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!