Tag Archives: RUS Grant

Research on VC Implementation

Do any of you know of any published research on the implementation of videoconferencing? Especially for K12 and for enrichment type activities (vs. shared classes)? I’m interested in any research related to videoconferencing. What kind of data is being collected? What type of research questions are being posed? etc.

I know about the research bibliography on the TWICE website, and also the research from VCAlberta. (The Alberta Videoconferencing Research Community of Practice Research Report is excellent.) Do you know of others?

We are starting to collect data on our three year USDA DLT RUS grant and that’s why we’re interested in the information. I’ll share back what I find out. Thanks!!

Polycom Remote Practice Causes Laughing

Last week I conducted the first two days of training for my new building distance learning contacts as part of our USDA RUS DLT grant.

I scheduled four days of all day trainings over the fall, and each of the 35 buildings with new Polycoms has to send at least one person to the training. Many of my buildings are sending two people. Since many of the buildings are small and rural (the population targeted by the USDA RUS grant), we have a wide variety of positions that were assigned support of the new system. In some buildings there is a media specialist or library aide, in others, a secretary who has a knack for technology, in others, one or two teachers are the new distance learning contacts.

The agenda for the day was:

My favorite part was the Polycom practice. I gave them an overview and an “assignment” sheet with different kinds of calls to make (IP, ISDN, multipoint) and things to practice (muting, moving the camera, setting presets, etc.). Then I divided them into groups and sent them off to our VC rooms around the ISD to practice. And I left them alone! But I could hear lots of giggling and laughing going on as they played with the remote. In about 30 minutes they came back to the main room excited and ready to go. They said the remote was easy to use and they felt very comfortable with it.

This was the first time I’d used this strategy and I was very pleased with the results. One of the participants said in the evaluation,

This was a great conference!!!! I’ve learned so much and I can’t wait to “play” with the equipment. I’m so looking forward to the first videoconference. I know it’ll be worth it.

So this is another reason demand is high! Many new building contacts who were concerned about their new role of supporting VC caught the big picture of possibilities, are comfortable with the tech, know they can call me if they are stuck, and are ready with tools & resources to support VC in their building. Yeah!

Demand is High

This morning I read Andrea Israeli’s blog entry, Hit the Ground Running, with interest. She says,

This year our schools are videoconferencing in September. I think this is a first. It used to be don’t even mention the “V” word until October and even then it wasn’t until late October that things got going. Now I find schools have dusted off the monitors, hooked up the Polycoms and started making test calls and school just started on Tuesday! What’s going on?

I agree! Something is happening! Last year at this time I had 25 requests for VCs for the year; this year I have 91 already and they are pouring in! I talked to another colleague in Texas who is also having increased demand. Gone are the days of a quiet September prepping for VCs for the rest of the year.

It’s a great problem to have, really! Training and advertising has paid off. Increasing access to the equipment clearly has made a difference already. Now the new problem is how to manage the increase and begin transferring more responsibilities to media specialists and building level coordinators. Already I’ve sent some media specialists off to do everything for some upcoming programs. So here we go for another exciting school year with wonderful learning opportunities brought to our kids via videoconferencing!

35 New Polycoms Installed This Summer

This summer 35 Polycom VSX7000s units & carts & TVs were installed in many of my elementary and middle school buildings as part of a USDA RUS DLT grant. During most of the installation time I was travelling, so now I’ve come back to lots of work testing and training! We still have some networking issues to work out in many of the buildings, but the equipment is there and the excitement is rising! This grant is unusual in that most of the buildings know what it is and what they can do with it. They are very anxious to use it. Unlike some grants were technology is purchased and the districts don’t know why they need it. Of course there is still lots of training to do, but it’s exciting to see the interest and anticipation.

Last week I got a chance (finally) to run over to one of my buildings and get a picture of the cart put together.


Here’s the whole cart. I was happy to feel how easy it is to push around. Many of our buildings will be using it as a mobile cart. I’ve heard several comments from my buildings on how cool they think it looks.


The principal who took this picture for me said, “Only techies want a picture of the wires!” But I thought this mount was pretty cool for putting the Polycom above the TV.

And my favorite feature – only two cables to plug in! Easy for teachers to use! Network & power.

We are looking forward to a great year of videoconferencing!

Sept. 18 Update.

Thanks for the comment Danny! Here’s the answers – and I’m putting them here because others may have the same questions.

1. The cart is the VFI C2736-42-VSX (with the cutout for the Polycom VSX speaker). It’s very likely your reseller is familiar with the cart. Our installation was through AVI Systems, and their installation included putting the cart together and mounting the TV & Polycom.

2. Document camera. The RUS grant funding has to be staggered across the 3 years of the grant, so we are buying the peripherals for these units next year. Our plan is to get a small document camera that also converts computer inputs to SVideo. It will be kept on the shelf of the cart and have a long S-Video cable to bring out into the classroom for presentations.

Thanks for asking the questions!

MysteryQuest as VC PD

Today I had an “aha” moment in our 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing week long workshop. We did MysteryQuest Beaches this morning. And here I will quote reflection comments from two principals in my group.

Mystery Quest is a lot of fun. This would be a good ‘ice breaker’ event to use with staff new to vc. It could be done between buildings in a district or between RUS grant buildings in Berrien ISD. It teaches so many things to staff and is so interactive (plus a lot of fun!). There are so many ideas that you could jump off of this from to anywhere!

This was a fun day. There was not a lot that I could have my classrooms use because we are a k-2 building. I did think that I could use aspects of mystery quest as a professional development activity. This was also a day where a lot of planning took place between myself, another principal, and Janine for the next year. That is a great start for me.

It never occurred to me to use MysteryQuest Beaches as a PD for anything more than as PD to learn about MysteryQuests for teachers who plan to participate in a MQ. But both of these principals see this as a good intro to VC for teachers, even the K-2 principal who doesn’t see the MQ format working for K-2 (and I basically agree). This is really a new idea to me. I told them I was worried about the teachers being overwhelmed by it, but they thought it would really get them excited about videoconferencing and highly engaged in the process. Then in debebriefing you really can use this format with just about anything.

It’s likely that we’ll actually do this sometime during the school year. I’ll definitely write about how it goes…

The Polycoms are coming! The Polycoms are coming!

Installation of the 35 Polycom VSX 7000s for our USDA RUS DLT grant began yesterday.

This week I’m participating in an 8 site week-long workshop on videoconferencing: 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing. One of the teachers in the workshop I’m doing this week called her principal to see if she could sign up for a videoconference.

She came back from the phone call just thrilled beyond thrilled! Describing the “sleek” new equipment that arrived a few hours before and how great it looks! The excitement in my workshop is palpable as just about everyone participating is part of the grant and getting equipment in their building within the next two weeks, thanks to the efficiency of AVI Systems.

We are all jazzed!

Testing a Polycom V2IU Firewall Traversal Unit

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I have 35 new Polycom VSX7000’s getting installed in 13 of my districts this summer. Of course we’re running into fun firewall challenges. In two of the districts, we have been unsuccessful at getting H323 to work through a Watchguard firewall. Changing the firewall isn’t an option. So I’ve been looking at the Polycom V2IU as a possibile solution. But I was very nervous about the dialing scheme required with any firewall traversal unit. The V2IU has an external IP address, and all the Polycom endpoints behind it have extensions. I haven’t been thrilled with my extension dialing experiences in the past, so I wanted to try this out to see what it could do. I made a list of all the tests I wanted to see working. Here’s the results.

V2IU Configured with Embedded Gatekeeper
First we (my district technology coordinator, me, and Cliff John from Polycom) set up the V2IU beside their firewall at the public/private border. We had a Polycom H323 Viewstation behind it, registered to the V2IU as the gatekeeper.

  1. Dial out to Polycom endpoint. Called out to my Polycom VSX 7000 (public IP). Worked great.
  2. Dial in from Polycom endpoint. My Polycom called in (using the extension box on the top right). Worked great.
  3. Dial out to Tandberg endpoint. Called a Tandberg MXP 880 (public IP) with no problem.
  4. Dial in from Tandberg endpoint. The Tandberg MXP 880 couldn’t dial into the V2IU. Could not get any combination of dial strings that we tried to work. Polycom suggested using the web interface to dial “extension@IP address” and said that Tandberg told them e.164 dialing was not supported. We couldn’t get that to work either.
  5. Dial out to Tandberg MPS. Called my Tandberg MPS bridge fine (IP address dial in).
  6. Dial in from Tandberg MPS. Figured out that to dial through the V2IU from my MPS to the Viewstation was extension@IP. (for example 123@111.222.333.444).
  7. Dial out to Polycom MGC. Called Macomb ISD’s Polycom MGC bridge fine (IP address dial in – gave the MGC the V2IU external IP address).
  8. Dial in from Polycom MGC. Figured out that to dial through the V2IU from the MGC (software rev 6.0.2.00) the extension had to be in the party extension box.

V2IU Configured with WAN Side Gatekeeper
The next tests I wanted to do required the endpoint to register to my Tandberg Gatekeeper to get ISDN access through my Tandberg Gateway and to use the Gatekeeper to get into conferences other than the first one on my MPS. To do this, we configured the V2IU with my Tandberg Gatekeeper’s IP address for the WAN side gatekeeper. The Viewstation behind the V2IU was registered to the V2IU gatekeeper. Then we did all these tests.

  1. Dial out to Polycom endpoint. Called out to my Polycom VSX 7000 (public IP). Worked great.
  2. Dial in from Polycom endpoint. My Polycom called in (using the extension box on the top right). Worked great.
  3. Dial out to Tandberg endpoint. Called a Tandberg MXP 880 (public IP) with no problem.
  4. Dial in from Tandberg endpoint. This still didn’t work. Same issue as above.
  5. Dial out to Polycom MGC. Called Macomb ISD’s Polycom MGC bridge fine (IP address dial in – gave the MGC the V2IU external IP address).
  6. Dial in from Polycom MGC. Figured out that to dial through the V2IU from the MGC (software rev 6.0.2.00) the extension had to be in the party extension box.
  7. ISDN dial out to Polycom MGC. Next we tried dialing from the Viewstation to the V2IU through the Tandberg Gatekeeper to the Tandberg Gateway to get ISDN access out to the Polycom MGC. Success!
  8. Dial out to Tandberg MPS. Called my Tandberg MPS bridge fine (IP address dial in to conference 1).
  9. Dial out to Tandberg MPS. Next we called into conference 2 by dialing it’s e.164 number. Success.
  10. Dial in from Tandberg MPS. Worked great by dialing the e.164 number of the endpoint.
  11. Dial in from Tandberg MPS. Dialing extension@IP did not work. However I suspect this is because the MPS can do this call with just the extension and was confused on how to send the call.

There are still a few unknowns, but I was very pleased with the results of these tests. Stay tuned for more learning this summer as our installation progresses.

6/29 Update. Based on some testing I’ve done today, I suspect that the Polycom Viewstations v 7.5.4 can’t call IP##Extension or Extension@IP either. The testing unit is gone, but I can see I’ll be dealing with this in the future.