ASK Project

Earlier this week two El Paso ISD schools had the pleasure of being part of a video conference with Vietnam Veterans thru ASK. ASK is the author, specialist, knowledge program organized thru TWICE - Two Way Interactive Connections in Education. ASK is an organized process that provides students with the opportunity to interview an author or a subject specialist in the topic they are reading about in a novel. For this particular conference the students had read Eve Bunting's The Wall and then had the opportunity to ask questions of the Vietnam Veterans who were in Michigan. Thanks to Sherita for sending me the pics! Be sure and check out other ASK programs from earlier this year. On a technical note, notice the gentleman in the second picture turning on the microphone unfortunately most of our video conferencing equipment does not have a remote control to mute the microphone thus someone has to physically turn on and off the mics.

Adobe Connect & Skype

The photo on the left is Adobe Connect & the one on the right is Skype. Skype had much less pixelation and it two way interactive video and audio. Our division has just purchased Adobe Connect for training purposes - the district choose this solution because on the first day of school we have thousands of teachers and attendance clerks that need to be trained on a new computer system on the first day of school. Adobe Connect is one way video (presenter) to upto 50 computers - I believe you can do more but thats all we purchased. The participants can interact thru a chat function. It takes about 2 minutes to set up a meeting and then you just send a web link to the participants. The presenter can share their desktop and documents. The reason we used Skype during this test was because I need to be able to interact with the presenter and it would of been cumbersome to use the chat feature. I'll let you know how the Adobe Connect Training goes. I know that some school districts are using Adobe Connect for their Principals meetings to save time and money.

Which Field Trip Looks Better?

Today Crockett Elem. had the pleasure of experiencing their first virtual field trip with Greenbush IDL in Kansas. They learned about the rain forest & animals in the rain forest.

I continue to stress to district officials that the BNI carts are inadequate. These pictures demonstrate some of the differences in quality between our BNI units and Polycoms.

The top three pictures is the field trip utilizing the BNI cart and the second three is the same field trip but on a Polycom. There is a huge difference in the quality of the picture & audio in these two units. We also had to physically change the settings in the BNI cart to H261 to connect to Greenbush. The BNI carts also don't handle the packet loss as well as the Polycoms. The BNI cart was only able to call out to Greenbush whereas Greenbush could call into the Polycoms. Most content providers prefer to iniate the conference but they made an exception and let us call into them. With the BNI cart the teacher had to run around with the microphone to each student whereas the Polycoms have onmi - directional mics which can be muted and un-muted from a remote control.Now, which field trip looks better to you?

Texas Wildlife Association

I just adore that Janine Lim keeps everyone informed of new content providers! Here is one content provider that hits close to home and is very reasonable priced! Check out Animal Skulls Investigation from the Texas Wildlife Association for Grades 3, 4 & 5. If you have not checked out the BCISD/Polycom Database of Content Providers I challenge you to! Scroll down on the left hand side and you'll even see a link to free programs.

One Week in EPISD!

Teachers in EPISD have been busy, busy, busy this week. Students at Bradley Elem. connected with the Mayor Cook of El Paso to get a pep talk for the big state test tomorrow while Rusk Elem. is making over 25 connections for Read Around the Planet, and Bond Elem & Western Hills connected with Emmy Award Winning Author Jim Stovall.
Of course, this is only a sampling - since EPISD doesn't have a way to track what schools are videoconferencing then I only know about what is going on that I coordinate or when someone calls/emails me about what they're doing.

Competition Heats Up

Today Western Hills Elementary & Kohlberg Elem here in El Paso competed in math in a Jeopardy format. The students were completely engaged and had a terrific time. I am proud of the math coach at Kohlberg that sees value in video conferencing and has begun to embrace the technology. The math coaches used one of the already made up jeopardy games from this website. I find it easier to use an existing jeopardy game and make the needed changes than starting from scratch. The jeopardy games look terrific on the Polycom VSX 7000s in a point to point call. And last month Kohlberg participated in their first ASK program.

Holiday Traditions - It's over!

3 school districts (El Paso, Dallas, Lamar)
21 connections
42 schools
920 students

I am exhausted but I have learned about Holiday Traditions Around the World - from Iraq, Germany, Mexico, Australia, England, Scotland, Italy, Canada, China, Israel, Finland and the list goes on. The kids did a terrific job researching the countries. I think in todays public schools the students aren't involved in the performance arts but this videoconferencing activity sharpened presentation skills and allowed students and teachers to put together a holiday performance. Some of the sets were very elaborate! Thank you to all the teachers for participating - yes, we had some network glitches but overall it went very well! Next year more interaction!

Jim Stovall & Polycom!

Once again two schools in the El Paso ISD had the pleasure of video conferencing with Jim Stovall. If you haven't read Jim Stovall's book the Ultimate Gift you must! Each class that participated in the vc had read the book and had questions for Mr. Stovall. Jim's nuggets of advice are very inspiring - words & thoughts to live by such as live each day as if its your last you don't know what is going to happen! Jim Stovall is blind but he has gone on to accomplish great things. Please take a moment to read about him on website and order his book. A huge THANK YOU to Polycom for bringing this vc to schools around the country!

Holiday Traditions Behind the Scenes

I have always prided myself on my ability to organize & orchestrate events - from large scale political rallies to movie sets - I have proven myself. Though organizing classroom to classroom collaborations is a different animal especially with the equipment in EPISD and how our system is set up. I am seeking ideas to make coordinating these large scale collaborative vc projects easier - I know as the technology progresses it is always changing. I love classroom to classroom vc projects - it really utilizes the equipment and the kids/teachers love it. Numerous factors go into coordinating these classroom to classroom activities - I've learned you can't just show teachers or explain to teachers the collaboration vc activities you must coordinate and facilitate it - which is very time consuming! Teachers are hungry for projects - we need to make it easier on the coordinators like myself so we can offer more!! What can we do to make the coordinating of these large scale classroom to classroom collaborations easier?

Trickle Down Effect

A few weeks ago I coordinated a Military Appreciation VC with Bond Elem & Western Hills Elem in conjunction with Fort Bliss. Then the following week Bond Elem. hosted their very own Military VC and invited another school to participate!

Spring Boarding One of Two

After a successful Monster Mash Connection - the Building Coordinator in Dallas said - we've been studying bats & spiders do you have any classes that would like to connect and discuss
these topics. Sure enough I had several EPISD teachers jump on board. It was interesting from my perspective to see how the teachers coordinated the event. Of course, there were some hiccups - one teacher hit reply all with her VC time for one event which caused some confusion among the groups of teachers. But overall is great to see the teachers in both Dallas and El Paso take the initiative and make the video conferences happen! I think the classes will continue to connect. One vc best practice was the teachers emailed their partner teacher the questions they wanted the other class to ask - it worked very well.

Teacher Appreciation.

I wanted to share with everyone the feedback I received from one teacher about our recent Military Appreciation Teleconference.

Ms. Graham,

I am one of the 5th grade teacher at Western Hills that had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the video conference today. I want to first thank you for blessing us with the pleasure of meeting and getting to know these amazing men. I also wanted to let you know that it really touched my 5th graders .....Those heroes taught us more in one hour than I could ever teach out of a textbook. Thanks again, and I look forward to video-conferencing with your help in the future.

Lisa Chung
5th grade
Western Hills

Honoring our Military

Today I had the pleasure of connecting 100 EPISD fifth graders with former and active duty military personnel. My distinguished guests included: Lt. Mullins, Sergant Major Kiel (served in Iraq), Sergant 1st Class Sperbeck (Korean War Vet POW), CPC Davis (Korean War Vet), Staff Sergant Stuart (3 tours in Iraq) and Specialist Singels. First the gentleman introduced themselves and told the students a little big about themselves, then for the next forty five minutes they took questions. The students questions were very engaging and some of the
answers brought tears to my eyes. I am so proud of these men for serving our country!

Some of the questions included: Is it exciting or scary to be in war? How do you communicate with your family while you are away? What inspired you to join the army? Great questions!
We ended with a flag folding demonstration.
The entire teleconference was taped by Fort Bliss and will be shown on the Pentagon Channel. Thank you to Janine Lim through her staff development and with her Lest We Not Forget Series for encouraging me to connect our students with military personnel. These soldiers have so much great advice to share! I look forward to coordinating similar events for more schools.

Monster Exchange!

Over the past two days - I've had the pleasure of facilitating a Monster Exchange (k-4th) between El Paso Schools and Dallas ISD.

17 Connections
34 Classrooms
680 Students

This was my first monster exchange that I 've coordinated and I learned a great deal. I am thankful for Google Docs. If you are collaborating/coordinating on a project - google docs is the way to go. One of my biggest problems coordinating the project was email - some of our EPISD email servers were down, some of the teacher's descriptions ended up in their partner's junk mail, the amount of emails I had to send, sort, forward & resend was absurd - so next year I am using a wiki for teachers to post their descriptions. Roxanne did this in Region 12 - and I sure wish I had thought of it! We need to consider teaching a class on tips & tricks for coordinating classroom to classroom collaborations.

JAZZ Stars Shine in TX & MI

Last week I had the opportunity to peek in on First Grade Teacher Steve Hines at Stanton Elem. as he was videoconferencing with Kathy DeMott at Marcellus Elem. in Marcellus Michigan. The teachers met by VC during Jazz up your Curriculum Staff Development Training offered each summer. Steve and Kathy did a community exchange that they had come up with during the training having their students share information about their surroundings from local crops to pinatas! It was great! Building connections outside of our four walls thats what it is all about. Thank you Kathy & Steve. To view more classroom collaborations ideas check out the collaborative videoconferencing wiki.
And to find collaborative partners consider posting on the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.

Excited about a Meeting!

Today Ellen Bell, Associate Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction in Birdsville ISD attended a Texas ASCD Board of Directors teleconference meeting in my office. This was coordinated by Vicki Allen of AT &T & Region 10. The ASCD is the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development which is an international educational organization consisting of over 170,000 members worldwide. There were 10 sites across TX connected thru Region 10 for the ASCD Board Meeting!

Paper Recognizes Significance of VC!

Thank you to the El Paso Times for the GREAT editorial on Teleconferencing opening up the World for our students!

Texas History Mystery Quest

Classroom to Classroom Collaboration
Sixteen Classes
Three School Districts: Dallas ISD, Temple ISD & El Paso ISD
320 students

I virtually duplicated the Texas History Mystery developed by Angela Conrad & Roxanne Glaser. Is copying the sincerest form of flattery? In the world of education I hate to even say the word copy. I just know there are certain "projects" that work well in VC and instead or reinventing the wheel - why not try to duplicate the projects? The Mystery Quest VC model can work with a plethora of topics - US presidents, US Geography, World Geography, landmarks, regions etc. As with any MQ two classes or more make presentations with clues, then there is research time, clarifying questions and then reveal answers - the formula works and the kids love it.
Here is an article that appeared in the El Paso Times.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/old/education/ci_7020402

Using VC

As another EPISD Administrator embraces the value of videoconferencing - I am smiling! Today, Director of Guidance Services, Kathleen Ortega and 22 of her school counselors participated in a VC thru Cooperating School District in St. Louis: Factoring in Forgiveness. The presenter was Lynne Lang, Curriculum Specialist the BJH Health Care School Outreach & Youth Development.
Also, check out the campaign at Fetzer Institute. Love and Forgive.
A Longfellow quote from Lynne's presentation: A torn jacket is soon mended, but harsh words bruise the heart of a child.

Animoto Video -

Web 2.0 tools are incredible! Check out this free 30 second video I made with Animoto.com. I linked to some photos in flickr, used their music and animoto made this video within minutes!

Associate Superintendent Embraces Technology

Meet Dr. Murphy, Associate Superintendent of Priority Schools and his directors in EPISD. This week Dr. Murphy held three video conferencing meetings in one day.The first meeting was with seven HS campuses. Second meeting with six MS campuses. Third meeting with six Elem. Schools. We had a few network glitches, unmuted microphones etc. but overall it went well. This is the second year that Dr. Murphy has started the school year by videoconferencing with principals. I applaud him for his use of technology to save time and money!

EPISD Connects to Iraq!

Last week I received a call from Suzanne Fletcher of the Freedom Calls Foundation - a 501C3 that sole purpose is to connect deployed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan with their families through video conferencing. The foundation has three video conferencing units in Iraq & Afghanistan for soldiers to use free of charge to connect to family members. Today I connected Sylvia & her two sons with her husband in Iraq - their eldest son is going off to college and Dad wanted to give him some advice. This was Sylvia's second VC with her husband - she told me it went much more smoothly since she understood the technology better - she said the hour just flew by! As she hugged me goodbye and thanked me - it brought tears to my eyes. Please let me know if you are interested in having your students vc with soldiers in Iraq - this can easily be set up through the Freedom Calls Foundation.

ASK...

What I absolutely adore about the JAZZ training is that it focuses on successful video conference projects, programs and simulations - allowing participants the opportunity to experience vc projects firsthand. Today we did a simulation of
ASK: Author, Specialist, Knowledge Program which is an organized process that provides students with the opportunity to interview an author or a subject specialist in the topic they are reading about in a novel. The program uses excellent literature, journal writing and interviewing to promote reading for understanding. In the morning Jim Wenzloff the driving force behind ASK read "The Wall" a powerful children's book about the Vietnam Memorial by Eve Bunting - then we interviewed Colonel Don a Vietnam veteran. A powerful and tearful morning. Through the process of the simulation teachers learned tips and
and techniques for preparing their students for ASK. We also heard from Rebecca Politka of Cooperating School District in St.Louis about successful vc racial dialogue program and from Kathy Mohr of Northern Ohio ESC one of our JAZZ participants shared her Great Race vc adventure.

Mysteries & Nomads!

Another great day Jazz day. This morning we did a beaches Mystery Quest Simulation with each site. Each group chooses a beach, collects clues and then presents the clues about their location and region while the other groups take notes - then everyone mutes their microphones and researches - it is fun, fun, fun!

Janine Lim facilitates two great Mystery Quest simulations each year:
Mystery Quest World Geography for MS Students
Mystery Quest USA Geography for 5th graders.

A Mystery Quest could be adapted for all types of content area ie. American Presidents, the planets, inventions, animals, biomes... the list is endless.

Then this afternoon we had Christopher Plutte from the Global Nomads Group facilitate - three questions for our seven sites that were connected together -

• What values are important to you?
• How do you think the U.S. is perceived abroad?
• In a perfect world, what should the U.S. stand for in the rest of the world?

He facilitated an incredible conversation among ALL the sites. He is one of the most talented facilitators. The Global Nomads Group is a 501-C3 dedicated to heightening children's understanding and appreciation for the world and its people. Using VC, GNG brings young people together face to face to meet across cultural and national boundaries to discuss differences and similarities, and the world issues that they face.

Check out more photos from our JAZZ session on Flickr

I am putting together a Texas Mystery History in Sept. 2007 please consider joining us!

A Great Day with Cockroaches!

What an exciting day - we just finished our first Day of Jazz. This is the third Jazz training I've been involved with/facilitated. "Jazz up your Curriculum with VC" is by far the most comprehensive staff development training to immerse teachers in video conferencing. This morning the teachers did a variety of exchange projects- these are great point to point classroom vc projects - exchange projects are easy, fun and get the students engaged and can easily be adapted.

One part of Jazz is a blog for all the participants to share their reflections - I would like to
share this one from Crystal: "When I woke up this morning I had no idea that I would be chatting with people in Ohio and deep Texas, and I never would have thought I would have visited a rain forest in Arkansas. I am extremely excited to see how the rest of the week unfolds. I will definitely use videoconferencing in my classroom next year."

The rainforest Crystal is referring to is Greenbush they are a "content provider." They modeled a VC lesson for our teachers at the seven jazz sites - Lisa at Greenbush even sent each site Madagascar Cockroaches - we had an activity sheet and had to find out information about the cockroaches & then there was a Q&A. The teachers were just like students in a vc with Greenbush.

There are many content providers and many searchable databases to find a virtual field trip that best suits your classroom. Most content providers do cost money and you will need to allow enough time to get it organized ie purchase order, test call, pre activities. Under the searchable database you can search for free content providers. Most all content providers have pre and post activities. Check out the Teachers Content Providers Choice Awards for 2007 & 2006. This list is a great place to start to looking for a content provider for a virtual field trip for your classroom.

Gearing Up for Jazz

Next week I will be facilitating "Jazz Up Your Curriculum with VC" While this is by far the most challenging vc staff development workshop it is also the most rewarding. We have a total of seven sites Ohio, Michigan and Texas & approx. 95 participants for the five day training. During this workshop we really teach teachers how to incorporate VC into the classroom environment and how to collaborate with teachers across the country to create a project. All the group projects are added to the collaborative wiki: http://collaborativevcs.pbwiki.com/
Not only do we videoconference with 7 sites we incorporate blogs, wikis, moodle, flickr, skype and google docs! Utilizing web 2.0 tools such as skype/flickr/moodle enhance and strengthen collaboration in videoconferencing. JAZZ is an amazing training. If you are interested in participating do not hesitate to contact me - instead of a five day training consider one of the mini jazz trainings offered through staff development.