Videoconferencing Out on a Lim

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!

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 afternoon Coloma Middle School, one of our RUS grant schools, is participating in a 3 hour Around the World session with countries in Central and South America. The sessions focus on “misconceptions resolved” as misconceptions are part of the 7th grade language arts curriculum for Coloma.

Costa Rica
Lincoln School, Costa Rica started with a presentation with an overview of their country and their school and daily life. Next they presented their game show to quiz our students on their culture. Many of the questions were taken from their presentation. Some of the questions were:

• What is the capital of Costa Rica?
• What is the most popular sport in Costa Rica?
• What countries neighbor Costa Rica?

Next, our class presented about Coloma, Michigan, and misconceptions about America. They created humorous skits about the misconceptions. We started the game show, and then ran out of time. Clearly, though the students were having a great time!

Nicaragua
Soon the American Nicaraguan School connected and we checked audio and video. Their students weren’t quite ready, so we played the “small town America” game for a few more minutes.

Then Nicaragua shared their humorous skits about misconceptions about Nicaragua. They were video clips liked the ones from Coloma. Both sets of video clips were a little hard to understand due to soft voices and background noise. We certainly learned a few lessons with those skits!

Then we played a Jeopardy game about Nicaragua Physical Geography, History and Culture, and Human Geography. We rotated between American and Costa Rica to compete in the game. Questions included the largest lake, types of food, etc. We just finished the Nicaragua game show in time.

We took a 20 min break for our Michigan students to eat since it was 5:00 p.m. here.

Guatemala
Soon Guatemala connected in. We started with quick intros from the participating classes, and then they started their presentation. They showed many pictures. Then we played their jeopardy game with American and Nicaragua competing. Guatemala had trouble with their skit video clips, so we played the jeopardy game about rural America with Nicaragua and Guatemala competing. This was a really fun format and the students in each class were really involved.

Finally at the end, we were able to watch the skits from Guatemala with misconceptions about their country.

Lessons Learned
We learned again that it’s important to slow down and speak clearly! It’s so easy to get excited and talk so fast! Laughing while talking makes it even harder to understand. We also had trouble with all of the video clips for the skits. They were very difficult to hear. We’ll have to think more about what could make these work better! I think that video clips probably can’t work unless there is a mic on the presentation. In a live skit, you can have the students come closer to the mic and speak slower. However in a taped skit, it’s hard to make it easier to hear.

Due to a comedy of scheduling problems, we didn’t connect to a country every hour for 12 hours as we originally planned. However we had a great connection with these three schools. We appreciate the hard work from all the students who participated in this set of videoconferences!

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.

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

• COSI Columbus
• HEC-TV
• Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
• Global Nomads Group
• Michigan State University Museum

Last week Andrea asked me about my Christmas holiday. She remembered the castle trip from last year. Well this year, we stayed home and I read a lot. But I did have some family-&-friends-fun-time too! We made a gingerbread castle and you can see the pictures here. My sister-in-law got me started on this hobby and you can see other projects we’ve done too. Enjoy!

Tips & thoughts & insights from this discussion/groups.

• Always share a map at the beginning of the videoconference.
• Voicethread - a way to do delayed time video discussions. Sounds cool & worth checking out. Also jabber, skype, googletalk, etc.
• collaborative vcs pbwiki  - projects written in my online classes: Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections & Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections.
• My projects templates booklet
• Find someone today and make a commitment to connect to them.
• Mentoring cross grade level within the district via videoconferencing.

One of the issues on my mind this fall is the essential role of the building coordinator in a successful implementation of K12 curriculum videoconferencing. As I look across my county with 70 units in buildings, I see a wide variety of ways to support videoconferencing within the building. But we do have at least one champion in each building. Without a champion, how would teachers be willing to try videoconferencing and who would help them get started? They can’t do it alone, that’s for sure. So here are some possibilities for a building level champion. Can you think of any others?

• Media specialist, librarian, media para professional. Whatever the title, the person usually is interested in technology and often has an instructional background. With these two characteristics and some training, they can assist teachers in finding and designing quality videoconference experiences.
• Technology integration specialist. It seems there are fewer & fewer buildings these days with the luxury of this position. But this person also is uniquely positioned to help teachers get a videoconference hooked up, do basic troubleshooting, and also help teachers figure out how to integrate VC in the their curriculum.
• Teacher or teachers. I have several buildings where a teacher or a couple of teachers are the building coordinator(s). They start out by modeling the use of videoconferencing and using it in their own classroom. The stories spread. Soon their grade level is planning to have all the classes participate in the same videoconference. And it spreads from there. It is very challenging for teachers to coordinate, though. It’s hard for them to get away from the classroom to hook up a videoconference for another teacher. Sometimes they swap kids to get it started. If the system is close to their classroom, it is easier for them to run across the hall and assist as needed.
• Lead teacher for each grade level/team. Another way that the coordination happens is by having a coordinator for each grade or team. This model helps to spread the labor around and make it easier. Still, it’s hard for teachers to coordinate for their colleagues. The teacher coordinator model especially needs strong support from the district or educational service agency level.
• Secretary. I have a couple of buildings where the secretary is the coordinator as well. In both cases, she is given extra time - an hour or two a day - to assist with videoconferences. They are helping teachers search for programs, fill out registration forms, keep track of scheduling, and hooking up the videoconferences.
• District Level Tech Coordinator. I also still have a few districts with just one videoconference unit and the district tech coordinator is the videoconference coordinator. While that is working for them; I’m encouraging them to get their building level people trained to relieve their load. It’s the best way to increase use of VC in their districts.

Ideally, all the building level coordinators have someone above them to call for help. They need training on not only using the remote control, moving the camera & dialing; they also need information on curriculum applications of videoconferencing. They need someone to call when they can’t make a connection work. They need tech support for network issues that can & will interrupt videoconferences. They need someone to bounce ideas off of, and to host user groups or similar sharing sessions.

So, how about you? What kind of support structure do you have in place for the implementation of curriculum videoconferencing?

Here’s another great post from my current online class, Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections. The class was discussing Scott Merrick’s article, When Good Technology Goes Bad.
This post is from a teacher and highlights the essential role of the media specialist in supporting videoconferencing:

The article was a bit funny.  I think that the reason teachers (I secretly include myself here) feel that it is more complicated than it may in fact be is because I can’t even read the seventh paragraph where the author is talking about the equipment.  The only words that looked like English was “Radio Shack”.  I’ve never been in one, but do recognize the name as a store.  I’m not so much afraid of having one bad go of it as I am destroying some costly equipment by cramming a plug into a spot where it doesn’t belong and breaking something. 

 

When I participated in a Mystery Location VC it was easier than driving a car.  That was perfect.  Work was required on my part to prep my kids and teach particular skills to ensure success on the day of.  We practiced for about a week.  Most everything ran smooth the day of.  Had I needed to climb on a roof and look for a “female/female RJ-45”, whatever that is, I most likely would have just cancelled the event.  When it gets down to the equipment I like to defer to our Media Specialist.  She is knowledgeable and happy to help.  Without her guidance I am not sure I could have been as successful in my first attempts at videoconferencing.     

I keep hammering this point home. The building level coordinator, ideally a media specialist, is critical to successful sustained use of curriculum videoconferencing!

NECC Presentation Proposals are due October 3!!

So, are you going to present? We need lots more videoconferencing sessions so our favorite technology, VC, is well represented this year. Here’s my dream presentations list (I posted it for Elevate 2008 too - those are due in November).

• Roxanne Glaser, TX a session on collaborative tools that support videoconferencing (like we’re using in Jazz etc.).
• Global Nomads Group, NY with the session including a simulation of Pulse like they did for us in Jazz last week.
• Jim Wenzloff, MI on the ASK process, with a live interview included. Make us cry with The Wall, Jim!
• Shane Howard, TX on how bridge guys can be fun and provide cool content too. How to hook up avatars to a Polycom PVX. How to work with creative educators and not lose your cool. Suggested Title: “How to support K12 videoconferencing with two MCUs and a sense of humor.”
• Bering Straits School District, AK, on how to provide cool content based in your community.
• Craig Moellerstein from GCI School Access, AK, on how to put a codec on a sled and VC to the world.
• Karachi High School on all the interesting VCs they are doing.
• Mike Griffiths, Global Leap, tips on successful international videoconferences.
• Joyce Chen on how to start a high school videoconferencing club.
• InteractiveClassroom.ca on how their collaborative community started/is doing and the state of VC in Ontario.
• Tim Boundy on UKERNA/JANET and how to collaborate with schools on UKERNA.
• The Megaconference Jr. crew on virtual testimonials, VJs, and how to organize student run VCs.
• Someone to do a clear explanation of the state of GDS dialing and a discussion of whether the K12 community ought to be embracing this dialing plan as a solution to firewall problems.
• Angela Conrad on class cheers and creative ways to help classes feel connected to each other. Maybe on podcasting IVC sessions too?
• A roundtable discussion of those who coordinate the videoconference sessions at their statewide/provincial edtech conferences. We could learn from each other and trade good ideas for speakers.
• I’d like to see our favorite content providers share best practices and models of quality instruction & interaction. Challenger Learning Center’s eMissions should present too!
• Carol Fleck and Kim Perry from OH from Keystone a few years ago for the full length classes crowd. They have more tricks for true interaction and blending the classes across the sites than anyone I’ve ever seen/heard present.
• A roundtable on Read Around the Planet technical problems with vendors coming to listen and learn. What if we all brought our wildest stories to share?! Wouldn’t that be fun!?
• Someone to try out my IP VCR projects in the new projects booklet & report on how they went.
• Dave Miller & Paul Hieronymous on their annual professional development series, one of the most in depth successful (i.e. 20-30 connections a year per teacher) PD programs I’ve seen.
• MAGPI - on Internet2 and all the cool collaborative things they are doing.

Can you think of anyone else who should present?