Tag Archives: VC Community

Elevate 2008 Call for Presenters

Have you put the Elevate 2008 Conference on your calendar? Well, now it’s time to submit a proposal! The call for presenters just opened up and they are due in November. I’m really excited about this conference, because it’s in Banff, Alberta, my home province, and because the VCAlberta crew are doing some great things! Any excuse to videoconference with or actually travel to Canada!

So, I thought it might be fun to start a “presentation meme”. If you’re not familiar with memes in the blog world, it’s basically bloggers giving each other assignments. Here’s an example from David Warlick. (TWICE folks reading this, sound like a “professional growth opportunity” to you?)

I’m not on the conference planning committee or involved in any way, but I thought it would be interesting to make a list of people & sessions I’d like to see at the Elevate 2008 Conference. This is just a beginning brainstorm. You can continue it by commenting or making a list on your blog!

  • Roxanne Glaser, TX a session on collaborative tools that support videoconferencing (like we’re using in Jazz etc.).
  • Global Nomads Group, NY with the session including a simulation of Pulse like they did for us in Jazz last week.
  • Jim Wenzloff, MI on the ASK process, with a live interview included. Make us cry with The Wall, Jim!
  • Shane Howard, TX on how bridge guys can be fun and provide cool content too. How to hook up avatars to a Polycom PVX. How to work with creative educators and not lose your cool. Suggested Title: “How to support K12 videoconferencing with two MCUs and a sense of humor.”
  • Bering Straits School District, AK, on how to provide cool content based in your community.
  • Craig Moellerstein from GCI School Access, AK, on how to put a codec on a sled and VC to the world.
  • Karachi High School on all the interesting VCs they are doing.
  • Mike Griffiths, Global Leap, tips on successful international videoconferences.
  • Joyce Chen on how to start a high school videoconferencing club.
  • InteractiveClassroom.ca on how their collaborative community started/is doing and the state of VC in Ontario.
  • Tim Boundy on UKERNA/JANET and how to collaborate with schools on UKERNA.
  • The Megaconference Jr. crew on virtual testimonials, VJs, and how to organize student run VCs.
  • Someone to do a clear explanation of the state of GDS dialing and a discussion of whether the K12 community ought to be embracing this dialing plan as a solution to firewall problems.
  • Angela Conrad on class cheers and creative ways to help classes feel connected to each other. Maybe on podcasting IVC sessions too?
  • A roundtable discussion of those who coordinate the videoconference sessions at their statewide/provincial edtech conferences. We could learn from each other and trade good ideas for speakers.
  • I’d like to see our favorite content providers share best practices and models of quality instruction & interaction. Challenger Learning Center’s eMissions should present too!
  • Carol Fleck and Kim Perry from OH from Keystone a few years ago for the full length classes crowd. They have more tricks for true interaction and blending the classes across the sites than anyone I’ve ever seen/heard present.
  • A roundtable on Read Around the Planet technical problems with vendors coming to listen and learn. What if we all brought our wildest stories to share?! Wouldn’t that be fun!?
  • Someone to try out my IP VCR projects in the new projects booklet & report on how they went.
  • Dave Miller & Paul Hieronymous on their annual professional development series, one of the most in depth successful (i.e. 20-30 connections a year per teacher) PD programs I’ve seen.
  • MAGPI – on Internet2 and all the cool collaborative things they are doing.

I’m sure you can think of many more! Comment or blog your ideas! And start planning now so that you can make it to Banff in August 2008. Figure out a way. It’s going to be an amazing experience I’m sure!

Skype is the NECC VC news?

Hmmm. Still thinking about yesterday’s post about the lack of VC blog entries from NECC. After reading Brian’s comment, I skimmed through his blog entries from NECC. In describing the Blogger’s Cafe, he said:

Someone brought over their laptop so they could Video-Skype a friend from across the country that is interested in progressive education so she could listen in and Chris was totally accommodating. This is how to conference. The face to face is awesome and needed.

So I hopped over to technorati for a search on Skype & NECC07. 68 posts! With people Skyping in friends who couldn’t make it to NECC to join the conversation, Skype chatting during a session (or not in a session) with others, etc. How cool is that! We need that for the IVC crowd at NECC & away from NECC next year.

Looking at my list of IVC bloggers, I think most of us couldn’t make it to NECC this year. That would account for less blog entries. So would the lack of IVC sessions. Seems like there weren’t as many as last year. Here’s a program search for videoconference, videoconferencing,  and IVC. Certainly some neat sessions that I would have loved to read about!

Anyway, from the hitchhikr perspective, it seems that Skype was the videoconferencing news this year and a tool that should be used next year to bring in conversations with our VC friends who can’t make it to NECC. A continuous NECC-Skype-chat-cast on VC next year anyone??!!

Why Aren't You Blogging about VC?

Well, I skimmed through and did some searches on the blog posts for NECC07 to get a flavor for the discussion and mood at NECC this year since I couldn’t attend onsite. I was disappointed that the web 2.0 crowd at NECC generated a lot of buzz, however I couldn’t find much blogging about videoconferencing. (Thanks Gail for your post & love how that pix of the hat gets around.) Then I read Roxanne’s post, Now Go Tell Two Friends.

Those of you who work as distance learning coordinators know that there really is no formal training available to teach us how to do our job.

There are technical trainings to learn how to run the equipment and Janine’s online courses that teach about creating projects and 123VC to immerse teachers into the videoconference/distance learning environment, but how do coordinators learn how to coordinate programs and what is available?

One way to learn is by blogging.

Amen, girl! What a blessing the blogging conversation about videoconferencing has been especially this past year for me. I learn so much from my colleagues blogging. We’ve started to really comment and interconnect our blog conversations in the ways that the web 2.0 crowd is doing so well. We can improve on this small start!

We need the same collaborative-learning-growing-knowledge community in the K12 videoconferencing world that exists in the School 2.0 world. We have so much to learn from each other! And some of you are really pushing the edges with creative cool engaging uses of videoconferencing in the classroom. You don’t have to blog every day, just start writing about what’s going well and what you’re experiencing and learning! I want to read your blog!!! Yes, YOU reading this right now. Send me an email when you start so I can link to your blog here.

NECC SIG IVC Forum

This morning I’m listening to the SIG IVC Forum at NECC remotely! Thanks to all the organizers who made that happen!! They are sharing 15 presentations fast with each person sharing for exactly two minutes. I’m trying to capture some of the pieces. If anyone reading this has the digital version of the handout that was passed out to everyone onsite, please comment & share where it’s online! I’m sure wishing I had the handout! Due to some technical glitches we missed pieces of some of the presentations.

July 24 Update. Dawn Colavita from CILC so graciously shared with me the handouts. So I’ve updated references below accordingly. Thanks Dawn!

  1. Pam Lloyd from Alaska talked about how they used Alaska Challenger Learning Center programs.
  2. Chris Lawrence, from the NY Hall of Science, shared how their programs are up & running again. He has a master’s degree in museum education. Did you know there’s such a degree? Cool.
  3. Mike Lay from Scott County, TN shared about the programs they do and how they’ve tied it into their RUS grant. They are planning to be a content provider, as they have a museum their students built themselves.
  4. Max Kolstad, State of Arkansas, Department of Information System, Manager of Distance Learning Services talked about their statewide network. He mentioned 9 content providers in Arkansas.
  5. Donna Farren from Monroe 2-Orleans BOCES talked about using videoconferencing to do student and teacher observation for their Reading Recovery program.
  6. Paul Hieronymous, a member of the The Lorain County Distance Learning Consortium (LCDLC), shared about their mysterybox project. I love this idea and would like to try this with our classes.
  7. Dawn from CILC talked about their website and all the resources available. I learned something new – the recommended programs get 2.4 out of 3.0 or higher.
  8. Debra Piecka, a doctoral student at Duquesne University, shared her research on  a kindergarten classroom participating in videoconferences  with another kindergarten class and a content provider. We all look forward to seeing this research published!
  9. Carol Teitelman from Bucks IU, Pennsylvania shared about their program called Keystones and how they work with teachers throughout the state via Elluminate.
  10. Chris Plutte from GNG shared about their programs, the Iraq, Rwanda, and Uganda ones. These are great programs, so look into them if you haven’t already!
  11. Tim Barshinger shared about Grossology Live. In addition to regular VC from LifeSize equipment, they are presenting via Skype too!!
  12. Darlene Haught, from the NC School of Science and Mathematics shared how they are offering content, classes and professional development/mentoring to  schools throughout North Carolina.
  13. Craig from GCI School Access shared about the programs they offer to their schools in Alaska including a career exploration program. He also shared the projects that the Bering Straits School District programs including a sled that can go out to any location and videoconference from that sled. GCI School Access helped build the sled for BSSD.

If you know any other details to fill in my holes from taking notes, please let me know!!

Blog tags: necc2007, n07s872

NECC Workshop: Designing IVC Projects

This morning I remotely presented a workshop for NECC: Designing Quality Interactive Projects for Videoconferencing (this second link goes to the handouts too). We had a full crowd with 30 participants onsite in Atlanta, and 4 participants onsite here in my distance learning room.

I wanted to model this year’s NECC workshop after the Mini-Jazz workshops I’ve done with Roxanne this past year.  So after a short introduction to videoconferencing and what you can do with it, we divided into groups and everyone got on camera and introduced their group. In the process, I was able to provide some extra instruction on how to do posters well! 🙂 One group had wonderfully thick fat writing and their poster was so easy to read.

Then we talked through the latest version of my projects booklet, with stories and video clips along the way. I had emailed the participants ahead of time, and some of them had done Kid2Kid connections, so I had them share their stories sprinkled through as we looked through the booklet. It was neat to have everyone hear from someone other than just me!

After a break, I divided them into groups and had them dream up a project idea, pick a potential month and time, and share their ideas on a poster. Here’s where it gets really crazy! I created a GoogleDocs file with all the participants information so they can network with each other after the workshop. I had invited them ahead of time; and about half of them had gone in and added more details about themselves. In the same file, I had another sheet to collect their ideas. As they presented, I recorded the following:

  • Topic
  • Target Grade Level
  • Preferred Month
  • Potential Time (include time zone)
  • Intended Videoconference Technology
  • Idea Creator Names
  • Names of Interested Parties
  • Other Notes

After each presentation, then I asked “who wants to do this with them?” I wrote down their first names, and since we already have all the contact for everyone in the first sheet, they’ll be able to contact each other and actually do the project. I’m really getting into the whole idea of follow-up and creating structures for people to actually implement their ideas. I was concerned that GoogleDocs would be too much of a stretch and just one more thing. But they jumped right in and some were editing right along with me as I recorded the project ideas. It worked well way beyond what I imagined! Those that couldn’t get in during the workshop will work with me via email to get set up. And I’m hoping (not promising!) to email everyone in the fall with reminders of their idea and who their partners are.
I’m much more pleased about how this year’s workshop went compared to last year, and I think the participants got more of what they were hoping for as well. I look forward to seeing these connections actually happen next year!

Blog Tags: necc07, n07s212

Building Relationships with Curriculum Consultants

Arnie and Roxanne both raised some important points in their comments on my post on Curriculum Consultants earlier this week. How do you establish relationships with curriculum consultants? So I thought it might be helpful for me to share how I’ve worked with some of our consultants.

  • Peeking in. Often our consultants stop by the instructional technology department to ask questions or to get assistance hooking up a presenter’s laptop to a projector. If something interesting is happening on my TV and they have a moment, they come in and watch for a little while. Sometimes I call them when I see something going on that I know they’d be interested in. They can’t always come and they aren’t always even in the building, but occasionally they see what’s happening.
  • Passing by. Related to that, sometimes when I pass them in the hallway, I tell them a story of a videoconference we just did that addresses their curriculum content area.
  • Network Resource Meetings. Most of our consultants offer what we call network resource meetings for our local schools. This means that in a particular building one teacher might be the math resource teacher, another teacher is the language arts resource teacher, etc. Our consultants may offer 2-4 of these meetings throughout the year. I’ve been to most of these meetings at least once or twice in the last several years. Sometimes it’s just a 5-10 minute blurb about VCs in that content area. A few times we’ve actually hooked up to a content provider for a 15-30 minute demo. It just takes asking for some time on their agenda.
  • ASK Programs. Three of our content area consultants help me with ASK programs. Our language arts consultant has suggested books and resources to put in the kits. Two other consultants have helped me set up interviews with local experts: a Safe Shelter employee for the book Cracker Jackson, and a panel of people who work with the homeless in various capacities for the book Monkey Island. What’s neat about these last two relationships is that we both feel that the other person is doing all the work. They arrange and work with the expert, and I schedule the schools and help them prepare the students. I think that’s a great definition of a collaboration – when we both feel that the other is doing the majority of the work!
  • Begging for help. Once the consultants are aware of VC and it’s benefits, then I can ask them for help on projects as I wrote about earlier. The trick there is to plan far enough ahead that you have a wide window of 2-4 months for them to fit it into their schedule. So I just said – here’s what I want to do and when can you meet for a couple hours so we can make sure this appropriately addresses the curriculum?
  • Attending meetings & workshops. Of course, it goes the other way too. It helps to attend curriculum consultant meetings to hear what everyone is doing. It’s good to know what the state curriculum revision schedule is and who is working on writing curriculum this year. We are busy too of course, but once in a while, getting a good dose of the non technology educational training and professional development that local educators are attending is a valuable experience. See my posts on Constructing Support and Analyzing Errors and Can Teachers Do This Alone? (written after attending a curriculum directors meeting).

So, do you work with the curriculum consultants in your educational service center or district office? How did you establish the relationships and how are you collaborating with them?

Projects Booklet 2.0

Just in time for your summer workshops is a new version of the Project Templates Booklet that many of you have been using. (It’s linked on the TWICE projects page and on our BCISD DL projects page.)

New Project Templates
I’m really excited about this new version. It is twice as long (but still only 10 pages folded & stapled into a booklet). There are several new project templates, the results of ideas simmering in my brain since NECC last summer when I listened to Bernie Dodge talk about WebQuests. I have felt for a while that it’s getting time to increase the interaction and level of thinking in collaborative VC projects. Exchanges are easy to start with, but then you want more!

Middle school and high school teachers especially want more than just a simple exchange. My teacher who designed the Invasive species project hasn’t done it again because it didn’t turn out to be “meaty” enough for her curriculum goals. I think some of the new higher level thinking templates based on WebQuest tasks might work better for her class and other middle and high school teachers.

IP VCR / H.323 Video Recorder Projects
I’m also excited about the new IP VCR projects. I called them that because the Codian name IP VCR seems to be the most descriptive of what this box does. Is there a generic term for it? I haven’t heard one. But this year as I’ve learned about the Codian IP VCR, the Polycom RSS, and the TANDBERG Content Server, I’ve been thinking about the possibilities for projects, especially international projects. Any projects ideas challenged by time zones could be adapted to use one of these boxes. Classes dial in, record their part. Wake up the next morning, listen to the other class, record their response. See the projects booklet for more details!

Evaluation
Finally, at the prompting of my friends at VCAlberta, I added a page for evaluation. It’s a start towards thinking about how we evaluate videoconference projects.

So I hope this new booklet is useful for you in your workshops this summer. If you want to try out any of the new formats with one of your classes & mine, let me know! Your feedback and ideas are always appreciated!

attendr distancelearningville

Check out this little tool that Arnie set up for Distancelearningville. Attendr is a tool to see who you know and who you want to meet.  Try it out – just create an account and put in your location, and click on the buttons next to names to list who you know and who you want to meet.

Ok, this looks like it could be fun (maybe even more right before a conference – like NECC or the upcoming CILC Symposium?). You could make a list of people you wanted to meet at a conference.

Can you think of any other uses besides just being fun & networking a wee bit with each others?

Learn, Teach, Lead

Wow! I love collaboration and learning from videoconferencing colleagues. I’ve been pondering Roxanne’s comments about learning, then teaching, then leading. She first mentioned this to me as we were working on setting up Google Docs for Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with VC this summer (affectionately termed Jazz). Now she’s taken the time to write up the theory more fully. Thanks Rox!

[There are] three phases: you as a learner, you as a teacher, and then as a leader. This is the philosphy that we have adopted in house and Ed and I conduct trainings within the region. At first we were skipping the “learner” phase and tried to get teachers to TEACH with the new technologies. We have revised that philosophy and now we conduct trainings to show teachers and tech leaders how to use the tools for their own learning. Then we will begin to work with them on how to use them with their students and eventually how to use them when they lead their own learning communities.

So today I’ve been in “Jazz” mode all day, preparing materials and meeting with the facilitators. I’ve been wondering, how are we using this idea in the Jazz training? (For more detail, you may want to review the Jazz workshop agenda.)

  • First, every morning the participants experience simulations of popular videoconference projects, including Read Around the Planet, Monster Exchange, Math Marvels, MysteryQuest, and the ASK process, complete with a Vietnam veteran interview. They experience these projects in the role of students, with each site playing the role of a classroom. They can see how the project could work with students. I think that fits into the “learner” phase first.
  • In the afternoon small group time, they design a project in teams comprised of participants from at least two locations. Here also, they use collaborative tools such as GoogleDocs and Skype to create a document describing their project. Early in the week, they have a chance to play with the tools, including camera presets, etc. on a videoconference system. This is the learner phase too I think.
  • At the end of the week, they present their project to everyone. During this time, the participants experience teaching over videoconferencing as they present and talk on camera.
  • I think these experiences prepare them to lead in creating their own projects and supporting their teachers (for coordinators who attend) in using VC. I know I’ve seen amazing increase in the use of VC by people who attend this workshop.

We are also using this idea in training new facilitators. In the facilitators meeting today we explored GoogleDocs and Skype, tools which will be used with the small group activities in the afternoon. We are also using GoogleDocs to share agendas, contact information for everyone, participant lists, and connection details. The facilitators are using the tools as a learner for themselves. In the workshop this summer, they will teach the tools. And we hope that Jazz will continue to grow and maybe next year, some of this year’s facilitators will be ready to lead their own team (3 to 4 sites).

So, what do YOU think? How do you use this pattern of learning, teaching and leading?

Final Report Reflections

Final Report Numbers
Last week I posted our final report online and have been mulling over the implications since. Largely due to the RUS grant, our districts averaged a 400% increase in usage this year. We almost doubled our total usage across the whole service area for the second year in a row. This year 63% of our programs were free; the majority of those project or classroom-to-classroom connections.

Percentage of Teacher Use
However, while those numbers sound good, this year we looked at another number for the first time – percentage of teacher use. I have a couple elementary buildings where 100% of the teachers participated in at least one videoconference with their students; however the average across our two county service area is about 23%. This raises some questions in my mind.

  • Is it our goal to have every teacher use videoconferencing? Should it be? Some of my new RUS grant building coordinators want every teacher to use it. They are all in elementary buildings.
  • Middle and high school classes still prefer high end challenging content which is usually rare from content providers and it’s still impossible to pay for every class to participate in a program. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Is it possible to integrate enrichment videoconferencing across the board at the middle & high school level?
  • Middle and high school classes also don’t see the value of classroom-to-classroom connections as much as elementary teachers do. They want a higher curriculum bang for their buck (or time), and connecting to another school doesn’t always provide that. Is there a way to create curriculum-rich, challenging, free projects for middle and high school classes?

Use & Work Load
In addition, what seems to be high use from my perspective is only 23% of teachers in my service area. If 23% usage is driving me crazy and I can’t keep up; something has to change to make additional growth sustainable. At what point will my building coordinators also feel that it’s driving them crazy and they don’t want to support anymore connections? The work load of supporting videoconferencing (curriculum wise) is shared between the teachers, the building coordinators, and support from the ISD (me). How can we support this in a way that is sustainable and makes room for additional growth? I’m hearing from many of my RUS grant buildings that they are basically pleased with the results of the first year and hope to get more teachers involved next year. How do we sustain that growth & prepare for it?

Solutions
The plans simmering in my brain include the following:

  • Raising the district contribution to our mini-grants from $25 to $50 to spread the funds further.
  • Switching from supporting and making every connection to supporting only those that we’re running (i.e. MysteryQuest & ASK) and ones that the buildings have trouble connecting on their own. This is a huge shift for me and one that I wasn’t ready mentally for last September. But as my schedule filled up, I had to move to this model. Now we’re making it official policy. Are YOU ready for this change if you’re at an educational service agency? It’s coming your way too!
  • More professional development, specifically that which helps building coordinators schedule & troubleshoot on their own and helps teachers design projects & match up with partners.
  • Help my buildings become more independent. This is not only happening at my level; but at the district tech coordinator level as well. In several districts where the district tech coordinator used to help with every videoconference, they are now leaving it to the building coordinators and assisting only when there are problems.
  • Often more content & dream up more projects, especially for middle & high school classes. My challenge here is that I really can’t add more projects that I have to coordinate and facilitate the videoconference. The projects need to be point to point and the teachers need to be able to do it themselves (like Read Around the Planet). This means good high quality teacher packets for projects that tightly match the curriculum.

So how are you addressing and sustaining growth in your area? Do you see these same challenges? Do you think every teacher should use videoconferencing? Please comment!