC from past bad experiences in the building/district. Now she’s requiring VC. In the other building, a history of teachers using VC often for clear curriculum goals and having successful experiences convinced her that each teacher should be using it, especially after they acquired the equipment in the building.

So, how do your principals support VC? What experiences and training help them get to the point where they are highly supportive? Share a comment please!

Monsters Monsters Monsters

This morning two more RUS grant buildings (Washington El and Three Oaks El) are doing their first videoconference. We’re lucky enough to have a couple of classes participating in Monster Match, a project coordinated by Roxanne Glaser, ESC 12, TX.

Before the videoconference, the classes made monsters and then emailed each other descriptions of their monsters. Then they tried to make the same monster. Roxanne facilitated the videoconference as the students checked their monsters to see if they matched.

I learned a new idea from Roxanne today! As the classes were connected waiting to start, Roxanne had a PowerPoint playing monster jokes. Cool idea!

Roxanne was appropriately dressed to facilitate too. Nice hair Roxanne!

As a first connection, this one is simple and low key. The connection is short — 20-25 minutes — and the classes get to talk to each other and practice zooming in on their camera. A great start for these buildings.

First RUS Grant Videoconference

This morning Marcellus Elementary is participating in the first videoconference with students at one of our RUS Grant Buildings. They are participating in the very fine LAPS programs offered by EDCO and Macomb ISD. This one is about Mitchell State Park.

Each of the classes introduce themselves. Then there are video clips of the park, presentations from each of the classes, a drawing activity and more. LAPS programs are highly interactive and require preparation on the part of teachers. But they tightly fit the 4th grade Michigan curriculum, so teachers love them. Thanks, Macomb ISD, for offering this program to our students!

2 V2IUs Successfully Installed

Two Polycom V2IU 4300T firewall traversal units were installed in two of my districts during the last two days. These two districts are part of my RUS grant and we were not able to make H323 work through their firewalls. So this is my first experience with firewall traversal, not counting the demo unit we tried out this summer.

All the tests we did this summer for the WAN side configuration still worked great. Connecting to my Tandberg Gatekeeper & Gateway worked fine still too. I’m glad because the gatekeeper is on a new version since the summer tests. Yeah for H323 standards!

I learned two things about setting up the Polycoms behind the V2IU.

  1. NAT has to be disabled on the Polycom VSX 7000. The endpoint just knows its internal IP and the V2IU as its gatekeeper.
  2. The endpoint gets registered with the V2IU as its gatekeeper and then the V2IU registers with the WAN side gatekeeper – my Tandberg Gatekeeper. And voila everything works.

This is our first year also having districts with multiple units. So our next puzzle has been – how do we have the endpoints within the same district network call each other? I have one district where it works and another where it doesn’t. The rest we haven’t tried yet. So I asked the Polycom field engineer how these units behind the V2IU will call each other – and the answer is – they call each other using their e.164 or H323 alias. So I learned yet another thing today! It’s likely that’s the solution in the district where it doesn’t work. More testing to do and one more puzzle solved.

Students Advertise VCs

Here’s a great teacher quote from the Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections class I’m teaching right now. This was a comment from Lori Pline, Watervliet North Elementary, one of our buildings participating in the RUS grant.

I totally agree that VC can give students something that sticks with them for years. A fourth grade teacher in our building does a lot of VCs and the students I get from her discuss what they did/learned a lot throughout the year. That is one of the reasons I wanted to learn how to use this technology.

Cool! The students are advertising videoconferencing to the teachers, which makes them want to learn & use VC. Has that happened in your building/district/region? Please comment & share a story!