Well, this year we embarked on doing the Monster Exchange in district. Last year we had some schools participate with other districts, but this is the first year that we did it with only DISD schools. It is also the first year that I organized it and ran it myself.
So over the last three days, we have had 19 connections involving 38 classrooms. I was pretty pleased with this, especially since we had a major staff turnover (layoffs and transfers) in our district only two weeks ago. This definitely affected many of our pairings. I had teachers dropping out as late as Tuesday of this week. It made life quite interesting. I really hope that the last minute scrambling had to do with what was happening in our district and is not a normal part of the process.
Things have gone pretty smoothly. I used our wiki, http://disdvideoconferencing.pbwiki.com, for the sign up. My campus cart managers, and some teachers themselves, could sign up for the time that they wanted. This worked pretty well. I then followed up with emails confirming the pairings. The email also contained the timeline for the project.
The timeline was probably the biggest problem I had…no one stuck to it. What do you do with the teachers that wait until the last minute to send their description? Do you set a hard and fast deadline that if they don’t meet, they are dropped from the project? Or is there a less drastic alternative? Before I run similar projects this is one thing I will have to think through.
Today, were the only two big snafus I had all week. One classroom somehow got the wrong description. So they recreated a monster that in no way resembled their partner’s. Oops! We made the best of it. I also had a class that had technical difficulties and we were unable to make the connection. So I got to entertain their partner. That’s why you always have plan B!
Overall, things have worked pretty well and I’ll definitely do it again next year. I’ll have an update and pictures posted early next week.
Happy Halloween!!
For the last year and a half, we have been plagued with bad video quality with our videoconferences connecting with anyone outside of our district. At best, the quality was decent, never good. Most of the time it was pretty poor.
This picture was taken Tuesday during the TETN Firefighters conference. 
This was due, in part, to the fact that our district’s internet bandwidth is typically maxed out. To alleviate this problem, we worked with Region 10 our local Educational Service Center, and now all of our videoconferencing traffic is going directly through them, instead of competing with all of our district’s internet traffic. Despite, doing this, our quality improved only a little.
But finally, I think we have finally found the answer. It all seemed to boil down to a port setting. Once we changed the port setting, things improved dramtically. We now have calls that are super clear! See below.
My thanks goes out to Danny, Bob, and Wayne, at Region 10 for spending many hours with me trying to figure this out.
We are very lucky here in the state of Texas to have a statewide dedicated videoconferencing network between all of our regional Educational Service Centers. (I’m sure most other states have something similar, as well.) Until this year, as far as I know this network was used mainly for staff development and updates from the Texas Education Agency in Austin. Twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring, they would sponsor a student oriented conference. These are very well “attended” and the students have a lot of fun participating in them.
Well, this year they have stepped up their offerings. They have hired Gerri Maglia, from the Connect2Texas and ESC 11 fame, and she has brought her passion for curriculum based videoconferencing to the state level. TETN has now started offering student based programs on a regular basis. And the best part of it is, they are FREE to the schools.
This past week, Gerri took a mobile unit out to a fire department located in Keller. The fireman gave a virtual tour of the station and answered questions from students statewide. I had 5 school participating. While we were experiencing some network issues and the video quality was pretty poor, most of the schools agreed that it was still a valuable expierence for our students.
Next week they are offering sessions for high schools regarding the election. And this fall’s student event is election oriented as well. I can’t wait to see what is next.
Today I had 6 classes participant in the ASK program based on the book “Ice Bear and Little Fox” hosted by TWICE. Let me say, it was an awesome experience!
For this program, the classes read the story “Ice Bear and Little Fox.” They then journaled about the story and developed questions in preparation for interviewing a zookeeper about polar bears, which is what they did today. The classes seemed well prepared and asked really good questions. I was proud of them!
I hope to replicate this program on my own so that even more schools can be involved. It was a great experience!
For more information about the ASK process and programs, see http://www.twice.cc/ASK/index.html.
Jump Start Videoconferencing by Sue Porter
This session discussed “How do you get people involved in videoconferencing?” She gave several very practical suggestions. I’ll sumarize it as best as I can.
- You need to find applications for VC that fit. Fit the curriculum and fit the teacher.
- Promote internally and externally. Invite the parents. Getting parents involved can help with awareness and possibly funding.
- Every school needs a videoconferencing champion. Find the one or two teachers that are open to the technology and start with them.
What she tells teachers:
- Pick your favorite two units that you teach to get started. Pick one from the fall and one from the spring.
- Take a look at your content and see how can you add VC to it.
This got me to thinking about the way we do training. Currently, I offer two types of classes. 12 hours for campuses about to receive equipment and 6 hours for teachers from campuses that already have the equipment. Both of these classes are pretty much an overview. They offer lots of hands-on opportunities and places to find information, but they are not really content specific. So I’m thinking about revamping the 6 hour class to a three hour “Videoconferencing in the Language Arts (Math, Science, etc) classroom,” and having very specific activities that they can take back to their classroom that fit their curriculum.
What do you think?
Yesterday I was able to attend the Distance Learning conference hosted by Region 11 in Fort Worth. This was a day well spent.
Lance Ford, from Howe, OK, was the keynote speaker. I have known Lance for a couple of years now and I was really looking forward to this. Lance did not disappoint.
I love to hear Lance speak. He is so enthusiastic about what he does, you can’t help but be inspired. He worked for a small district in rural Oklahoma and did amazing things with technology. Last year, one of the classes in Howe were one of the winners of the KC3 contest, which focused on student created content for videoconferencing.
For this conference, he was discussing the importance of 21st Century Skills. He emphasized the fact that our students need three types of skills: creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication and collaboration skills. A great quote from the presentation was “Can a student find infomration, put it back together in a way that is ENGAGING and then present it? And be able to answer questions about the content.” Don’t we all wish that for our students?
A new term that I learned – “Chillax!” A combination of “Chill” and “relax.”
Once again, this was a very good conference. I’ll will post more about what I saw, when I have a bit more time.
If you were able to attend, please leave me a comment about some of the things you saw.
Next year’s conference is planned for October 14, 2009. Mark your calendar!
So today I sent out confirmations for 24 sessions of Monster Exchange that will be held October 29-31. I have to say that I am VERY pleased with that. With the impending RIF, things have been a little slow to take off this semester.
It is also the first time that we have done the whole thing in house. I’m excited about the prospect. I have had some great mentors and most of the supporting material came from them. Thanks, Ashton, Roxanne, and Janine!
I can’t wait to see what kind of Monsters the students come up with.
