It’s the start of the new school year, and I’d like to welcome everyone back! We were very busy this summer and completed upgrades for 10 of our distance learning classrooms, making the rooms more user friendly and tech savvy for those instructors who offer synchronous distance learning classes to our districts. The upgrades will also provide opportunities for teachers to use the room as a Smart Classroom. The rooms now have more space and can accommodate more students when districts want to use their room for electronic field trips and videoconferencing. Thanks for your patience during this process!
Speaking of opportunities for e-field trips and videoconferencing, I would like to point you to a couple of resources that I use to locate museums, zoos, science centers, collaboration requests, etc. that correlate to the national standards and some state standards. The two resources that I’m including are databases maintained by two organizations: Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, Inc., which is a non-profit organization in Indiana, and Two Way Interactive Connections in Education, which is Michigan’s organization for videoconferencing in K-12 education. The corresponding links are: http://www.cilc.org and http://www.twice.cc. Attached are copies of the documents I created for users to learn how to search on these two websites. Feel free to use these as you see fit for educational purposes.
Some of the work that I did this summer included working with my VC colleagues from NYS. We are members of the NYS Distance Learning Consortium and are all from various Regional Information Centers (RIC) or Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) or one of their component school districts in New York State. There are two projects that I have been involved with and they include preparing a how to workshop for presentation at the New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE). This workshop is called “Videoconferencing Soup to Nuts: Expanding the Walls of the Classroom. This will be a full-day workshop on Saturday, November 17, 2007 from 9:00 am – 3:00 pm.
The other workshop that we are creating has yet to have an official name attached to it, but it will be a two-day workshop based on the original “Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing” that was presented at the Texas Distance Learning Association Conference. Andrea Israeli, the distance learning coordinator for Jackson Heights, NY was part of the project and was able to videoconference with us and provide her insight to the development of our workshop. Click on her name and read her blog ”VCing From the Comfort of Home,” which is where she was during our planning day. Andrea also developed mini jazz sessions for her school district, which is the model that our group is following for our workshop. I see that Ashton Graham from Texas has responded to Andrea’s blog and is willing to be a Texas partner in our workshop. The dates that have been scheduled for this two-day workshop are December 11 and 12, 2007.
Another place that has many valuable resources is Janine Lim’s blog and wiki sites. Janine was part of the “Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing” project and is the instructional technology consultant for the Berrien County Intermediate School District in Michigan where the TWICE site was developed. Thank you, Janine, for providing your insight and many valuable resources.
There are many places to go for information. It in my intent to use this blog site to post information and links about new videoconferences and collaboration requests that I hear about. I also look forward to hearing from many vc colleagues who have additional insights and resources that can be shared.
Periodically, I will post information about a videoconference I was able to take part in and to provide some reflection on those experiences–whether it be from my point of view or feedback that I receive from instructors and students who take part in the videoconferences .
Until next time…happy videconferencing!!!
