New Programs
Here are the some recent updates to our VC Program Database linked on TWICE and Polycom.
Archive for February, 2008
Point-to-Point MysteryQuests
This week I’ve been facilitating three Point-to-Point MysteryQuests for Reed Middle School in Bridgman, MI. They connected to MO, NJ, and CA. It’s our first time running MysteryQuests in just an hour with just one other school. The time frame better fits the traditional middle school schedule and makes it easier for the teachers to schedule and participate. We did one each day so that they weren’t scheduled back to back.
The schedule is generally as follows - with some flexibility depending on how everything works out:
- 5 min. Introductions & background info about each of the schools
- 15 min. Presentations from both schools
- 15 min. Research with NO computers
- 5 min. Research with computers
- 5 min. Clarifying questions
- 5 min. Reconsider answers and more research (computers allowed)
- 10 min. Sharing guesses, correct answers, and some time to ask each other questions.
The teacher and I discussed the computers issue and decided to not allow computers during the first research portion. The hard thing about a decision like this is the varied difficulty level presented by the other classes. One of the class presentations was so hard that we didn’t get it at all. The other one we were able to get even after losing 20 minutes to technical difficulties. It seems to be an issue to play by ear. In the session with the hard presentation, we allowed the students to use computers sooner.
If you’re familiar with the MysteryQuest format, you’ll notice that one difference here is the amount of research time. In a traditional multipoint MysteryQuest format, students have 30-40 minutes to research. Of course in that format they are research 4-5 other presentations. In this case, the whole class is researching the one presentation. In theory it should go faster. But we did find this week that each time when the 20 minutes were up the classes wanted more time.
The classes seemed to be mostly involved as usual. I did notice some “behavior” in front of the camera towards the end of the research times. With just one presentation to research, it’s harder to get all the students involved in the research. Easier to lose some who are prone to get distracted anyways. However, it seems to me that the lack of scheduling headaches seems to outweigh this disadvantage to the shortened format.
In the connections where we didn’t have technical difficulties, we were able to spend more time letting the students ask each other questions.
My sense is also that if a teacher does this a couple times, they’d be able to do a point to point MysteryQuest without a facilitator. I would like to get to that point so that we can increase the number of these sessions. There’s only so many sessions a person can facilitate!
I look forward to additional feedback from my teacher. We’re doing another point-to-point one in March with a different teacher, so we’ll see how that one goes too. Overall though, I’m pleased with this adaptation of the program to make it easier for our middle school classes to participate.
Creative News Shows
Running another MysteryQuest Western Hemisphere today. One of my favorite formats for presentations is news shows. You can see some examples in the MysteryQuest video.
Today’s most entertaining presentation was from O.W. Best Middle School in Dearborn, MI. They had a news show with all kinds of interesting facts and lines while giving their clues.
One funny clue started with, “From the Institute of Boring Information, the nearest body of water is…”
The one that really caught my attention was, “Police are tracking a tourist named Ms. Janine Lim who is suspected of hijacking a boat.” That really perked up my ears. Thankfully, later in the broadcast, the student news show reported, “All charges have been dropped for Janine Lim. It was discovered that she actually owns the boat.”
Very creative, O.W.Best! You made me laugh after a morning of too many technical problems! 
I wish I really did own that boat. See you in the next MysteryQuest in March!
There are still a couple openings in MysteryQuest World in March. Let me know if you want in but are struggling with funding. Also, I’m beginning to get dates together for MysteryQuest USA in April. In a week or so those should be ready for registration as well.
Lit Review: Videoconferencing exposes students to new worlds
Lit Review: This is a post in a series focusing on the research studies on videoconferencing.
WMHO. (2002). Videoconferencing exposes students to new worlds. T.H.E. (Technological Horizons in Education) Journal, 29(8).
Author: Ward Melville Heritage Organization (or THE Journal staff? it isn’t clear)
Title of article: Videoconferencing exposes students to new worlds.
Publication year: 2002
Database source: T.H.E. Journal
Name of journal: T.H.E. Journal
My Codes: VCContentProviders
Main Point: Videoconferencing allows a non-profit science organization to protect the salt marsh wetlands and still educate students about it. It allows WHMO to reach more students than would be possible with onsite visits.
Limitations:
This isn’t a research article and does not include a theoretical framework or any research data or references to other work. Well, page 3 says,”research has shown” the benefits of VC, but no references are provided. A few sentences describe teachers’ feedback from the sessions.
Notes:
The article describes how WMHO transformed an on-site field trip to a 45-60 minute engaging interactive curriculum-based program for videoconferencing. The program includes a learning kit with lesson plans, worksheets, activities, and a CD-ROM with additional resources. The article describes the visuals shown, including some innovative cameras that allow for visuals right from the water’s edge.
The article describes the reach of the programs - locally in the tri-state area and to several other states as well and mentions 12,000 students served.
Relevance:
While not a research article, this article does describe one aspect of curriculum videoconferencing - the content provider experience.
New Programs
Here are the some recent updates to our VC Program Database linked on TWICE and Polycom.
MysteryQuest Africa
First MysteryQuest World Geography of the year today. (I still have openings in the March sessions!)
MysteryQuest sessions are really fun to do because the students are so engaged and earnest about their work and learning. My favorite presentation today came from Bell Academy, NY, one of Andrea Israeli’s schools. The students had woven their clues into a mystery story about a special magical object. They even showed it - it looked like a beautiful silver teapot. I was too slow to grab a picture of it, but you can imagine.
At the end, when they revealed the answer of Morocco, we got to meet at student from Morocco and the city that they presented. She shared some information about the what life is like there. What a treat for our students!
We finished early because we lost two schools to snow days and other complications. So we spent some time asking questions at the end. A new question this year was, “What’s the price of gas?” We also had some lively rivalry about football and baseball teams.
Consider participating this year! Kids love MysteryQuest and they get deeply involved in their study of the region and motivated by the competition.
New VC Blog from London
I was delighted to find this blog from the Havering and Redbridge Boroughs of London, UK in my Google Alerts. Welcome, Dave Smith and Anthony Evans, to the VC blogging community!
It appears to be reporting on a partnership between two districts to form their own network and collaborative projects. A quick review of recent posts shows some really cool things happening that we can learn from. The pictures from their Uganda connection are exquisite! Check it out & leave them a comment!
Understanding and Troubleshooting H323 Networks Workshop
I’ve blogged about this Understanding and Troubleshooting H323 Networks workshop from the University of Wisconsin before here and here. It’s excellent. Now they are offering it again and this time via web/phone conference. If you can possibly scrape the dollars together, I highly recommend it for your networking and technical videoconferencing support staff. Even videoconferencing coordinators like me - educators turned MCU support - can gain something from the workshop, especially if you’ve done a lot of connections to sites outside your network and run into strange scenarios.
They don’t pay me, or even ask me, to advertise this workshop. I’m just sharing it with you because it was such a benefit to me.
KC3: Mound Builders
This morning one of my lucky classes is connecting to one of the KC3 programs as part of the competition. Our class is one of the test audiences.
This program is on the Mound Builders and is presented by a school in Oklahoma. Their program included a Moodle site with activities. All of our students got accounts in their Moodle site to participate in the pre activities. I didn’t get to see this, but from what I heard it worked out great.
The videoconference started off with the students in OK asking questions of our students in MI, some of which referred to conversations they’d had ahead of time in Moodle. They talked about the weather, driving to Chicago, sports, snow-mobiling etc.
Dr. Dirt, the lead presenter from OK, drew a name out of a bucket, and threw a t-shirt to Amanda, one of our students. He threw it at the camera, and our teacher threw it to the student. Very funny. The kids really laughed. The t-shirt had the numbers of the student presenters in their basketball team.
After the preliminaries, the students in OK gave a little geography lesson on their state and then moved into the presentation. It included some live presentation from the students, visuals in a PowerPoint, and a taped interview with a local expert on Native Americans. After the video, our students had an opportunity to ask questions, but they didn’t have any.
Next, students learned about excavations and looting that has happened at one of the mounds nearby. After this, the students divided into three groups already assigned. Within those groups, a person was assigned to be the mapper, the reporter, and the excavator. They had planned to have a jello mold at our site, but it wouldn’t set. So they had to improvise and show the students their jello mold on the document camera. The activity helped students see how excavators and archaeologists map and document everything they find as they carefully excavate.
After this activity, our students talked to the archaeologist who was in the taped interview before and learned about how the jello mold activity is similar to an archaeologist’s actual work. He also talked about what he had learned about the Native Americans who lived in Oklahoma based on his work and research.
After a little blip in the technology, another student shared additional information on how the Spiro people lived along with pictures of artifacts found in one of the mounds. The neat thing about student presentations is the extra humor and interesting questions interspersed throughout the program.
After we got reconnected, the conference went down again due to scheduling on the TN bridge that’s recording this for the KC3 competition. Considering the stresses of the technology, the students in OK did a great job in just keeping on! Our class liked it enough to stick around even though there were difficulties.
At the end, our students asked several questions about the mound builders. Then the OK students asked our kids if they could do a virtual field trip for them and what it could be on. I think it was a stunning question for the kids on our end. But they started to brainstorm some ideas on Michigan. To close, our kids said thank you and all the presenting students got on camera and waved.
This was a neat connection. You could tell the students had built a bit of a relationship ahead of time in Moodle and that definitely made a difference in the interactions, especially at the beginning. I look forward to seeing the results of the KC3 program.
Lit Review: Bridging the Gap Between Formal and Informal Learning: Evaluating the Seatrek Distance Learning Project.
Lit Review: This is a post in a series focusing on the research studies on videoconferencing.
Ba, H., & Keisch, D. (2004). Bridging the Gap Between Formal and Informal Learning: Evaluating the Seatrek Distance Learning Project. Retrieved Febuary 11, 2008, from http://cct.edc.org/report_summary.asp?numPublicationId=177
Author: Harouna Ba and Deborah Keisch
Title of article: Bridging the gap between formal and informal learning: Evaluating the SeaTrek distance learning project.
Publication year: 2004
Source: Center for Children and Technology
My Codes: VCContentProviders
Main Point: This article is an external evaluation of Mote Marine Laboratory’s SeaTrek program.
Methods:
The evaluation study examined “the impact of SeaTrek on students’ perceptions of science as an engaging discipline and student reaction to inquiry-based learning approaches” as well as how the project is usable within school settings. p. 1.
Data was collected via interviews, focus groups, observations and surveys from two Florida schools that participate in the project. The schools have different profiles. Observations were collected on seven sessions at the schools, and three sessions from SeaTrek. Online surveys were send to all educators who had participated in SeaTrek programs.
The data was anaylzed for emergent themes to provide a detailed report of the experiences.
The qualitative study cannot be expected to be representative of the target population, nor can them be generalized to the entire population of SeaTrek teachers, not to mention teachers connecting to content providers in general.
Findings:
The programs seemed to target teachers with a high level of technology access and literacy. Maybe not target, but those are the teachers most likely to use these programs and probably more likely to fill out a survey about it. In addition, there was generally a “school-based Instructional Technology Facilitator” who worked with the teachers and with Mote Marine. Sound familiar?! There’s the critical role of the coordinator again!
Teachers felt that the videoconferences motivated students to learn more about how scientists work, and increased their interest in science. The instructional materials helped them better understand the field of science (p. 5).
Some of the teachers found the materials really helpful for helping the students learn, and other didn’t. The reviews were mixed on this. Maybe because some teachers find time to use the materials as a preparation for the VC, and others don’t. p. 9 The teachers who used the materials to prepare were enthusiastic about the program as a whole. Interesting lesson on preparation isn’t it?!
The evaluation contains specifics on preferences for this program over that program, and teachers’ reactions to the materials.
Teachers reported scheduling as a critical factor. They need to schedule programs when they are studying the program not whenever the provider can offer it. The teachers wanted to pick their own time slots for the programs. It sounds like SeaTrek used to schedule their programs in sequence and schools participated in several in a row. Now you can mostly schedule them when you want if they aren’t booked up already.
The program offers students a chance to interact with real scientists which is highly motivating for students and encourages their interest in science. Sounds like a worthy result to me!
Issues to address included scheduling, age appropriateness of programs, identity of the content provider. That’s an interesting one. I see the evaluations come in from my teachers and they often forget which place is offering the program. Hmm. What are the implications for content providers? These results would be helpful to all content providers hoping to improve their programs.
It’s interesting that the study recommended the content provider provide more tech support to schools. This one is interesting too. Can content providers really do that?
Author/Audience: This report was written as an evaluation for Mote Marine and I’m sure they used it as a tool to continue improving their programs. It’s posted online so we can learn from it too.
Cross References: This is quoted in the new textbook on videoconferencing by Newman, Silverman, etc, but not in the Alberta Lit Review or any of the earlier ones, because it wasn’t published yet.
Questions/Thoughts:
I wonder how many other content providers have commissioned this type of evaluation and if it’s posted online.
I like the title - the idea that content providers bring informal learning to the classroom formal learning.
Relevance: This article is right on target for my literature review of curriculum videoconferencing and the videoconferences described are targeted to a K-12 audience.
