Videoconferencing Out on a Lim

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to either take my research survey or forward/promote it with your local videoconference coordinators/site managers. After the first week of the survey being open, I thought I’d share the status of responses. I’m hoping for at least 400 responses to achieve statistical significance. We’re about 40% of the way there. Here’s who has responded so far:

Countries

• 11 from Canada; 1 Ontario, 10 Alberta
• 1 from Greece
• 1 from Honduras
• 1 from Pakistan
• 2 from the United Kingdom
• 140 from the United States

States

• 1 Alaska
• 1 Alabama
• 2 Arizona
• 3 California
• 1 Connecticut
• 1 Florida
• 1 Georgia
• 10 Indiana
• 2 Kansas
• 1 Kentucky
• 1 Maryland
• 23 Michigan
• 4 Minnesota
• 1 Missouri
• 2 North Carolina
• 7 New Jersey
• 14 New York
• 4 Ohio
• 1 Oklahoma
• 5 Pennsylvania
• 2 South Carolina
• 2 Tennessee
• 38 Texas!!!
• 5 Virginia
• 3 Washington
• 5 Wisconsin

Thank you again! My target audience is school level videoconference coordinators who support one videoconference unit. So please take the survey if you haven’t already, or share the information with your school level coordinators.

Several of you have asked me about results. I definitely plan to share as soon as I can. However it won’t be really quick because this is for my dissertation and I have to defend it before I can share results. But you’ll hear about it for sure!!

I’ve been running a bunch of MysteryQuest USA sessions in the last couple weeks, and more coming. Here are a few snippets from what’s been happening so far.

Intros
After the introductions in the session today, the first class was unmuted for a bit before they started their presentation. I heard a student ask, “Are we going to see her?” I laughed and said, “I know you don’t want to see me; I’ll be muting my video.” That’s why I like to control the bridge at the same time I’m running a MysteryQuest. I can “hide” when I want to. And now I know the kids want me to hide too! It was pretty funny. I could see the student who said it squirm in her seat as I chuckled about it.

Presentations

This screen shot is from a presentation that was organized around the game, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Very fun!

News shows are always fun, especially when complemented by visuals to review the clues. This class, from Western Hills, El Paso, did a news show. In this shot, the announcer is in a helicopter!!! How cool is that?!

This is an example from New York State of a background that gives clues at the same time as providing a set for a new show.

Clarifying Questions
In the clarifying questions section, we’ve had some interesting questions. I think my favorite so far this year was, “Is your city colorful?” The class wasn’t sure, so they said “no.” But we all still wonder what city they had in mind!

Sharing Guesses

This clue is on the document camera and is a great example of sharing a guess. This class did well because they had time to make and print these before we shared guesses!

As usual, MysteryQuest USA is a lot of fun and full of engaging learning experiences!

Dear blog readers! I know you have probably been able to learn and use resources from my posts and projects. I hope now that you can do me a return favor and promote my research survey in your service area.

Note for regional coordinators: There is one question that asks if they are supported by an educational service agency and if so, what is the name of it. I can use this to pull just your region’s data if you are interested in it. If so, when you send it out, please encourage your coordinators to name your educational service agency in the survey (question 13). Send me an email to let you know you’re interested and then give me over the summer months to pull it together for you. Also, if you want to look through the survey, write “delete” in all the open ended fields so I’ll know to delete your entry since it won’t be valid. Thanks!!

Here’s the official announcement:

Dear Videoconferencing Colleague,

Please take a moment to complete this anonymous web based survey for videoconference coordinators at the district or school level and are responsible for one videoconference unit. If you coordinate videoconferencing at a regional level, please forward this notice to your local videoconference coordinators.

The focus of this study is the videoconference coordinator and their influence on the utilization of videoconferencing in the school. The purpose of this research is to investigate the coordinator’s support of videoconferencing, and the technical and administrative issues that may affect the school’s use of videoconferencing. This study will analyze how these factors may predict the utilization videoconferencing in the school and will assist in providing knowledge on the most effective ways to support the implementation of videoconferencing in schools.

The survey is anonymous and your answers are confidential. Completion of the survey serves as a form of implied consent. Participation is voluntary, and refusal to participate involves no penalty. You may discontinue participation at any time without penalty.

Please click here to take the survey:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227RTY7Y6M7

I appreciate your time and support of this research. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you,

Janine Lim
Instructional Technology Consultant
Read Around the Planet Coordinator 2006-2008
Berrien County ISD
(269) 471-7725×101
jlim@remc11.k12.mi.us
Graduate Student in the Leadership Program in the School of Education at Andrews University

If you have questions you wish to address to an impartial third party, you may contact the advisor for this research, Erich Baumgartner, baumgart@andrews.edu or (269) 471-2523.

Thanks to all 388 of you from 29 U.S. states & Canada who voted in this year’s Best Content Providers Survey. You can find all the results, best providers, honorable mentions, and the prize winners online.

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Classroom Exchange
Our Upton Middle School students just finished connecting to the Reef HQ. Now, they are talking to middle school students at Scots College in Sydney.

We had 3 girls from our school, because everyone else is at soccer practice or other activities. The school we connected to was an all boys school, so it was a fun exchange.

Our students started by telling a little about our town, St. Joseph and the schools in the district. Then they shared a presentation about their area, including their beaches. We learned all about rugby and cricket, and some of the best Aussie sites to see. Another presentation from the Australian students covered the flora and fauna in their area.

Here are some questions we asked each the Australian students. Our students had used CultureGrams to compare the countries and prepare questions.

• What brands do you usually wear?
• Australians live longer than Americans, so why do you think that is? Our students think it’s because of smoking in the U.S. Do people smoke a lot in Australia?
• How many of you have cell phones?
• What are some of the popular books around your school?
• When you think of Americans, what do you think of? (loud, “out there”)
• What do you think is most important for us to learn about Australia?
• What TV shows do you watch and what bands do you listen to?
• What do you have for pets?

Some of the funny word differences that we really laughed about were:

• thongs in Australia, flip flops in the U.S. (lots of red faces on both sides with this one)
• “heaps” in Australia, “lots” in the U.S.

Some of the questions they asked us were:

• What are popular sports in Michigan?
• What do you do in an average day?
• Is basketball big in your area?
• Do you travel around the U.S. a lot?
• Do you have South Park on TV?
• When you think of Australians, what do you think of? (surfers, kangaroos)
• Have you ever heard of Steve Irwin?
• Do you play rugby?

A funny line from Australia was “we’re the only country that eats our emblem.”

These two experiences were part of a unit on Australia and turned out to be a great experience. We learned some lessons about scheduling and hopefully will have more students on our end next time.

This evening Upton Middle School students are connecting to the ReefHQ in Townsville, Queensland, Australia.

We started by the students taking a deep breath to go diving. The diver explained how his mic & breathing system works. Then he gave the students a tour of the reef, showing and explaining the coral reef. He showed different corals and asked the students to guess the name of the coral (brain coral, honeycomb coral, etc.)

The excitement in the room was palpable. All of us were exclaiming to each other how cool this is! A custodian walking by came in to watch for a while.

We laughed at a sea cucumber that breathes through it’s bottom. We learned about creatures living on the sand, and more in the lagoon. During the tour, we asked a few questions too. We were able to watch a starfish retract it’s stomach too.

Next the diver switched over to the shark tank. During the switch, Julie, the reef guide, asked the students questions to review what they had learned so far. We found out that the coral reef exhibit is 37 m long and 4.5 m deep and holds 2.5 million liters. The shark holds about 750,000 liters. We chatted about the movie Finding Nemo and how it corresponds to real life.

It was great to watch the diver swim with the sharks and get close up views of the different types of sharks in their predator tank. We met so many different sharks and fish, including one that likes to nibble the camera.

The students thought the video was incredibly good (we connected at 384 K at H.264). A green sea turtle enjoyed a scratching on its back and came to say hello.

This was a great experience, and I’m sure we’ll be doing it for an after school evening activity again!

Unbelievably, I’ve been thinking about how we could get videoconferencing into every classroom. We’re still in the days of trying to get it into every school in our county (about 3/4 there). But in my districts where every school has it, now they want it in every classroom.

Why VC in Every Classroom?
First, here are the catalysts from the last few weeks that have set my brain spinning:

• One of our local superintendents wanted to know if it was possible to buy cheaper cameras and have videoconferencing in all the classrooms, preferably connected to the projectors installed with the Promethean boards in all the classrooms. It’s not easily done nor seems to make sense cabling-wise with the current options out there.
• I know of at least two of my local districts who are setting up “model classrooms,” and are including videoconferencing as part of the technologies featured.
• My teachers are starting to say they want it in their classroom. Not just a mobile cart rolled into the classroom, but they want it there all the time. Here’s a sample comment from the current session of my online class, Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections. Of course this description assumes the need for fiber so any teacher could VC any time they want as well.

My hopes and ideas for using videoconferencing is to enhance my curriculum. I would love to have the equipment in my classroom, so I don’t have to mess with scheduling and compromising with others in my building. Since our students are growing up in a global community I would like for them to see more of the rest of the world and meet people from other cultures.

• At the USDLA Conference last week, I heard several K12 educators describe dreams for VC: many more content providers (about 250-300 ish now if you count the local ones not ready to offer content nationally), and VC in every school.
• I downloaded the latest version of XMeeting on my Mac and got up & running in two minutes with no NAT messiness due to a new cool little thing called a stun server. I’ll write more about that later.

Is It Possible to Have VC in Every Classroom?
I believe that VC cannot become mainstream until the cost is below $1000, even below $700 or $800. A school needs to be able to buy VC equipment without a grant. I don’t know very many places that have acquired their equipment without grant funding, and big grant funding at that. They should be able to get it with the district tech budget, or with little local grants like the MACUL grant (up to $2000 per grant).

A Paradigm Shift is Required
I also think that VC cannot become mainstream in schools until the vendors are selling it not just for teaching or for meetings or for traditional uses of VC. Schools need to see the value of curriculum videoconferencing - experts, authors, content providers, collaborations, projects, backyard content, the whole works! We need great VC experiences published in the popular edtech magazines. Schools need to know they can do a ton of videoconferences for minimal cost - i.e. lots of free ones in addition to the paid quality content from our favorite providers.

A Dream Curriculum Videoconferencing VC Kit
I’m hearing the term “VC kit” from my friends in Wales, England, and Scotland more often these days. I really like it. I think we need a “kit,” not a box that has to be rack mounted in a specially designed cart. If I were an engineer, here’s how I’d try to design it.

• Runs on the computer already in the classroom (a high end one of course). Can be Mac or PC. Could it be built on XMeeting for the Mac? That would solve the Mac challenge easily.
• Has classroom quality audio. I prefer the Polycom mic, not just because Polycom funds many of my ideas, but because it is so well suited to placement anywhere in the classroom: desk, stool, floor, chair, etc. We need something that is just above desktop videoconferencing. We need the echo cancellation for the classroom audio.
• Can show slides etc. from the computer it’s installed on. Curriculum videoconferencing is primarily receiving content, but also collaborations and projects. Students need to be able to present clues and information about their town, among other things. This would eliminate the need for any inputs, hooking up VCR, document camera, etc. etc. Presentations could be shared from the computer. Also, preferably, not just H.239! Yikes, that’s driving me crazy. Hopefully the engineers could think of a way to make that work no matter what you connected to on the other end.
• A simple camera with presets. A camera a little higher end than a webcam. We need presets for ASK programs, for collaborations, for presentations in projects. But not so high end that the cost is too much.
• Hooks up to the projector already in the classroom. A kit that integrated well with the major interactive boards would be awesome. Certainly there must a way to do this. I think installing with the computer that’s hooked up to the board seems best to me.
• Can do Skype and iChat too. Ok, now I’m really dreaming. But think about it. We really need a way to do VC - either Skype or iChat with our international buddies, or H.323 with content providers, colleagues, universities, other H323 sites etc. If it could work with Skype, why not iChat? If it was basically just a camera and a great mic with software for H.323, couldn’t the camera and mic be used for those too? Why not?! Since I’m dreaming! Schools need an all-in-one solution for all the curriculum videoconferencing opportunities out there.
• EASY firewall solutions. I am so intrigued by the stun server that comes with XMeeting. Couldn’t it be this easy to make H323 work on school network? It has to be if we’re going to increase the use of curriculum videoconferencing.

What do YOU think? Is it a worthy goal? Do we need it? How would you design a less than $1000 unit for all classrooms? Please comment.

Ottawa Elementary, whose school mascot is the otter, is connecting this afternoon to author, Laurie Keller, to discuss her book Do Unto Otters. We also have Mars Elementary participating locally, and there are other classes across the US, too. This is a Polycom Special Event and the students have followed the ASK process to prepare.

• What inspired you to write this book?
• Which one of your books is your favorite?
• Did you have a mean neighbor too?
• Have you ever been to any Michigan schools to visit?
• Do you always use the golden rule?
• When did you decide to become a writer?
• You used a lot of animals in this story. What the process you used to pick the animals to use in the story?
• Have the rabbit and the otter finished the book about you yet?

Each school also shared their favorite classroom or school rule. Some them were:

• I will always try to do my best.
• I am responsible for my own behavior.
• Hands are for helping, not hurting.
• Don’t talk when other people are talking.

Laurie also showed all her materials used during the preparation of the book. It was a great experience and I’m sure we’ll do this again!

This afternoon, Brown Elementary connected with author Laurie Keller for a Polycom Special Event based on the ASK format. Several other schools across the country were participating as well. Students had read Laurie’s book, The Scrambled States, and had prepared questions to ask her. Here are a few of the questions from today:

• How did you get the idea for the book?
• Where was the party?
• Who is your favorite author?
• Have you visited all the states?
• What is your favorite state?
• How long did it take you to write the book?
• What did you do before you were an author?
• As a child, what was your favorite book?
• Why is there a penny on two of the pages of the book?
• Why didn’t you scramble continents instead?
• Since your favorite president is Lincoln, have you ever been to Mt. Rushmore to see him?

We got a peek look at the sequel coming out in August, The Scrambled States Talent Show, and we also saw some of the writing process and other books that she had written. The students each shared 3 facts from their state as well. Great connection!

Here are some recent updates to our VC Program Database linked on TWICE and Polycom.

• Cranbrook Institute of Science
• Ontario Science Centre
• Tuscarawas Carroll Harrison Educational Service Center

Also, today, April 25, is the last day to vote for best content providers! We need Canadian and UK voters too!