Tag Archives: VC Community

This & That

Here’s a collection of notes & thoughts….

  • I’m about halfway through listening to the whole interview between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the D Conference last week. It’s great evening entertainment for those interested in technology. I caught a reference by Bill Gates to videoconferencing and looked it up. Microsoft is working on a teleconferencing product called RoundTable. Intriguing, but it seems to be designed for meetings and may not work well in a classroom setting. But might work for shared classes. Something to keep our eyes on.
  • Did you know that TANDBERG has an education newsletter? Here’s a sample from my inbox and here’s how to subscribe. Enjoy!
  • This is really cool from CSD’s blog. A parent wanted to find out about a museum they connected to so they could visit on their summer vacation! Isn’t that cool!! Content providers, you never know when you’re inspiring an actual visit to your museum!!
  • Mark your calendar for Megaconference Jr. on February 21, 2008.  You won’t want to miss it!!
  • PBwiki came out with a new word-like editor this spring. Makes editing in a wiki a whole lot easier. Also, I’ve recently updated the list of collaborative projects on our collaborative VCs wiki. Lots of great examples of VC projects for your summer trainings!
  • The New York Hall of Science has a nice set of bios on their presenters (explainers) on their blog. Check it out.

Megaconference, Nov. 8, 2007

Mark your calendar for Megaconference on November 8, 2007. The date was just sent out yesterday on the Megaconference listserv. This is the higher education, adult facilitated, original Megaconference that Megaconference Jr. (student facilitated) is modeled after. If you haven’t experienced a Megaconference, it’s an incredible experience.

Here are a few good strategies for bringing a Megaconference to your school.

  • Have the event running in a central location so that classes can pop in and out.
  • Print the schedule and share with teachers. However, realize that Megaconference is live and sometimes it gets off schedule a bit. So be flexible!
  • Encourage students to study and celebrate the geography of the event. Have them map out the participants list. Keep a world map close to the videoconference system so students can look up the locations represented by the presentations.

Anyone else have some good strategies for making a Megaconference a successful learning event in your school?

May 24 End of the Year Wrap Up

This afternoon I hosted four one hour VC sessions with my schools to wrap up the year, reflect on how it went, and talk about next year. About 20 of my 70 buildings attended. I’ve never done any type of wrap-up before, but several of my new RUS Grant buildings wanted to hear from each other.

We used a very simple format: 20 minutes of sharing what went well; 20 minutes of sharing challenges; and 20 minutes of sharing ideas for next year. Here are some of my notes:

What Went Well

  • Author interviews, ASK programs, Center for Puppetry Arts, Columbus Zoo, St. Louis Zoo, Read Around the Planet, MysteryQuest, etc.

Challenges

  • Scheduling and logistics within the school
  • Bandwidth and picture quality
  • Getting teachers interested in VC
  • Technical issues related to test calls, and what to do when problems happen

Ideas for Next Year

  • More provider showcases via vc
  • A workshop for teachers via vc on how to use the ISD website
  • More classroom to classroom projects
  • Mock job interviews for high school
  • Pen pals
  • News teams connecting to each other
  • More free things!
  • Directory of the other building coordinators in the county
  • Middle and high school science – something on the environment
  • Refresher sessions for staff meetings in the fall

We had a good conversation. They enjoyed hearing from each other and realizing that other districts have the same challenges as they do.  They picked up new ideas from each other as well. And my todo list is growing with new ideas of ways to provide support, training, and programming.

Other VC coordinators (Roxanne, Paul, and Andrea) have blogged about their end of the year celebrations. You’ll find them inspiring and more exciting than mine. 🙂 So check them out too. What have YOU done to celebrate the successes of this year?

Distancelearningville

If you didn’t catch this on Roxanne and Arnie‘s blogs, check out this little video clip of Distancelearningville. It’s a must-see experience! If YouTube is blocked at school, then watch it at home. Very funny! 🙂  Enjoy the fruits of this Michigan-Texas collaboration!

IVC Volunteers at NECC

Are you going to NECC this year? If so, you should volunteer to help with the distance learning sessions. This is a great opportunity to network with other videoconferencing colleagues. Here’s the announcement and details from Kecia:

Greetings all!

This year’s NECC is going to be wonderful for Distance Learning enthusiasts. We have an entire strand dedicated to distance learning technologies. We would like to invite you to become part of our team by volunteering as a facilitator or operator for the NECC Distance Learning Committee. Just follow this link http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/volunteer/contact_login.php

and select ONE or BOTH of the tasks listed in the table in order to be considered a volunteer for the NECC Distance Learning Committee. We look forward to meeting you in Atlanta!

Interactive Videoconferencing (IVC) Facilitator Support IVC presenters before and during their sessions, workshops, and showcases. Assist with microphone and camera manipulation and audience management. In the case of showcases, may be called upon to stand-in as “on camera” host/facilitator for remote presenter. Experience with leading and conducting videoconferences. “On camera” experience as either a local or remote presenter helpful.
Interactive Videoconferencing (IVC) Operations Support IVC session, workshop, and showcase operations. Test connections, monitor sessions, troubleshoot problems. Understanding of video conference connections (H.323) and equipment. Experience with Polycom or TANDBERG equipment helpful.

—

Kecia Ray, Ed.D.

Blog Reviews & Video Clips of Content Providers

We’ve just added a couple new features to our VC Program Database linked on TWICE and Polycom. Now under the special searches on the left green bar, you can find all the programs that were reviewed by a blogging educator – , or all the programs that we can find video clips for – . TWICE is planning to add more video clips this summer.

We’re collecting the links to blog reviews from all the people I know of that are blogging – see the Other VC Blogs linked on the right – scroll down a bit. If you’re blogging about VC and I don’t have your blog listed, please let me know!

On another note, while checking links, I noticed that the Battleship New Jersey has a new math program, What Good is a Parabola Anyway? It’s always hard to find a good math videoconference, and this one sounds really neat. I hope to have a teacher do this program next year.

A Day in the Life of a Distance Learning Coordinator

Inspired by Arnie, Roxanne and Sandy, I thought I would write about a day of videoconferencing. So I picked a pretty busy day to record. If you are blogging too, pick a day yet this school year and tell us what it’s really like!

7:30 a.m. River Valley participates in the first ever Literature Quest. I came in early and sat by my phone waiting for a call in case they had trouble. No phone call so they did great on their own!

8:00 a.m. Patrick Hamilton connects to the Buffalo Museum of Science. This connection didn’t go well and after a few minutes of struggling, I had the school dial directly to Buffalo and then I didn’t hear from them so they were fine!

8:30 a.m. River Valley’s second Literature Quest starts. Again they were doing it on their own. At about 8:40 I called the media specialist to see how it was going. Very well. We’ll probably modify the materials to include three presentations from each school. At the high school level it seems, based on this pilot, that a full MysteryQuest with six presentations can be done between two schools in an hour long class period. Good to know and we’ll continue to use this model to develop more programs.

9:00 a.m. Pat Ham finishes with the Buffalo Museum and Washington Elementary connects to them. With Washington El it worked fine on the bridge. I scramble to set up the distance learning room for an ASK program. Presets, tables, logo. Welcome panel participants.

9:30 a.m. Sam Adams and Marcellus Middle School participate in ASK: Monkey Island with our panel of experts. We rescheduled to today so that Marcellus could participate. So now I’m facilitating and making sure the Buffalo Museum program is still going at the same time!

10:00 a.m. Washington El finishes with Buffalo Museum and Patrick Hamilton is back for another session with a different class. While facilitating the ASK program, I keep checking my bridge to see when Washington is done. Then I disconnect so Pat Ham can dial directly. Note: Later today I received an email from Washington Elementary with this feedback on their program with the Buffalo Museum of Science: “The vc went wonderfully. The kids really enjoyed it, and I liked that the kids were making good observations and deductions. It’s definitely one that I’ll recommend to our teachers.”

10:30 a.m. ASK Monkey Island finishes and I thank our panel members and walk them out of the building.

11:00 a.m. Brandywine and St. Joseph High Schools connect to Global Nomads Group for their Pulse program on Muslim-Western relations. St. Joe’s camera was acting up so we had to reboot. Brandywine was connecting at 128K and we tried to resolved that but finally gave up. This program is led by David MacGuirt and is a facilitated dialogue with David posing questions and the students responding to the question, and then commenting on each others’ responses.

12:00 noon. Whew. Time for lunch.

12:30 p.m. River Valley’s last LiteratureQuest starts. On their own again. They did fine!

1:00 p.m. Catching up on email and phone calls. Arranging two more videoconferences. Helping a teacher in my online class. Answering a district tech coordinator’s questions about a grant.

2:30 p.m. Ottawa Elementary goes to the Bronx Zoo. For some reason in today’s connection I couldn’t call the Bronx Zoo, so I had to have them call me. But that was quickly resolved and we had a great program on Animal Colors.

3:40 p.m. Quick test call for Where in Michigan tomorrow.

4:00 p.m. Final videoconference reflection for the Kid2Kid Videoconference Class. We talked about what went well with their projects this year, talked about challenges – mostly related to technology and communication and talked about what other VC projects we have going on. It was a great debrief!

In between VCs today I worked on automating my final report for this year. It’s almost done!

So tell us about one of your days!

SIG IVC Forum

If you’re going to NECC, don’t miss this SIG IVC Event!  This sounds really fun!

It’s SIGIVC’s First Forum

And we need YOUR participation.

We are looking for 15 successful programs/projects to highlight in a fun and informative format called Speed Networking.
Here’s how it works:
First: 15 people have 2 minutes each to share about their project.
Next: Time is provided for all Forum participants to network with the presenters.
Last: One page Project Overview handouts will be available to enable each participant to create a folder of best practice projects.
How to become a presenter:
•Submit a Project Overview by email.
•Judges will choose the 15 that have the greatest appeal.
•Those selected will be notified by June 1, 2007.
Project Overview Submissions Requirements:
•No longer than one typed page.
•Include all the following in this order:
1.Organizational Overview
2.Your challenge, problem or organizational need
3.The solution
4.The results
5.What innovations &/or best practices were used?
6.Contact information
Submission Process:
•Email one page Project Overview to Vicki Allen at va9187@att.com
•Deadline: May18, 2007.
SIGIVC Forum Information
When: Tuesday June 26,2007 from 10:30am to 1:30pm
Where: NECC Atlanta, GA
Who: Anyone interested in videoconferencing
Forum Registration: On NECC website.
•Go to http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/registration/
•Register or reassess your registration.
•Click on Add Special Conference Events
•Under Tuesday, June 26, 2007, choose SIGIVC
•The cost is $20 which covers the cost of lunch
SIGIVC: Who we are
Mission Statement: Our mission is to promote an understanding of Interactive Videoconferencing (IVC) and related virtual learning technologies.
Our goal is to promote and share research and best practices in the field.

Sincerely,
Dawn Colavita
Secretary
SIGIVC

VC on YouTube

I was wandering across the Internet recently and found this link to YouTube videos about videoconferencing linked from the AT&T (SBC / Pacbell) Videoconferencing site. These links probably won’t work at school (they don’t for me), so try them at home. (Issues with YouTube include inappropriate comments on the page featuring the clip and that’s an issue with some of these too. Beware!)

Here’s some clips that show the use of videoconferencing outside the school setting:

Video clips that feature school use:

There are many more including Cisco and Tandberg ads (including some funny Russian Tandberg cartoon ads); examples of Cisco’s Telepresence system featured in popular shows, and other odds & ends. If you’re ever looking for some partially work related entertainment, here’s a place to start!

CSD is Blogging!


I’m so glad to tell you that Cooperating School Districts in St. Louis, Missouri is now blogging about their great videoconferences. For example, international connections, dinosaurs, and puppets. I look forward to learning from CSD as always! 🙂 Go Rebecca!