Please share your responses to the readings here. What did you like about the article? How does it add to your learning? What ideas do you have from reading the article? How can you implement what you learned?
Be sure to tell me your first name so I can give you credit. Tell us which article you read as well.
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I am going to try this again..
The article I read this evening was entitled “Videoconferencing in Education.” The first thing that struck me was the fact that our classroom walls are becoming invisible. The four walls of each of our classrooms is not confining us any longer. The interactions that the students can have are limitless now. It changes the whole perspective of how we as teachers deliver information for our students to embrace, learn, and apply in their lives. In my school district, we have many students that come from families that are enrolled at Andrews University. Many of these students come from all over the world. These students need and deserve to have global awareness within their lives and the students in the same classroom need to know and understand the different cultures of these students, as well as globally. Our goal as a district is to teach our students to think, learn, and care in a global society. This can be done through videoconferencing. It opens the door to allow the students to experience first hand the different cultures their classmates are from, it teaches them to think about a world outside of their own little one, and it allows students to care and connect with those from around the world. The benefit of videoconferencing is that it saves time and money, which is huge right now for all of our districts here in the state of Michigan. We are all experiencing budget tightening, so we can still provide experts and expert information to our students without a huge price tag. It is imperative that districts implement equipment that will be able to handle the fast pace of progress that is occurring with technology as well. The lesson to be learned is that by videoconferencing we can make a difference in the world by educating our youth to develop a citizenship of a global nature and to be responsible contributors to our world society. I know as a Kindergarten Teacher, the Kindergarteners of today will be our future global leaders of tomorrow. We need to teach them well and give them as many experiences as possible outside of their own little worlds.
The article I read, “Going Global:Rural Washington Students Connect With the World” is yet another amazing example, in my opinion, of the new information age in which we live. The article begins by explaining how an inventive teacher convinced her principal to allow usage of a phone line to receive and send emails. It struck me as I read this as to how much technology has advanced since 1993, when she made this request. This lead to the creation of iEarn, a network of over 400,00 students world wide, that has provided students with opportunities to express, share, and evaluate art, increase reading, writing, and math skills, and perhaps more importantly, to experience other cultures via Emails, websites, digital video production, and recently, the growing access to videoconferencing.
The article explains how students have been able to become more aware of the world, and more enlightened as to the cultures and lifestyles of children in places as far away as China and Australia. This exchange of cultural differences, in this manner, would not have been possible for most students a mere 20 years ago.
I have found in my own teaching career that students generally gravitate toward technology. I feel this makes the teaching profession more rewarding, provided that such resources are available in the classroom. Although my students are usually between 15 and 16 years of age, this article demonstrates that the use of the new types of technology, including video conferencing, is embraced by children much younger than this. They (hopefully) have not yet been exposed to cultural stereotypes and can begin at a young age to not only use this “modern magic” for their own academic growth, but their growth of understanding, compassion, and sense of community on a global stage.
Mark Smith
I read the article, “Learning from a Distance Brings it Home,” by Barbara Bray.
The article broke down the four key components of distance learning…they included the following main categories:
1. Credited coursework-It listed the essential steps to setting up your own online course and the advantages to taking a course online.
2. Virtual Field Trips-Explained the benefits to virtual field trips(more practical on limited school budgets)and shared a wealth of websites where teachers and students can learn a variety of information for practically free! (Checkout George Lucas Educational Foundation-you can take virtual tours of classrooms at this site)
3. Interactive one-time videoconferences: This category is not only informative, but cost effective and a time savor!
4. Collaborative Projects-These videoconferences connect students from all over the world. They make learning exchanges collaboratively throughout the year gaining a better understanding about the people and places around them. I am interested in checking out one of the sights mentioned in the article, EPals. This is a collborative penpal sight where teachers can setup classroom exchanges with other classrooms around the world. I think my 1st graders would really enjoy doing this and learn a lot at the same time! The other site, Global Schoolhouse, sounded interesting too. This site offers over 900 online collaborative projects for students of all grade levels.
I read the article, “What the Research Says About Video Conferencing in Teaching and Learning,” by Becta ICT Research. This article shares some key benefits of using video conferencing. Some of the obvious are being able to enrich your content areas by linking up to experts, collaborating with other schools from different cultures, and developing communication and social skills. One benefit that I thought was interesting was motivating students that may normally stay in the background. I know that this form of technology motivates students, but I guess I haven’t used it enough to notice my normal “non-participators” becoming more involved. This is an exciting idea!!
This article also discusses the problem with lack of activity during a video conference. Teachers need to find ways to include all students during the conference. This would be important to make all students feel apart of the process. We should also be prepared to fill time if technical difficulties arise, as they often do. I never have a plan B for the students, I usually just panic and frantically start calling for help. After just one full day of exposure, I already feel more confident about using the remote and doing some of my own troubleshooting.
I read the article east meets west. The project was front loaded so that their would be a minimal of cultural “mistakes” made in the way of communication expectations. While I feel this is worth while I wonder if the communication between kids would be more authentic if we let them communicate within their own cultural norms and then deal with differences as they rise.
The idea of a script would help with the language understanding issues. I would like to see the students sharing and teaching each other about common slang or alphabet versus characters.
Do we have a membership to i learn network? I wonder how much it is to join.
I read “Interested in meeting authors using distance learning? Well, just “ASK”" by Jim Wenzloff. I decided to read this article because the ASK videoconferencings are my favorite ones. I realize that I am no the only one that enjoys these conferences. After reading this article, I now know how and when this program started. Is was very interesting to me to read about how the program is funded. I met author Janine Panagopoulos at the MACUL conference. She was a very fun, outgoing lady. I really enjoyed talking to her. The funny thing she told us was the sometimes she does a vidoeconferencing in her pajama bottoms. I look forward to more ASK videoconferencing next year.
I read “Interactive Videoconferencing: Planting the Seeds for Global Learning and Caring.” I love how this article stresses the unlimited learning opportunities we have with videoconferencing. Breaking down the 4 walls we teach within, and entering into a classroom made up of the entire world! Instead of students reading about experiences other students have in other locations, or meeting with an expert on an area being studied, they can actually interact with them face to face. Interactive videoconferencing requires those involved to converse with others. Not just sit back and take it all in. We are so “techy” these days….a real conversation doesn’t happen like it use to! “Interactive videoconferencing allows students to engage in the LOST ART of human interaction.”
How many experts did we have in school teaching/sharing their experiences with us? How many other students were we able to interact with across the globe? How many amazing field trips did we experience hundreds of thousands of miles away from home??
I teach 2nd grade at Mars Elementary in Berrien Springs. I am fortunate to have a very diverse class every year. It would be wonderful to be able to connect with the many countries that are represented in my classroom. The students from the US would be amazed to see where many of their peers come from. How exciting it would be for a child to have us visit his or her home country!
Videoconferencing certainly opens up a whole new world not only to our students, but to us as educators as well!
The second article I read was “Learning from a Distance Brings it Home.” Online learning can take place anytime from anywhere! I like how Joan divides Distance Learning into 4 categories…
1. Credited coursework – Take a class or develop an online class. I have taken a few online courses with Janine which have been great! I’ve learned a lot and appreciate her knowledge and patience!!
2. Virtual field trips – zoos, museums, hospitals, science centers, galleries (NASA, TWICE, and ID Solutions) Next year I plan to take a few virtual field trips. At this point I’m not sure where. I’ve never done one before!
3. Interactive one-time videoconferences – Not only for students but for teacher training as well. I’ve done a couple of these but would like to do more!
4. Collaborative Projects – ePals instead of pen pals, Global Schoolhouse, and IEarn I’m excited to learn about ePals. I’ve been wanting to become pen pals with another 2nd grade classroom for quite a few years. Here’s my opportunity! I will be checking out ePals for sure! An ongoing collaboration is certainly a goal for next year!
Well, now that I want to do everything, I’ll have to be realistic!! Time is ALWAYS an issue!!
Refections on the Article Broadening the Vision and Eliminating the Barriers
A remote school district KUSD in economically deprived area received a grant that allows them to learn beyond their geographically distant area. This rural area known as Appalachia of the North Coast was able to connect with authors, collaborate with peers, talk with experts, and explore the solar system from the classroom or the library media center. The Konocti Unified School District concluded that innovative technology such as video conferencing when integrated into the curriculum enhances the process of teaching and learning. The conditions that exist in the KUSD school district are in some ways similar to the conditions that occur when teaching in Juvenile Detention, primarily isolation and economic depravation. The use of video conferencing opens up the possibilities of experiencing places and events that would be impossible without this technology. Field trips with a teacher, two staff and sixteen students in shackles and hand cuffs are not realistically feasible. However virtual field trips are realistic and possible. Collaboration except in strictly defined situations would be problematic but exploration and talking with experts is certainly feasible. There are with some creativity extensive applications possible with video conferencing.
Brooke Marceau
Article: Good Practice in the use of Video Conferencing
This article was more like a tip sheet on how to do the prep. work for having a successful VC conference and overall experience. I like how the article was broken up into sections. I viewed the article as a check list of things to think about before the actual conference occurs. For me, I found it very helpful and would like a copy of it for my references as I am brand new to learning all the logistics of video conferencing. In my district, due to fiscal issues, we no longer have a media specialist to assist us with these kind of technology opportunities. I see this article as a good resource for assisting other teachers in my building who would like to do a video conference. As a resource teacher, Leveled Literacy Interventionist, I do pull out for services with students and do not have a class of students that I see all year. LLI program instructional schedule is 14 to 16 weeks where I see small groups of 3 students.
Some of the important things that I got of this article were the following:
1) have an alternative lesson ready just in case something goes wrong with the technology;
2) ensure that you have a preconference with the key professionals involved prior to the conference;
3) involve the remote site and the local site equally so that participation is distributed equally between the two sites of teachers and students
4) keep changing the pace using a variety of teaching styles and methods
5) summarize the lesson and its key points at the end of the conference
John Griffin
Article: “Lights, Camera, Action: Videoconferencing in Kindergarten”
I thought that this article was interesting in two ways one of them being that the teacher of this program must have been very patient. Because having the children doing all of the different roles must have been hard to cordinate. This technology for the children must have been neat to watch, all of these little kids doing differrent jobs. The article does not say exactly how long the children worked with the other classroom on their daily videocnferencing and practicing to be able to do the videoconferencing. The other point I want to say is how much of the role did the teacher play in this project, their had to be a lot of modeling of the differrent roles. Technology sure is going at a rapid pace and the children are learning quicker and younger.