A Shared Professional Development Session: Canada and United States

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Janine Lim

ISTE IVC Showcase: Monica Cougan, CILC with Janet Barnes and Lance Ford

In this section, they described, 22 sites across the U.S. and Canada to a district that has sites across the two countries.

In the PD, the teachers were learning how to be interactive in teaching full courses over videoconferencing. Doug’s emphasis was to take the same things you do well in a face to face class and to figure out how to do that the same way with students who are learning in a full length videoconferencing class. They split the groups into two sessions – Tonia Carriger teaching one group; and Doug teaching another group. Then the groups split apart into small groups to have discussions. The presenters would pop in and out of the different rooms. This was done with Lance Ford’s Tandberg bridge. The teacher participants wrote lessons together in the small groups and presented them at the end of the week.

Cool VC Strategy Tip

  • Doug Meyer, CILC, described how he had the participants “huddle up” i.e. zoom really close in on the faces. It brought the group together and helped people feel closer to each other. After the huddle, they introduced themselves to learn more.

Building Community

Monica Cougan described how the format of the videoconference and the multiple sessions allowed a community to be created.

Lance Ford described how teachers have great strategies and lessons, and all that needs to be done is to wrap the technology around that. Teachers don’t have to change how they are teaching to teach over videoconference.

What is an MCU/Bridge?

Lance talked a bit about how each site can change their layout on the screen (Tandberg Codian MCU). Lance says: “an MCU is just a schoolhouse with a bunch of rooms” – and each site in the participants dialed in to the other rooms to do small groups or other activities.

CILC PD Marketplace

Monica explained the CILC Professional Development Marketplace and featured some of the various sessions that are listed there.

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Start spreading the news….

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Janine Lim

One more little tidbit from Jazz last week… these are the words to the song that the participants in Torfaen, Wales sang to us as they said goodbye last Friday:

Torfaen BIG BANG song!

Start spreading the news.
We’re leaving today
We’ve had a real good start at it
in Jazz VC.
We’ve learned how to Skype
and host a roll call
we’ve solved some hard Math problems
we’ve enjoyed it all!

And if we can VC here
we’ll VC anywhere
So bye for now
from Jazz in Wales!

Can you tell they (and we) had a great time learning last week??!

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Looking back to Jazz; Looking forward to ISTE

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Janine Lim

June has been crazy for me – hence the quietness on this blog! I sure have a list of things to post though. Maybe in July you’ll get to hear about them!

June 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing.

Shane Howard, of Whirlidurb, gives VC etiquette tips in a very entertaining format!

The June session of Jazz was again an amazingly stellar experience! Take a few moments to browse some of the resources used and generated during the workshop:

TWICE Retreat
The rest of this week I’m off to the TWICE retreat – watch for an announcement of Read Around the Planet dates for next year. (The calendar is a little weird. Not sure how it’s going to shake out yet!)

ISTE SIG IVC Playground

Next week I’ll be at ISTE – hanging out in the showcases on Monday (look for the brunette pirate); presenting a cool new CAPspace feature in the Polycom booth on Tuesday, and helping with the SIG IVC Pirate playground on Wednesday. If you’re going to be at ISTE, don’t miss the playground! We’re giving away $4000 worth of free programs from content providers, plus other cool pirate treasure.

Also, be sure to review this list of ISTE videoconferencing happenings.

I’ll be blogging the conference of course, so prepare to be inundated with what I’m learning. Particularly I’m hoping to write about what I learn about the 4 desktop VC tools featured at the playground.

Finally, Google Ads.

Lastly, it has come to my attention that wordpress is putting GoogleAds on my blog. It costs $30 a year to get rid of them. I never see them because I’m logged in! Do you see them? Are they annoying? Do they come in your RSS reader / email? I am just wondering what you, my readers, think of them and if I should do something different. Thanks for your feedback!

Hope your summer is going well and stay tuned for news from ISTE!!

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Links for Region 11, TX

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Janine Lim

Greetings to my Region 11, Texas, audience! Here are a collection of links and resources mentioned in my presentation, plus more!

Collaborations Around the Planet

Read Around the Planet

More TWICE Information

Information for Collaborations

Content Providers

Berrien RESA Links

More Information

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Resources for My K12 Online Conference Presentation

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Janine Lim

Instructional Strategies That Work with Videoconferencing

Videoconferencing can bring the world to your classroom. It allows educators to bridge the divide by bringing experiences to rural students; by engaging conversations and interactions between urban and rural students and by connecting students globally. Whether using desktop videoconferencing or room based videoconferencing, educators can bridge the divide between “dabbling” in videoconferencing to fully integrating with solid classroom instructional strategies.

Links are shared in the order referred to in the presentation video.

Curriculum Videoconferencing

Top VC-Using Teachers Study

Resources

Projects Mentioned

Final Slide Links: More to Explore

Be sure to enjoy the rest of the K12 Online Conference 2010!

Filed under: Collaborations, Professional Dev., VC Community | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

National Distance Learning Week

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Janine Lim

Did you know this is National Distance Learning Week?

USDLA is doing a full series of webinars on many distance learning and ed tech topics.

I presented yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to have almost 60 people in my session.

What do you think? Are webinars a quick and easy way to learn? It seems like it worked very well yesterday… maybe this is the latest for PD… training without leaving your computer? Do you prefer this method of learning? Please comment!

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Supporting VCs by a High School Media Specialist

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Janine Lim

This week I’m finishing up a session of the Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections online class. One of the participants, a high school media specialist, wrote an excellent plan for supporting VCs in her school. I wanted to highlight a few points:

Here at the high school, I can also be available to assist teachers during the actual connection. This includes assisting with the equipment, setting up the room appropriately, and making students aware of what to expect and how to speak and act during the VC.  From my experience, most high school teachers feel fairly confident with the equipment after they are given instruction on how to use it.  High schools students can also assist in running the equipment (muting microphone, changing camera presets, etc.).  It is imperative to provide teachers with sufficient support during a VC program.  If they feel overwhelmed by the technical aspects of a VC program and keeping their students engaged and on task, chances are they will not enjoy the experience and will not be interested in scheduling future VC programs.  Therefore, communication is the key.  Teachers should not be left alone until they feel comfortable with running the VC program by themselves. Once they express that they are comfortable, they can be left with contact information in case they face technical problems. – Alma Holtgren, Lakeshore High School, Stevensville, MI

Do you agree? Are you able to provide this type of support to your teachers? If not, how do you compensate? Please comment!

Filed under: Implementation, Professional Dev. | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Monster Match and Other Projects as Professional Development

Posted on October 29, 2009 by Janine Lim

I’ve been thinking the last couple of months about professional development on videoconferencing. I had a nice line-up of face to face, online, and via videoconferencing workshops this fall for my schools. But since our 3 year RUS grant is over, the pressure is off to meet the PD requirements of the grant. That factor, plus the uncertainty of budgets, MEAP test stress, etc., means that I have little to no registrations for my fall professional development sessions.

09-10-29monster1So, how are my teachers continuing to learn and improve their VC practice? By doing actual videoconferences! I’ve noticed that I have several new teachers signing up for programs this year. They don’t seem to feel the need for any official / formal professional development on how to use videoconferencing in the curriculum. They are learning as they go!

As I’ve watched the Monster Match sessions this week, I have realized that carefully and well-designed VC projects can provide professional development for teachers. What are they learning in Monster Match?

  • How to effectively compare similarities and differences with venn diagrams
  • How to zoom the camera in on their monster
  • What a wiki is and how to use it (pasting their descriptions)
  • How VC can help students learn about different areas (like TX students asking our students about the color of the leaves to supplement their seasons unit)09-10-29monster2
  • How to prepare questions for their partner class

So I’ve been thinking about this more. What if we deliberately designed mass projects like Monster Match and others to teach teachers how to teach 21st Century Skills, specific instructional strategies like Marzano’s research based strategies, specific effective methods for meeting state standards, thinking skills (i.e. Linda’s projects) etc. Obviously we can’t do all PD this way, but could we make a bigger dent in that direction by carefully designing our projects to meet curriculum and professional development goals? What do you think?

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Links for ESU 10 Nebraska

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Janine Lim

Greetings to my Nebraska ESU #10 audience. Here are a collection of links and resources mentioned in my presentation, plus more!

Collaborations Around the Planet

Read Around the Planet

More TWICE Information

Information for Collaborations

Content Providers

Berrien RESA Links

More Information

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Jazz is a network of dense clusters

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Janine Lim

Have you read Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody? Or at least watched his 20-min presentations on TED Talks? here and here.

A Network of Dense Clusters web graphic by Dave Pollard

A Network of Dense Clusters web graphic by Dave Pollard

He suggests that a strong network is a network of dense clusters. This is more efficient than a hierarchy, where everyone is critical to the organization. It’s also more efficient than everyone being connected to everyone, which soon becomes unmanageable.

Those of you participating (or hoping to) in the Jazz workshop, does this graphic ring a bell? Lead facilitators and “Jazz veterans” are the connectors between the groups. Newbies start just connected to their small group.

I think that’s why Jazz seems to be successfully growing without driving any of us crazy (yet). What do you think?

Are you in any other groups that have this type of network of dense clusters? Who is in YOUR cluster? Are you in more than one cluster? Are you passing information between them?

Filed under: Professional Dev., Research | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

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