Videoconferencing Out on a Lim

It seems like this is the third year in a row that sometime in March we have really weird H.261/263/264 dialing conflicts. We upgrade software, and all of a sudden bridges are crashing, sites just ring & ring and won’t negotiate, and one site can take down the whole conference. Is it just me or is this happening to you too?

When you do a lot of connections with multiple vendors’ units involved in the call, once in a while you get caught in between upgrades. The upgrade of one vendor breaks the connections with another vendor and they haven’t fixed it in their latest version yet. Has this happened to you?

It seems like it’s never a good idea to upgrade anything in the middle of the school year. However, sometimes we want to upgrade to fix a problem. It seems like a no-win situation.

That’s my rant for today! Do you have any words of wisdom? Please comment!

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

• Fort Mifflin on the Delaware
• Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
• Adora Svitak
• Mote Marine Laboratory
• Global Nomads Group (Bolivia trip this spring!!)

Today I am running the last MysteryQuest World for this school year. We’re focusing on Europe and have 3 classes from TX, one from OH and one from MI.

After a rough start with technical difficulties for three of the schools, we got right into the presentations. Several of the schools were participating for their first time. The most unique presentation today was from Mata Intermediate in Alief, TX.  They used an investigative interview format. A student was investigating the disappearance of a person who had committed a crime. Each person who was interviewed (wife, mother in law, father in law etc) shared the clues. Then they showed a poster. While we looked at poster, the interviewer repeated the clues again. “So you said, ….” and this gave the students a way to hear the clues again and get them written down.  This format worked really well and was quite funny to watch. The student interviewing had a fancy hat and pipe and acted very aggressive. It was a very entertaining presentation.

In the clarifying questions section today we had some interesting questions:

• Does ya’lls city start with an e? I can tell we have a group of TX schools this time!
• Is the city known as the city of a 1000 windows? These are the kinds of clarifying questions I really like!

Great job to all the classes that participated this year. Stay tuned for news from MysteryQuest USA coming up in April and May!

Reading my VCInsight news and found this announcement from the March 17 issue:

At VoiceCon Orlando 2008 this week, Microsoft Corp. announced broad availability of its conferencing solutions and continued customer and partner adoption of its Unified Communications platform. Polycom and TANDBERG videoconferencing systems (74% of the installed base of room systems) will work with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. In a keynote address, Microsoft revealed that it has plans for the OCS Server to handle High Definition video and that the company is developing a HD videoconferencing camera with TANDBERG, priced for the masses at $300.

This sounds really intriguing. It sounds like a desktop type unit, but I wonder if it would have audio that could work in a classroom?  It sounds like it might require the OCS server, which might be a complication for schools. Still, it’s nice to know the vendors are competing over a low cost videoconference system, which should continue to benefit K12 education.

Did you know the Elevate 2008 draft schedule is posted now? I can see already that it’s going to be a great conference. I hope to see you there! Here are some features I’m looking forward to:

• Optional daily hikes, right during my usual exercise schedule. Should be fun! Bring your hiking boots!
• Afternoon Nutrition break and networking. Doesn’t that sound fun?!
• Live VC demonstration from educational content provider. I wonder which providers they will be featuring. I hope I can see a new one.
• VC Showcase demonstrations and displays. I’m sure I’ll be blogging up a storm with all the new learning at the showcases!
• Two great preconference workshops on Sunday for a cheap $25! How will I choose which one to attend?

Check out the schedule and get your passport soon!! Banff is going to be gorgeous in August! Can’t wait!!

To celebrate my 3rd blog anniversary, I thought I’d finally respond to Gail Desler’s tag for a passion quilt meme. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, so this is the result of simmering.

My passion, as you well know, is bringing engaging experiences to students, generally via the technology of videoconferencing. I want students to know and believe that they can talk to and learn from anyone! I guess the quilt idea got in my head too so I wanted more of a collage. The collage includes videoconferences with a blind author, children’s author, World War II veterans, Iditarod racer, students in Benton Harbor, MI, Wales, and Pakistan, a rattlesnake and a caterpillar. The girl in the center is one of my favorite student pictures from Microsoft Clip Art.

Ok, so here’s the rest of the meme information:

Rules:

• Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
• Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce

And I’m tagging Roxanne, Kevin, Rebecca, Andrea, and Ashton.

Finally, in honor of my blog anniversary, thank you to each of you, my readers, who share, comment, pass the word, send me resources, and in general nudge me to keep learning! If you want to take a stroll down memory lane, wander through some Selected Posts.

I’ve been flat on my back sick all week, but on Tuesday we had a small miracle.

I had a MysteryQuest Western Hemisphere session scheduled with 5 classes, and I was too sick to crawl out of bed, let alone facilitate. All weekend prior, I had wracked my brain trying to think of what to do. I can’t bear to cancel a MysteryQuest because they are almost impossible to reschedule.

Then it hit me, all the teachers had done MQ before! They could just dial in and run it themselves.

I know, whoever heard of that? Five rowdy middle school classrooms on a multipoint with no facilitator?

But, they did it! Four amazing teachers and one great MysteryQuest. I am so proud of these teachers:

• Classroom A Teacher: Annette Rozycki, O.W. Best Middle School, Dearborn, MI
• Classroom B Teacher: Debbie Fucoloro, St. Clement School, Archdiocese of St. Louis, Des Peres, MO
• Classroom C Teacher: Jeff Gaynor, Ann Arbor, MI
• Classroom D Teacher: Laura Ponsart, Gilles-Sweet, Fairview Park City Schools, Fairview Park, Ohio
• Classroom E Teacher: Jeff Gaynor, Ann Arbor, MI

And afterwards, they all emailed each other sharing congratulations on a  job well done. Thank you, teachers & techs, for making another great experience possible so we wouldn’t have to disappoint students by canceling the session!

On a slightly off-videoconferencing topic…. I’ve been teaching an online class, Technology in the Early Elementary Classroom, the last 8 weeks. I love listening to the teachers discuss, create projects, and sharing great ideas with each other. This week there was a discussion of the use of the overhead projector. Kindergarten and 1st grade teachers talked about how students went crazy over it when they first saw it. New to them! And how it helped them follow along in using their math books, etc.

I thought about the tech coordinators I’ve heard wanting to get rid of all the overhead projectors in their school and replace with [insert preferred technology here].

And I wondered, how often do we really stop and listen to the teachers? How often do we observe how they are actually using the tools in their classroom (without judging teaching philosophy or strategy)? How often do we think carefully about how teachers will still do their great work minus a tool we’re tired of? Do we really listen and hear the potential impact of technology decisions on teachers?

——

One of the ways I want to listen to my teachers this year is to do a little end of the year survey. Actually two surveys. I’ll send the Zoomerang links to my regular VC listserv for my teachers, with a link for if you did a VC this year, and if you didn’t. I want to ask them some questions. To see how we can serve them better.

How are you listening to the teachers you serve?

One of my schools had conflicts with the scheduled Read Around the Planet dates this year, so I helped them find partners later in March. Our first connections were this week, and more are scheduled next week.

Today’s session is one of three that we scheduled with Wales. We’ve been working on several collaborations with Wales.

Our class is first grade, and their students are close to the equivalent to 3rd and 4th grade students.

Our class started with a song about sounds and words that have those sounds. Then the students shared a story called Lazy Mary. The class read the story together and two students acted it out.

The class in Wales had different groups talk about various components of Welsh culture.

Their students asked our students, “Where is Wales?” our kids said, England! One of the things that I’ve learned as we do more connections with the United Kingdom is that there is a perception in the U.S. that the UK is the same as England. Whereas people from Wales and Scotland really don’t appreciate that! I’m not sure that this misconception actually got cleared up in the session today. I don’t know what it would take to clear this up, but I think probably when we connect to schools in Wales and Scotland we need a map and an explanation of where England is compared to where they are. When I first started to understand this confusion, I had to look it up online to get a grasp of the situation. It’s certainly confusing on this side of the Atlantic!

Here are some examples of the questions the students asked each other.

• Are you actually by Lake Michigan?
• What is the weather there?
• What time is it there?
• Do you have uniforms?
• What subjects do you learn?
• How many students are in your school?
• What’s the coolest thing about your culture?
• What TV shows and movies do you like? Simpsons and SpongeBob on both sides of the Atlantic!
• What kinds of foods do you eat?

It was a great connection and hopefully we’ll continue our collaboration with Wales.

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

• Adora Svitak
• Cooperating School District
• COSI Columbus
• Manhattan School of Music
• Tuscarawas Carroll Harrison Educational Service Center
• Note: The Bronx Zoo and Camden Children’s Garden are full for this year. It’s that time of year to hurry up and schedule or you’ll be out of luck!

New High Definition  icon
We’ve just added an HD icon to the providers that are offering their programs in HD. I tested this week with the MSU Museum with their new Polycom HDX. The cool thing about HD is even though you may not have an HD endpoint, when you connect to an HD content provider, their picture is REALLY GOOD! It looks great! Of course, it’s a better, higher end camera so there’s a difference. So while I don’t see schools adopting HD quickly, it’s great when the content providers update because we benefit from the improved quality. At this moment we have 139 programs in our database that are offered by providers with HD units.

Don’t forget that there are special searches on the left when you search from either of these links:  VC Program Database or TWICE.  You can search HD, blog reviewed programs, programs with video clips, and more.