Today is the culmination day for the CILC Symposium. Each panel moderator is reporting out on the various todos. Here’s a few notes from them. The PPTs will be posted on the CILC Symposium soon.

• Develop a collection of tips for collaborative projects. Did you know about our Collaborative Projects Template Booklet? Also check out the Collaborative Videoconferences Wiki.
• Increase communication between teachers and content providers.
• Encourage vendors to create non-proprietary products. “It needs to be like a telephone. It doesn’t matter what the device is on the other end, it just needs to work.”
• Details from my group – with resources and solutions – are posted on VC Rox.
• International collaborations – make sure you plan the outcomes and goals and activities for the group.
• Share strategies to help teachers move through the CBAM adoption model
• Encourage more participation in collaboration by sharing best practices – such as blogging, wikis, sharing with peers.
• We need to do a much better job at showing rather than telling
• Teachers need to see “best practice” in motion
• Do a collaborative project where teachers connect to teachers where one school mentors another
• How many times have you been to a workshop to talk about the technology instead of using it!

Definitely good points to consider and keep working on in our respective areas.

This is the third panel session at the CILC Symposium 2007. Roxanne blogged the second one, so check that out. Also check out her summary of the ideas and resources brainstormed in my breakout.

This panel, moderated by Jan Zanetis, Tandberg, is comprised of the following panelists:  Paul Hieronymus has coordinated the Avon Schools’ Distance Learning Project and also Lorain County Distance Learning Consortium (LCDLC). Paul is also involved in OhioDL.org. Bernice Stafford, consultant, was Vice President of School Strategies and Evaluation at PLATO Learning, Inc., and a Lightspan, Inc., co-founder. Linda serves on the Executive Committee for the Indiana Council for Economic Education. Dr. Howie DiBlasi is currently the C.I.O. (Chief Information Officer) for the Durango School District.
Main guiding question: What do you think things are going to be like 5 years from now? 10 years from now?

Paul: Videoconferencing is still an emerging technology. In 5 years all the technologies are blended and it’s a standard tool that can be used in the curriculum. The selection is based on the curriculum, instead of what technology you have access to.

Howie:  We need to unlearn some common problems. Why can’t we do a VC at 8:14? Why do we have a clock in the classroom? Why can’t we do project learning all the time?

Howie: We as IT directors need to open things up so that the schools can use the tools. It’s amazing what writing is improving as mom & dad, aunts and uncles are reading. There is a global audience. “I tell educators to have their techs call me. They are so afraid of what will happen on the network.”

Paul shared several of the issues with teachers using VC. Their fear of the technology, concern for being on camera. Also it’s hard to get over bad experiences from when the connection didn’t work. Classroom management is an issue.

Someone asked, are your web 2.0 tools on an internal site or on the Internet? Howie answered that they use blogger and so only a select group of parents and relatives can view it. They also can’t comment on it because they control that.

Bernice shared this good quote: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” Anytime anyplace learning is growing.

Linda – there’s a future of national level professional development getting delivered via videoconferencing, online courses, podcasts, etc. The blended learning solution seems to be the future for professional development. Can we say Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing? CILC has a relationship with My eCoach for offering and creating professional development spaces. The state standards are already loaded into this tool.

Roxanne – we can’t continue to think that telling is teaching.  “We use whatever tool is available to meet the needs.” 123VC is a weeklong staff development: we have them experience it first as a learner, then as a teacher, then as a leader.

Paul shared details and tips for doing collaborative projects. There are technology challenges, firewalls, test calls etc. It’s so important to go through everything, planning, setting timelines. Nothing is worse than one teacher being completed invested in the connection and connected to a class that is using it as a break. Start with something small. Don’t try to replicate Megaconference on your own.

Tommy shared some issues – places that say, we want your project but we don’t have anything to give back to you. Say to the teachers up front – this is NOT TV quality. Tell the teachers – your kids are going to live in a video world. Where is this technology emerging to? My 16 year old is going to have a video cell phone. VC is like Windows 3.0. It’s just now starting to get user friendly.  I don’t know where it’s going, but I do know we’re going to live in a video world.

Question from audience: what is being done to make accommodations for students of all learning needs and styles? Polycom offers Closed Caption.  As educators we must be cognizant of the needs of students.  From the content provider perspective, teachers can post their needs. The content providers can adapt their programs to what exactly the students need. The content providers mentioned who adapted their programs – the Columbus Zoo and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Becky from the Columbus Zoo, said “we really need the teachers to communicate what they need and the best way to work with their students. These are some of our favorite programs.” From another audience member, video is an incredible way to benefits students with special needs.  From another audience member, at the university level you can get sued for offering distance learning without accessibility.

The last question was from someone wondering if kids get confused in what’s real or not in a videoconferencing. I can remember a kid saying, “is she a robot?” Ruth Blankenbaker answered and emphasized how the kids get a fuller experience. I remember one of our teachers saying how her 1st grade kids just see “arms and legs” on a field trip, and on the videoconference they can actually see something.

And the panel ended because time ran out.

Tommy Bearden is still preaching the EASY ACCESS. Easy Access is NOT the tech person bringing you a unit when you need to do a program. It’s having easy access to a unit in your building ALL the time. We have to get there. If you’re just starting, put it in the elementary

If you want to be successful with shared classes, PAY the teacher well. Teaching over VC is a “pain in the posterior” (Tommy’s words), and they need to be compensated properly. Tommy recommended his document onsite for Recommended Fees. You can hire the teacher at the service center, or get the small districts to co-op their position.

Two districts with the BEST units, and they don’t use it and don’t use it. Everyone has districts that aren’t using it.

The best way to get three to five teachers involved, have them do a highly interactive program like Gadget Works, and make sure other teachers see it, and tell about it in the school. Make sure they get the packet out and make sure the students are prepared. After training, look for that one excited person and get them hooked and they are the champion. They are the ones who stay after training and talk to you. They are the people to cultivate. If you have something free, send it to them. Then they start hooking in the other teachers.

Donna Weber, Euclid, OH, talked about Read Around the Planet hooked the teachers on videoconferencing and how they’ve been using it since.

It’s interesting how many teachers hooked on VC are loving VC, even in the face of so many test calls, and want their districts to create a position to support videoconference. The time is a huge issue for these building coordinators.

Regional coordinators shared how they try to make VC as “painless as possible for teachers.” This is a critical goal we all agree on!

Sidenote: I always wonder when we give numbers – we do x VCs a year. What’s the context? compared to how many units? i.e. x events / unit average; or by number of teachers. So we can put it in context to compare.

One technology teacher shared that she has 3 30 min. periods a week to support tech in the building and coordinate videoconferencing.

Bearden-ism for high school classes. Teachers go through five stages of (death & grief): 1st before school starts is excitement. They better be your best teachers. 2nd before school starts, hesistation right before school starts. 3rd is frustration. And this is where you’d better be there to help them. 4th acceptance. Hey this isn’t so bad. Hey I got paid some money to do this. The 5th is excitement again. This isn’t research based. If they don’t get past that frustration stage, they won’t come back next year. They will all go through these stages the first year.

As you move into collaborations – you need to get them some equipment: a digital camera, a camcorder. They do stuff on their community – they go out & capture video & pictures and share it with community. Give the equipment to share that stuff. Make sure they have good microphone – like a bluetooth wireless microphone – to help them put their stories together. Don’t buy your camera from WalMart – get one that you can plug an extra mic into.  Give your kids good equipment that you can use to do the collaborative projects.

Tommy shared a story of a state that gave detailed quiz questions on their own state to another state. Those kids couldn’t answer the questions. Think carefully about what will fit well for the other kids in your presentation!

Dual credit hooks the parents. One person didn’t agree and said it doesn’t work in their state. There has to be a state level commitment to it.

Dale Hilton is working on a project with two 3rd grade classes in Ohio on a coin project. They are presenting about the coins they have in their collection and the kids are designing a coin that represents their community. Isn’t that cool!?

Sidenote: We have to remember that content providers are non-profit organizations, and of course we want free stuff; but they need to cover at least SOME of the cost of providing content. None of them are making money on this!!!!

Tommy’s suggestion – see where your kids are doing not so good on the TAKS test – do a project where your kids teach that topic to other kids within the state. They’ll learn it better!

Hey – the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is up and running with VC!

Tommy – distance learning systems installed where no one is using it is an expensive dust collector.

Tommy – You can’t train them on it without giving them something to DO with it.

Tommy told a kid about two teachers pulling teeth to get the high school kids to talk. It was very hard. Then one of the TX kids asked the NY kids, were any of you affected by 9/11? Half the kids raised their hands. Then she said, we were watching that on TV and we were praying for you. NY: What do you mean you were watching us? What is six man football? Tell us about the ocean. What are ships like? All of a sudden the kids were talking like crazy. It had NOTHING to do with ART, but it was good stuff. Let the kids be kids. Let them talk to each other!

Easy access is also them knowing how to run it themselves and do their own connections.

When you’re thinking of where to put it – if you’re doing classes, at the high school. If you’re using it for curriculum activities, put it in the elementary schools as they will use it the most if they have EASY ACCESS.

Interesting idea – media specialist walks around the building and relieves teachers for 5-10 minutes so they can go down and see what’s going on in the videoconference.

What is everyday and mundane to you is so exciting and new to me. It will fit your curriculum and your educational standards and you can teach it to us so our kids can learn about, for example, the Mississippi River, or the kid’s dad cowboy. “I want someone from a city like NY to tell my kids that a subway is not a sandwich.”

Resources mentioned by the group:

• Elevate 2008 Conference
• Megaconference and Megaconference Jr.
• We can find each other on CILC Collaboration Center, Collaborations Around the Planet, Listservs such as K12 IVC and Collaboration Collage, Connect2Texas.

The CILC Symposium 2007 is comprised of several panel sessions followed by breakout follow-up sessions. This session is on Practical Applications. “Best practices in the use of videoconferencing and collaborative technologies will be shared from the perspective of classroom instructors, technology directors, IVC managers and coordinators, content providers.”

The panel, moderated by Elaine Shuck, Polycom, includes Judith Plant, White Plains City School District at Eastview Middle School (Global Run); Jason Dennison, Director of Instructional Technology at Cincinnati Museum Center; Tommy Bearden, Distance Learning Consultant at Region 14 Education Service Center; Jeff McMahon, Academic Technology Officer for the Indianapolis Public School System; and Max Kolstad, Network Services Lead for the State of Arkansas Department of Information Systems.

Driving question: Many educators are pressured to meet state testing goals. In what ways are you using this technology to enhance curriculum, meet goals, bring opportunities to students?

Jeff McMahon shared how their district is using laptop programs and other initiatives to teach 21st century learning skills. An audience member from British Columbia shared how videoconferencing is used to share high end courses with rural schools.

Max Kolstad shared how the Arkansas DIS meet the needs of the Department of Ed. Max talked about how e-rate doesn’t come back in the same fiscal year. The vendors have to be paid “whenever.” The state legislature funded technology and also PEOPLE! They have an “ebay” for courseware within the state. In response, Carol Willis, TX, shared best practices within TX. They don’t have state funding like AR, but have a collaboration of people at education service centers.

Judith Plant shared how she decides whether to use a technology in the classroom or not. The first is it must meet her curriculum goals. Those goals in her Spanish class are to work in the language (Spanish), or to work with classes in the culture. If she’s connecting with a content provider, she’s looking for someone willing to have a dialogue with her; to see it as a team-teaching situation. It has to be a topic of high-interest and something that fits into what we’re doing. “I, as the teacher, need to do some preparation before the videoconference. The students need to know the vocabulary and concepts before walking into the experience. With classroom connections, these are the best experiences for my students. It serves as motivation for many many months. It starts all kinds of discussion – why did they use this word instead of that word? I couldn’t understand his accent. Usually the conversation is half in English and half in Spanish. They have to create content, prepare a visual, rehearse, and plan for the collaboration. I try to create an authentic situation for using the language. We do many gimmicks to help students be in the situation, like a cafe in the classroom. The videoconference is an actual authentic experience. ” She also integrates service learning into the videoconferences.

Another teacher from OH in the audience shared. She’s from a school with a high rate of poverty. She has a VTel in her classroom and hasn’t had it for a year yet. She’s connected with two classrooms in New Hampshire. “No Child Left Behind seems to be creating a common curriculum across the country. In one classroom, we share reading activities. We fax materials back and forth and collaborate on what we want to accomplish. We have a massive literature circle between the two classes. I have another school in the northern part of New Hampshire, and we’re planning a similar activity for writing. In social studies, the students have learned about eastern woodland Native Americans with a museum in Columbus. ”

Next Jason Dennison shared the journey from being a classroom teacher to being a content provider. Alignment with content standards is critical. Content providers wonder, which content providers? The overwhelming response is with “state standards”. This is a very difficult task. The content providers prefer to work with the teacher working up to the videoconference to actually meet their curriculum goals. Jason shared a story of doing a videoconference where the teacher walked out of the classroom during the videoconference. When he asked for the teacher to call on the students, the students said, the teacher isn’t here! “How much better could have it been, if the teacher had been in the classroom.” “You know your students much better than I do from 600 miles away.” As a content provider, the challenge is finding the partnership with the teacher.

Dale Hilton, Cleveland Museum of Art, agreed that standards are critical. The program needs to have a good description so that teachers know what is involved. “I invite teachers to call me on the phone to discuss the program.” She shared one scenario where the students were so prepared that she set the script aside and did Q&A with the students. She ended up emailing some of the answers afterwards because they asked such in depth questions. “Sometimes a school will call you up and use a lesson in a way you never expected.” They have one lesson that focuses on various architecture houses of worship. A business class signed up, and Dale asked them why they signed up. They said they wanted be able to understand their community to better serve the community. She also shared a not-so-successful experience where she followed up afterwards to find out what could be improved. Elaine reminded us all that the content providers have other resources besides what they have on their website.

Tommy Bearden talked about why some campuses are successful and others are less so. Tommy services 42 predominantly rural schools. He said to all the administrators and techs in the audience – all of our schools should have EASY access. His elementaries say, what can we do for FREE? “This is where we coordinate projects for our schools.” For example, Snake, Rattle and Stand Still. Think about the time 20 years ago when we put computers in the classroom. We put a big sign on it – for teacher use only. We told the kids, don’t touch that, you might explode. Then something happened. Then snuck around our back and got on the computer. And now we say, how did you do that? Roll forward 20 years. Tell me we’re not doing the same thing. We’re telling those kids the same thing. Don’t touch that, you might explore. So in Region 14, we’re trying to give them the remote; and have them teach other kids. Empower your kids to teach others. Public Service Announcement: He’s looking for partners for 42 campuses creating projects. Don’t make the same mistakes. Let your kids run with this stuff! To the school administrators: EASY ACCESS. One per CAMPUS. If we don’t put this technology in front of kids, we’re making a horrible educational sin.”

The KC3 project fits into this. Check it out.

Collaborations Around the Planet is a way to find partners for collaborative projects. Read Around the Planet is another great way to get new partners for projects too.

Someone asked about what other interactions there can be other than Q&A. WOW! What examples can you think of for interaction other than Q&A? MysteryQuest, game shows, Monster Match, see the collaborative projects template, Polycom Special Events, TWICE ASK programs, etc. What else can you think of? Comment if you want to add to this discussion.

Here’s a question for you. How do you define the successful implementation of curriculum videoconferencing in a building? How do you measure it? What does “successful” curriculum videoconferencing in a building look like?

Total Events?
When we first starting using VC, from about 1999-2005 or so, we had access only in the high schools. Elementary and middle school teachers used it occasionally for activities that seemed worth getting a bus to the high school to experience. During this time we counted how many videoconferences a district did each year. Districts that used it for 20-40 curriculum videoconferences a year were our “high use” districts. The others did 2-5 or so per year.

Total Events and Percentage of Teacher Use
Last year was the first year most of our districts had access to VC in all of their buildings. District use shot up to 80-90 curriculum videoconferences in some areas. Some buildings alone were doing 50+ conferences with individual teachers using it at least twice in the year. So last year, for the first time, we starting counting the number of teachers who participated in a videoconference at least once throughout the year. That number, combined with the total number of events for a building, gives a picture not only of how much they use it, but the breadth of implementation across all the teachers in the building. For the first time, I have building coordinators setting a goal for this year to have EVERY teacher participate in at least one event this year.

Is “More Use” Success?
So here’s the question. If we are only counting how much they use it, does that imply “using it more” is success? Does that imply we believe everyone should use it at least once a year? Do we believe that everyone should use it every year? If this measurement of success isn’t “up to par”, then what would be?

Effectiveness?
Someone suggested to me last evening that I should be measuring the “effectiveness” of curriculum videoconferencing. I’m not sure about this. What do you think? Can you measure the effectiveness of VC in a school? I know for sure that we can measure the effectiveness of particular programs (ASK, content providers, MysteryQuest, Read Around the Planet, etc.). We do collect evaluation data on these events. But can we measure the effectiveness of VC in a school? What is the desired end result? Can a few 1-2 hour events through the year impact student achievement? Can a few events through the year impact the attitudes about students towards the world around them? Can a few events – or even one event – impact the students’ understanding of technology communication? What do you think?

Quality?
What about measuring the quality of the experiences? Isn’t that based more on what events the teachers choose, the money they have available to spend on content providers, etc? Would you say connecting to COSI for a live surgery is better quality than Monster Match? Is that a fair comparison? Don’t they both meet curriculum goals in unique ways?

Independence
What about the ability of the schools to use videoconferencing on their own? I think that increased use results in building coordinators and teachers able to connect and participate in videoconferences on their own. (Of course, they call for help when something major is broken.) So is their independence in using and creating videoconferencing experiences a measure of success? Or is that independence actually collected in how much they are using it? I don’t have any buildings using it at a high rate who aren’t able to connect & create their own VC experiences.

Integration into the Curriculum
Can we measure how well videoconferencing is integrated into the curriculum? Can we measure if the events participated in actually address curriculum goals? Would this be a measure of successful implementation?

What do you think? How do you know if the buildings you service, or even your own building, is successfully using videoconferencing? What is your definition of successful implementation? I really want to know!! So please comment!

Voting is now open for the National Distance Learning Awards hosted by CILC.

Be sure to read over the descriptions carefully. There are some really cool projects in the list! I definitely plan to “Google” some of the nominees to learn more about the neat things they are doing.

Vote by November 7!!