Videoconferencing Center of Excellence

Transcript

IU1: What prompted you to begin using videoconferencing?

Hamel: We were the first wave of the IU's project, Regional WAN, and part of it was asking for videoconferencing equipment. We got an alotment as part of that first group. We used that money plus I used some district funds to buy… we have three videoconferencing units. So once that started, I have always thought that it was a good idea. So I picked someone like Mary to start using it in the classroom.

Wallace: And it came to me through Dana Kriebel at the high school. She's the one who kind of mentored me into being able to use it within our building. And one of the units came. We started with Carnegie Museum of Natural History. We did a dinosaur archeologist presentation with them. And once the unit came it just never left. We've been using it almost weekly within our building now.

IU1: What do you do to prepare for videoconferencing procedures?

Wallace: Actually in our building, I do all of the scheduling for the videoconferencing, so initially I find out from the teachers what would work within their curriculum and then from there you have to go in and do the actual scheduling and coordinate with the various sites that allow you to use their facilitators. And from there they give us certain materials for classroom use, curriculum-wise, and I allow the teachers to collaborate with me and we put the materials together. Sometimes there's some preassessment testing that the sites would like for you to do so that they know what kind of basic knowledge your kids have prior to the conference. And then there's also some prelessons that they like to do. We've even done conferences where kids have developed materials within the conference. We've used the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia. We've actually created puppets. So there's often times that you have to prepare materials and have them accessible for the kids. So between the classroom teacher and myself, we'll do that and then have the conference and then in the postconference sometimes there's other follow-up lessons or there's actually like a posttest procedure that some of the sites will ask you to do.

Hamel: It's important that the people that are doing this, like Mary's doing it, has a good line to the technology people because we always find out sometimes we need a port open, sometimes we need to check things. The hardest part of actually doing the conference is making sure that the connection works. They always do a pretest. And we've had to work out a few details by that. You can't have the teachers doing that on their own. You have to have some other kind of contact. So, for people doing that you have to have good communication with the technology department.

IU1: How have your students reacted to incorporating videoconferencing?

Wallace: They are enjoying it completely. They are actually developing their communication skills in this format, because they've realized that in the world that they live in, that this is the way that they will probably communicate in the business world or even in the medical field. We won't be travelling back and forth to conferences or companies won't be spending money to send people to travel, so they are becoming more accustomed to it and enjoying it because they know that this is the future, and children embrace that technology. They just think it's the neatest thing to be able to talk to somebody else on the other side of the world. They're never adverse to it, that's for sure.

Hamel: It makes everything they're doing real. We've done the Space Station Alpha. We've had the autopsy and a bunch of other things and it takes the things they are learning in class and allows them to see how they are applied in the real world to get experiences that they would never get in a classroom and that seems to be the big plus. They really enjoy those things. We've had kids who miss school a lot but during the month that we work on one of these projects they never miss a day.

Wallace: We just did a conference with NASA where it was actually in two parts where we had to in the first session they gave us information about a lunar landing challenge and they gave us the information. The children took that information and then had to build lunar habitats. They had to study the geography of the moon, and the next session they had to present all of this information to NASA and we had a mingling of all abilities within the groups and you couldn't necessarily tell who were the children who were higher achieving and those who were less because it kind of evens the playing field. The kids who maybe don't necessarily like that kind of paper and pencil work and don't necessarily shine in doing that, this technology allows them to have a different outlet for their creativity.

IU1: And what advice would you give to a teacher who hasn't begun using videoconferencing?

Hamel: Plan, plan, plan. Know what it is. You just don't wake up on Thursday morning and say, "I'm going to do a videoconference tomorrow." It's important that you see what's there. Videoconferences are useless if you just do them like you used to show a video in class. It needs to tie into what you're doing. So, it does take some preplanning. Like Mary said, there's a lot of work that usually comes with it in order to get the students ready to participate. But you have to think about how you want to use it and plan ahead on how you're going to use it. If the students prepare and do that it is a wonderful experience for the students. But like anything else if you don't plan it isn't going to turn out as well for them.

Wallace: I think you have to consider the conference, and there will be conferences that you do that you'll say "I'll never do that one again." It depends on the facilitator too. They can make it or break it. And one of the things we found is if it's something that you could do yourself don't spend the money on a videoconference to do it. Find those that are really relevant to what you are teaching and make it something that you couldn't necessarily do yourself.

IU1: Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Hamel: We're trying to get this so that we could do it in all of our schools. I think it's that important. It brings so much extra stuff into the classroom that our students are going to get. Technology is really, like Mary said, it evens the playing field. We may not have some of the resources that other schools do, but virtual field trips, the videoconferencing with experts and doing those things, that allows our students to have those experiences that they would never get otherwise in the regular school setting.

Wallace: Yeah. And another thing: we've always been on the receiving end of the videoconferencing. What we are moving toward is being facilitators ourselves. You never want to just be satisfied with just getting the information. We're at a point where we are trying to now present the information to other people too. So it's always a development stage. Keep it fresh.

Hamel: Even within the school district, we're going to have the high school students do a videoconference with some of our elementary students, science classes, to show them things and do that. So, once you get started, it's very contagious. And once we get it started in a building, we could buy other videoconferencing units, we use it so much.

Wallace: Yeah, and look for free stuff. There's plenty of free out there too, not just those that you have to purchase. NASA in particular is one that offers some wonderful conferences. And even collaborations just between teachers one-on-one gives your students an opportunity to use this technology for virtually nothing.