Share ‘n Tell on a Global Scale

K is for Koala

Our school’s student leadership team suggested an ‘out of uniform’ day to raise funds for student projects within the school. The theme was “Come dressed in a character that starts with the first letter of your name”. eg My name is Anne so I came dressed as an artist.

During period 4 of that day I had my ICT class with year 3 and 4. As I walked into the room, ready to teach them about the finer and more exciting features of MS Powerpoint, I could help but stop in delight at the gorgeous outfits that they had worn.

This surely provided  a teachable moment. The students wanted to show off their costumes, so I quickly messaged the HLW Skypers Group on skype to seek a ready educator or class to link up with us. Fortunately, Karen Lirenman was online in Canada and was willing to speak to the students, via skype videoconferencing,  as they came up to the web camera to introduce themselves and their character.

This led to working out where Ms Lirenman lived etc and then to the planned task of the day – using MS Powerpoint!  Does it matter that I did not follow my lesson plan? I would always answer no, make the most of every teachable moment and opportunity as these can be the most rewarding for learning. Some skills developed included:- confidence, clear speaking, using the web camera to project image correctly, geography, time zone differences (Karen was still in their yesterday) etc.

Some of the many characters

Localization of Blog Posts

Armenian translation of a post on skype

Several years ago, I wrote a post Using Skype in the Classroom.  This is still one of my favourite tools for connecting and collaborating.

Several months ago, I received a request from Leyli who described herself as

a student at the Department of Foreign Languages and at the same time a volunteer at an organization named “Translation for Education”. I love surfing on the Internet and being informed about the latest happenings around me. Unfortunately, most of my fellow citizens don’t know English, so that makes them feel somehow excluded from all this variety of useful info from the Internet.That was the reason that made me decide to start being a volunteer at such an NGO. So I created a blog, where I post translations of some of the texts that really caught my attention. Sometimes it’s a simple description of some organization, and sometimes it might be a narrowly specialized scientific article.

You can read the Armenian translation here. I was intrigued to read that this is called localizing online content.  I had to google where Armenia was, so thank you, Leyli for adding to my world geography.

Comparing School Lunches globally!

A senior student lunchbox in summer

On many occasions I can empathise with those who are part of the digital divide. Internet access can often be poor from my home and mobile phone service is non-existent, unless I go outside to the end of the veranda, face south and the weather conditions are good. This gives me great empathy for those citizens of other countries and schools who experience similar conditions.

An online teaching colleague, Reinhard Marx from Germany asked for a photo of a typical school lunch box as his year 7 student were studying foods in science. He asked the name school that I teach in. As our official website is very bland, I always send the link to the school blog. He read the post on the school vegetable garden and asked whether I had time to share with his students about our foods. There were three classes in all and the presentations spanned a week Europe (excepting Russia) is not time zone friendly for synchronous linkups with our classes, but it is reasonably friendly for teaching on my part, as their school day starts in my early evening and often finishes late at night for me. Two of the classes were at 6:30pm my time and the third was at 10pm, 8:30am and noon respectively in Germany.

Skype for videoconferencing was the tool agreed upon as google hangouts do not work well for me from home, despite being on a cabled computer.  I like skype for the following reasons:-

• User friendly
• Globally acceptable
• Can share my screen for the powerpoint presentation that I prepared on food, the school canteen and the vegetable garden.
• Send files through
• Maintain a backchannel for interpretation, ensuring understanding and adding questions in the text chat.

We tried sharing videos from both sides of the world, but the audio was not good. I dropped my video but audio was still poor when I tried to screenshare. The powerpoint presentation was quickly sent through skype and Reinhard displayed my powerpoint on his data projector and I talked through the slides when prompted without video connections.

Our school vegetable garden

The second lesson started in a similar manner but I had booked a Blackboard Collaborate room as a backup. The sound was perfect in here and the presentation could be shown. However, I had forgotten that many of the images were high in pixellation and the final slides did not load for Reinhard and his class. Again, he had to revert to showing my powerpoint at his end. The third time lucky, it all worked as I ensured that I had resized my images on the presentation.

The challenges:-

• Bandwidth – found a tool that worked – blackboard collaborate – I can book a room through my Education Department license.
• Working with a class where English is the second or third language. On occasions I had to pause for Reinhard to interpret
• To ensure comprehension  – by the third class, I realised I should label the food using the text tool on the whiteboard, use lines etc  whilst I was being interpreted.
• To ascertain interest of class when there was one class logon. Would be preferable to have students individually logged on in Germany.
• How to bring my students online next time – share the link and they can logon from home.

The highlights

• Multimedia tools – audio, text chat, whiteboard, video, labels, lines, shapes, app sharing (through Blackboard Collaborate)
• Recording – the classes were recorded for future reference or use with other classes and the links to the recordings shared with Mr Marx.
• The questions from the students, responses to my questions and the sharing of languages and names of foods.

Lunch in the School Canteen

Using the shapes and lines tools in BbC to annotate and ensure understanding.

Here is the

• link to the recording of the second lesson
• link to the recording of the third lesson

Look local Go global!

People often ask where they can find global connections. Too often we forget to look within our own local and school community. Unfortunately, our school is isolated geographically and culturally, but many other teachers could look for:-

1.  parents of students from other cultures or find relatives that may live overseas. They can be keen to share their culture, backgrounds, experiences, food etc with the students. 
2. Major towns and cities will have Chinese, Indian, Thai, Portuese, African, Italian, Greek etc restaurants and shops. These also make a starting point.
3. Students within the school may be overseas on holidays or on an exchange program and that is one that we were able to use,  as one of our year 10 students is over in Canada for 6 months. Emma was keen to connect with her friends back at school via skype and videoconferencing, so this week we set up a connection with four of her friends.

Despite Canada seemingly being similar to our culture, Emma is experiencing so many different things to what she would be back here on the farm. It is snowing there and she has been skiiing, dog sledding, skating on the larges skate rink in the world etc. Her school is bigger, she now lives in a town etc. The sports are different. Tuesday morning this week was Monday evening, Emma’s time.  We used skype. Some of the questions our students asked were thoughtful and reflected their curiousity and a real interest in her life over there. Although they keep in constant touch via facebook, the videoconference brings an intimacy on a higher level. Emma took us on a virtual tour of her Canadian home and into  the snow laden backyard. The girls were also able to ask questions of the family members in Canada.

Here is some of the conversation:

1.  Why aren’t you at school? (Reflected lack of knowledge of time zones)
2. Do you do much homework?
3. What are you doing in maths? – voting procedures
4. What subjects do you do that are different to here?
5. How many students in your class (20-25)
6. Are you still doing drama?
7. What is the weather
8. What is the time?
9. Do you stay with the same family for 6 mths (yes)
10. Does it feel like home? (yes)
11. Describe your house- (3 storeys – basement ground floor and first story)
12. Do you do anything with your friends after school ?
13. What different foods have you had?–(poutin – French fries with gravy and cheese curd.  Bagels for brekkie, beaver tails = cinnamon toast.)
14. Does any one speak French? (French is their second language)
15. Show us your school uniform (Emma’s school has no uniform)
16. Do they have cheer leaders
17. What are the popular winter sports – ice hockey, volleyball and basketball
18. Do you go on camps or work experience (no)
19. Do you have holidays? (Just had one week holiday break – this is first week back. Easter another break. In summer will be 2 months)
20. Do any of your friends have jobs? (Leah has a job and works at a pizza place.)
21. How do you get the snow off the road –( add salt to the roads to make it melt.)
22. Do they have a big back yard? – this question resulted in a virtual tour of the yard
23. Can you show us some money?
24. How hot does it get it Canada?
25. Do you go to the beach? (On the Great Lakes – not the ocean)

A Canadian coin

• Have you videoconferenced back to exchange students or use relatives and connections from the local community to bring textbooks to life?
• Have you brought in any of your local community to give students a global perspective? If so, how?
• Have you taken your students out into a cultural neighbourhood?

Is Face to Face Better than Virtual?

One of my highly valued colleagues, Sue Waters,  tweeted out the link to my blog post on Blended Technology Use for Great Learning. It was with interest that I read a response to her tweet by @strong99 who thought it would be better to have the author/illustrator teach face to face. Below is part of the conversation.

Technology has broken down the barriers of distance. This linkup was free, took very little effort to organise, gave us a top quality presenter from another country, highly engaged the students and taught them how to make simple, effective illustrations for their storytelling.

However, it gave food for thought as to whether  it is preferable to have someone come into the classroom if cost, effort, availability etc was not a problem. Here are some arguments for using  technology in preference:-

• students engage with technology and not always with a person
• if the presenter is physically there, time is limited and there may be little time for questions. Students have so many questions and many of there questions are really good and it is what they want to know within the topic. Having access to the Smartboard, allowed us to key in the questions in the chat. We added at least one auestion for each student, all of them different.  (Some are listed below). Only four students got to ask questions with the traditional methods of using the microphone and web camera. The questions from the chat were saved and viewable by all involved. These questions even if not answered by the presenter, give the teacher an avenue for further research, learning and mentoring with the class.
• Using the smart board and polycom equipment meant that all students could see quite clearly the author at work illustrating and stroke by stroke how she created the drawings.
• It is of high interest for students to be sharing their virtual classrooms with those from other schools whether they be in Australia or New Zealand or other countries. It brings a different perspective to the topics at hand and increases the thought processes beyond their own small own small class.

What do you think? If money, effort, cost, availability were of no consequence, and the presenter was highly engaging, would you choose face to face or virtual linkups? Why is one preferable over the other? How successful have your video linkups been? What makes them successful, what makes for unsuccessful connections?

Blended Technology Use for great learning!

Polycom and Smartboard

This morning, we booked year 2 and year 6 in for a polycom videoconference session with Terri Rose Banyon, an author and illustrator from New Zealand. See her book trailer. This linkup was combined with the use of the Interactive White Board, using Bridgitt Conferencing software. 

The Setting: An author/illustrator from NZ, presenting from New Zealand to schools in Australia from across a number of states. The linkup was controlled by technicians and Concetta from See Shape Share in Sydney. It was organised by See Share Shape of which we are a member. (It is free.) A school from NSW participated with our year 2 class. Two other schools, from New South Wales, Australia  connected with the year 6 linkup. Each session lasted approximately one hour.

How it looked with the Year 2 class:-

• dialled the bridge number given to us on the polycom videoconferencing equipment
• dialled into the Bridgitt Conferencing software on the Smart Board
• Terri appeared on the Polycom equipment with her smart board behind her. Her smart board work was projected onto our smartboard.

Asking questions

The session

• While we waited for the other school to dial in, our students wrote questions for Terri on paper.  These questions were written into the chat on the smart board, by me,  to share with everyone.
• Terri read us her book Mr Bear Branches and the Cloud Conundrum  - a story about Lintfrey Longfellow who would love nothing more than to sit among the clouds. This was important for us,  as we did not yet have this book in our library
• Two students from each school were given a chance to ask questions about her story and illustrations via a microphone and the camera on polycom.
• Terri then gave some tips and lessons on how to draw simple type figures for great impact on the viewer.
• Students worked on sheets of paper, copying her instructions and drawing their own figures

Reading us the book

How the book looked on the smart board

Why it was so successful and students were highly engaged:-

• Terri provided a variety of activities – reading, question seeking, exercises, drawing
• Students had a choice to view the pages of the book via either the polycom screen or the smart board (which projected a much clearer image) as Terri read it.
• Using the smart board for Terri to share how she actually drew her illustrations was clear and engaging.
• Terri sought physical feedback from students at times to vary the activities eg raising their hands, using their heads to view themselves from different perspectives.
• At all times the presenter could be seen.

Hands up to ask questions

Teaching us to draw

How it looked on smart board

A student draws

Playing Games in Skype

Memory in a bag of objects

Yesterday, I noticed a facebook update from my innovative colleague, Endang Palupi from Indonesia. She was working with a school 6 hours from her home, demonstrating the ‘magic’ of skype in the classroom with them.

This time Endang asked us to use games, singing etc over skype with these students. I wracked my brains (as I am certainly no good with singing) as to what game I could play. Then decided on a memory game. Here is what it looked like:-

1. Collect 10 objects and place them in a bag (eg scissors, newspaper, mug, ruler, dice, flag etc)
2. Display each one, one at a time  to the distant class over skype
3. Say the name of the object
4. Hide the objects back in the bag
5. Students  come up to the webcamera, name each of the 10 objects in the language of the initiating class.
6. Students could then name them in their first language and the other class repeat the name.

Taking the learning further – share the current news from the newspaper  of each school over the webcam, discuss the flags, compare what is in their pencil cases etc. I could have put my mobile phone in and then we discuss favourite technology, favourite use of phones etc

I wondered what other teachers do apart from Mystery Skype, straight question and answer etc. So a public collaborative google document was created for you or others to add ideas to. To ensure you can always retrieve it, bookmark the website or goto share, add your email address in there and it will be approved.

It is hoped that this will become an ongoing rich resource of sharing by teachers wishing to collaborate beyond classroom walls. What ideas do you have for both younger and older students. Please share them with us all.

A Virtual Presentation for our VCE Study Camp

At the beginning of each school year, VCE (year 12) students from across a number of small rural schools, including ours, attend a three day study camp at the University of Ballarat. A last minute plea was made for suggestions of a speaker or workshop for the Business Management class. This is the first year that I am teaching this subject so am inexperienced!

Again the power of a professional network came into play, as I contacted a wonderful colleague, Amanda Ritter who teaches at Toorak College (a private girls’ school) in Melbourne. Each year Amanda’s student gain extremely high results and Amanda is herself well networked, resourced and experienced.  Amanda offered to videoconference in to the students and speak to them virtually from her school. Blackboard Collaborate was the software tool of my choice for the virtual workshop, as students have access to a chat, can see Amanda on video and watch the powerpoint presentation on the virtual whiteboard. Polls can be setup and high interactivity employed. However, this software does not work at their school. So, we agreed to use skype.

Testing skype connection whilst still at school

The Business Management student cohort:-

• 15 students at the camp were studying Business Management 
• students came from 8 different small rural schools
• Students studied the subject under different conditions – some with a face to face teacher, some study virtually with a remote teacher using polycom videoconferencing equipment, several study the subject by distance education (I still call it study by correspondence)

Webcam Introductions

The challenges included how to-

•  ensure that skype would work in a tertiary institution where I had no control or direct contact with lecturers or technicians (it can be blocked in many eductional settings)
•  provide a backchannel or area of chat for the students to interact, ask questions, provide feedback etc
• encourage an ongoing social network for students beyond the camp and through this final school year
• engage students for a 2 hours – the length of the workshop
• project Amanda’s video image up (feedback suggests seeing the presenter is more engaging for students) whilst simultaneously sharing the powerpoint presentation. (I did not have time to print it out in pdf form and photocopy for students). Amanda was unable to share her screen with us in skype.
• contact students after the date when they publicly state they dont use email!
• the lack of time to fully test skype and its potential features for the presentation.
• Give Amanda a clear view of her virtual class (this was difficult as they were in a computer lab and mostly hidden behind monitors whilst taking notes)
• the practicalities of accessing skype at the university and their network
• Camp organising staff organised a University rep to help me setup and ensure we had a username and password.
• created a Todays Meet backchannel for introductions, discussion, questions, reflections etc 
• shared a collaborative google document to add contact details for networking and sending out the pdf version of the presentation
• opened up the powerpoint presentation on my laptop
• when in the videoconference, skype was maximized to show Amanda on video, then when referring to specific slides, the ppt was maximized. This enabled Amanda’s video image to be projected (in small size) over the actual slide. I could grab her video and move her into a position where she could be seen but did not block out any of the images or text. A fabulous feature that I only discovered that day!
• Took photos of the class and the way in which Amanda appeared to the students. Share webcam view of her projected image in the computer room.
• Amanda’s voice has lots of character to hold student attention
• Had one quick test two days before to ensure our linkup would work.
• used my laptop with skype downloaded, cabled into University’s network, used a temporary username and password to login to their system, projected laptop screen onto their large white screen at front of room via a data projector. Brought my own speakers (thank goodness, as students would not have heard audio otherwise)

The room setup, cabled laptop, white screen for projection

Reasons for the session’s high success and being rated  as one of the top camp sessions:-

• Students introduced themselves in school groups via the webcamera  and in the backchannel to Amanda
• Amanda had created an engaging presentation using  text2pic to replace the usual dot points on slides, featuring  images as much as possible to show what she was talking about and gave examples of things that her students had said had worked for them.
• Amanda appeared at all times in video format so that students could always see their presenter.
• Amanda used interactivity where possible – with questions requiring feedback, written response etc
• She had also worked out a hands on session at the conclusion of her presentation. Students used magazines to cut out appropriate images to build posters on “The Operating Environment” or the “Macro Environment”

What I learnt

• how to have a ppt presentation up with the virtual presenter image shown in an overlay of the slide and discovering the ability to drop or drag this video image around the screen. Will test to see if it works when presenter shares their screen
• using text2pic app to replace the often boring dot points in Powerpoint. This creates very effective imagery.
• how to improve student external exam results based on the experience of another teacher
• the need to remind students of appropriate behaviour in a professional online chat
• being reminded of the need for each party to see each other or understand how they look to each other.

My laptop screen with ppt and Amanda on video

Have you used skype for virtual formal presentations? What elements of skype do you use?

Getting the most out of Polycom Videoconferencing Equipment

These notes were taken at the recent Perfecting the Blend Conference at Mt Clear in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.  Lynette  Whitfield was the presenter.

Mobile videoconferencing

As students bring in more tools, schools and Polycom add more opportunities for these tools. Students collaborate on a daily basis using iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices. Polycom now has a mobile app for iDevices, smart phones etc  allowing students to connect tablets and smart phones with other standards based video systems. Teachers and students  can add active touch monitors and now use with Polycom. See the guide.

Sharing files:-

• Capturing the content – if a student comes with something on her iPad, can share file through touch screen, saved to thumb drive and sent to LMS.
• can save screen or email to students.
•  Using airplay – going back to regular iPad, shutting off content. Using BYOD, connecting with HDX, sharing and uploading.

iPad – apple TV, cannex connector which goes into codec .Can use touch panel  Interactive whiteboard in session. New software uploads makes it available to users.

Students working from home, can

• download video app or android.
• Join call from home.
• Uses wireless or 3G.

Use these extra features not as a top on but capability to bring relevance into curriculum. Always tie the context to students. Use technology to enrich curriculum and engage students as never before.

A stylus can be used to double touch.  Need a thumb drive so can save files for uploading, or to email out to students. Dialling in on iPad enables the user to start a whiteboard collaboration and another person can take control and annotate on that whiteboard as well.

Flip the  classroom, spend less time on presenting content than diving into the context. Put students in teams even though geographically dispersed. Students drop into individually setup meeting rooms and come back into the big virtual meeting room.  Polycom have announced cloud access – skype, iCloud, google etc will all be able to have access.  Get link, click on link and actually join conference (just  like skype) with people you can drag into the conference. In meeting invite there will be link to join and can connect.

Some ideas for use

Languages:  eg if students live in a rural state – with not all classes available at all high schools – don’t have teachers for all languages.  One class – teach Spanish, French and German from across state. Students can join collaboration around the planet. http://www.twice.cc or http://www.polycom  Goto Education Section. Could interact with USA learning mandarin Chinese students who are just learning Chinese rather than with Chinese people. Ask questions in Chinese students and students answer back in English from China. Students use videoconferencing. They want to use these, they want to use their iPhone or iPad. Throw up ppt slide using polleverywhere and can quiz students.

Adjusting to what students are expecting in a school environment. Connecting back on phones on sporting excursion with school, if on holidays, then can conference back into school or can share what they are actually doing. Use app to connect in to use mobile devices.

Pixellation and quality of video depends on network of each school and how many are using network at same time, downloads, no. connecting through network.  Lessons can be recorded

 

 

 

MS Lync for education

MS Lync is now available to all Victorian Education Department staff and should replace MS Communicator as a tool for communication. The following notes were taken from a session by Graeme Oswin of the Grampians Regional Office. MS Lync is a virtual meeting software that is being considered for general classroom us.

Pros

• Free to Victorian  Education Department staff
• Available to all staff
• Simple to use
• Powerful sharing and collaboration features
• Person to person or group conferences
• Scales  well – Video Conferencing equipment does not scale well.
• Integrated with MS Office
• Windows and Mac versions
• Distribute large files and attachments
• Conferences recordable
• Integrated with Polycom VC units

Video does not work well in online version with eg global connections.

Cons

• Requires computers to be online
• No direct student access
• Students  would need to use teacher login
• Less suited to large groups – best used for individuals with headset
• Does not support advanced camera actions such as pan and zoom

Updates:-

• New video call, share whiteboard, with annotation tools at the bottom.
• Can create groups in projects
• Set availability
• Can send email for meeting alerts

Have you used MS Lync for online meetings or for classroom use with students? If so, what do you have to share? Please leave any questions or experiences as a comment.