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"Videoconferencing in K-12 Schools: Who's Doing it? Why? Should I?"
6-17-02

Key idea: use www.ivisit.com to do live face to face videoconferencing and chat, can password protect rooms, should password protect also within K-12 area (from another participant)

Jan Zanetis, co-director of Virtual School program at Vanderbilt Univ tasked to make K-12 distance learning connections
Medical Center at Vanderbilt has just established a K-12 outreach center
- partnership with schools to enhance the integration of technologies in the K-12 classrooms
- have setup 16 partner schools with videoconferencing equipment, interact with each other, with 'experts' at the Vanderbilt Medical Center, medical students and graduate students in hands-on science experiments
- also using videoconferencing for educator professional development
Next had an historical actor visit to the classroom: Orville Wright
- Jim Spence, Virent Technologies
- last year videoconferenced to 78 schools, hundreds of students
- company is about a year old
- book historical presenter live presentations
- personalities: General Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Annie Oakley, Nellie Bly, Joan Clemments, Ben Franklin, Galelio, Civil War Soldier, Revolutionary War soldier, have over 50 different personalities
www.virent.net
- informal education provider, like visiting a museum
John Foreman from Nashville, TN (Father Ryan High School)
jforeman@stannnash.org
- videoconferencing partner with Vanderbilt
- does class to class videoconference collaboration
- have had museum tours, experts from different departments of Vanderbilt
- teachers a genocide studies course to seniors
- developed a relationship with another class in New Jersey, would link up once a month, would team teach, students would present
- have had some very rewarding interchanges, esp when New Jersey students asked about confederate flag in the south, showed cultural opinions not necessarily shared by students everywhere
- journey of videoconferencing just limited by own imagination
time for partner connections - is amazing how much you can accomplish with limited time when you do email communications in advance and afterwards
- email never replaces what students can do face to face
Donna Svinis at Nobles and Greenough in Boston
- have done connections with New Jersey and played who wants to be a millionare in French, both created powerpoint sessions and shared those with students
- they are using Polycom Viewstations, just had a recent session on using different peripherals with Polycom classes
as far as student participation in videoconferences
- have found that the student interactions are about the same as they are within regular class: quiet classes/students are the same, exuberant classes are basically the same
- students really enjoy sharing about non-academic topics, the prom, weather in another place, etc.
When you connect to another class, you double the class size but so much is going on visually that it tends to hold student attention real well
For language classes (esp native speakers), it is great for students who get used to hearing their own teacher speak to hear another one
- really helps when teachers at both ends are well prepared, have discussed what will happen in the session
- winging it during a videoconference connection works less well than in traditional face to face setting
Steve Bergen at nobles and Greenough in Boston
- runs a Summer Corps training program for teaching
Need to find some key people to bring your use of videoconference technologies along
- focus less on the room and the technologies, more on the use of it
Video technologies are more about human relationships, need to have someone who it is part of their job description to facilitate and move along videoconferencing efforts
- Steve got a line item added to their budget to pay for videoconference calls and encourage them
Have worked with 'The Boston Home' which is a school for multiple-sclerosis afflicted people
- the school partnered with them, do fundraising for them, have contents, sing songs, have almost a community service program with them
- they are always there for the school
- for 5 or 6K any school can get setup with videoconferencing
- what you need are LINKS WITH PEOPLE
Kecia Ray, started doing VC in 1988 to build reading skills with mentor teachers
- is now with Vanderbilt Univ Medical Center
- teacher ed programs didn't prepare our teachers to teach with technology
Have come a long way with distance learning (from correspondence courses, casette tapes, video tapes, to email, internet, videoconferencing)
- don't know the 'best practices' for distance learning
- are going to be doing a study to determine best practices
- DL courses should never rely solely on one technology delivery method
At vanderbilt, have a list of content area experts that have agreed to videoconference with them at the drop of a hat
- previously teachers would call and ask for a videoconference on a topic, and the university people would search for the content expert
- this was not a workable model
- have to test the connections and prepare the presenters to visit with students (remind to adjust vocabulary sometimes)
Professionals are excited about working with kids, excited about mentoring
- would not be able to do this any other way, their time schedule does not allow for that
- are committed to outreach, want to have an impact on students
Now scheduling: 3 week advance notices and 3 different possible dates/times
- also have lessons they create but don't do that anymore
- most important is to provide people resource
Now teachers ask for their type of expert / lesson and the people at vanderbilt find them within the university
Scientist at Vanderbilt did a scientific method demonstration with two beakers: one of water, one of vinegar, asking students at the remote site to determine which was which so he could drink one
Conferences last no longer than 30 minutes each, or you will lose your kids
Scott Merrick, lower school tech coordinator in Nashville
- works 1 day a week for Vanderbilt
- has found the medium is SO VISUAL overcoming teacher resistance to use it is a big challenge
- so Scott learned how to do digital movies from videotape to create clips on CDs to use when training teachers
Vanderbilt now has new 'office of science outreach' with its own director
SCOPE = Science Community Outreach Partners in Education
- links link goes to interactive database of links: called SCOPE Webliographer
- created by a teacher at Peabody college, makes it available and hosts it on the creator's own server
Used Videowave software with a capture card to
do a tobacco awareness program
- students at remote sites have a sheep's lung to pass around after putting on gloves.
- Vanderbilt scientist has a healthy lung and a diseased smoker's lung that are compared
Types of connections:
- expert to class
- teacher collaboration
- classroom to classroom
- administrative planning
- informal education - demonstration
- informal education - virtual field trip
SCHEDULING IS KEY with different class schedules, that is just 1 level of scheduling, when equipment is available, when the teacher teachers the course, etc.
Retired educators in your area are available with time to do this kind of thing
Patricia Riley is videoconferencing and distance learning coordinator for ESC20 in San Antonio
- help districts in rural areas to interview candidates
- had an older network called START
- now have over 50 nodes across the region, courses are offered over the network
One of the most fun applications are electronic field trips
Pac Bell has a tremendous listserv with the pacific bell network
- lots of other VC resources on their site, address for these resources is on the participant CD:
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/vidconf/index.html
Internet2 started in 1996 because the commercial internet is too slow for many research applications
- 622 Megabits per second is max bandwidth
- Gigapop is major internet pops, provide direct internet access to internet2
- K-12 schools need to partner with research institutions, they can sponsor k-12 institutions for internet 2 membership