The Point: Linking Students with the Community

In 2006, Linda Starr in Education World (available at the National Education Association website) reported on the success of the Literary Book Club online forums in Fayette County, Kentucky. The original Literary Book Club site is being shut down, but the club is alive and well at The Point, the Fayette County public schools blog. Through The Point, classrooms can also collaborate with each other and authors and illustrators can be scheduled for videoconferencing sessions with students.

The Literary Book Club was developed by three technology resource teachers -- Amy Ford, Cathy Brandt and Barbara Hardy -- to encourage students to read more books and discuss what they read. A side goal was to help teachers and students sharpen their computer skills. At The Literary Book Club site, K-12 students could write book reviews. Classroom teachers had to register for students in their classes to submit to the site; this also ensured there was feedback and help for student writing. The publishing aspect, according to technology resource teacher Mike Johnson, gave "students a purpose and an audience for their writing." He added:

"They like being able to log on to the site to see what students are writing, and being able to add comments to each part of the review. Teachers have reported that the site has increased their students' desire to read and write.

"Students are eager to have their work published online and they seem more interested when they're writing for a real audience...They can show their reviews to their parents at home, and e-mail the link to distant friends and family."

The reviews are now housed at The Point, "Fayette County's Student Online Writing and Blogging Platform." Students and teachers log into private blogs and forums. Public blogs offer information on school events, curriculum issues and upcoming technology projects and events. Two guest pages offer guidance for community members who want to collaborate with teachers: a general information page that allows authors or other experts to submit a request form, and a page that outlines the process for collaborating with a teacher and his or her class. Guests are screened and then registered in The Point's system. After that, forums can be accessed and even videoconferencing sessions can be scheduled to bring authors into Fayette County classrooms.

The Point has great information pages for teachers and students and about blogs and current and past projects. One page, Author's/Illustrator's Corner, announces upcoming videoconferencing sessions, such as one in mid-April with cartoonist Bruce Blitz, and websites of interest by or about authors. The only videoconferencing session described is for grades 3-5 but Fayette County's schools clearly have the technology and structure needed for remote expert access.

SOURCE: "Online Book Club Promotes Student Literacy" 2006
photo courtesy of cogdogblog, used under this Creative Commons license

Do You MeBeam? Or Cocinella?

There are lots of options for online chatting and/or videoconferencing but it can be hard to choose which will work best for your situation or needs. Most people probably choose what friends have used or whichever program is most familiar or comfortable. Mebeam and Coccinella are two more free options for getting live chats or videoconferencing.

MeBeam offers multi-person videoconferencing that is based on Flash and can be run in any browser. It's web-based so nothing has to be downloaded. Users type in a name for a room to create that room or users can open an existing room. Rooms can be made private, a real help when you are arranging something for a middle school classroom. Once you set up your audio and video settings, you can invite others by sending the room link in the browser address bar via email or an instant message. Files can be uploaded to the room, too, another plus for classroom use. A help page has instructions and screenshots to help you get started. At the MeBeam blog, you can find up-to-date advice and learn more about MeBeam's features.

Coccinella is open-source and cross-platform, able to connect to any Jabber/XMPP instant messaging program such as Google Talk, Live Messenger, ICQ or Spark. Coccinella also comes with a whiteboard that can take text, pictures, MP3s, drawings and more. It works with Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. The Coccinella website has forums for finding more information. Coccinella also supports Voice over IP though it is not clear from the available pages and forums how this works or how well.

Coccinella requires a download. A system administrator needs to tweak settings for it to get behind firewalls. And it has no videoconferencing capabilities as of yet. MeBeam is limited to 18 people per room and files sent to the room can only be 30MB or less. On the homepage, a Random Room button can take you to any room and, like other online meeting sites, MeBeam has its fair share of obscene and questionable rooms. This feature is beyond your control and a real problem for classroom use. It may be easier to control the environment on Coccinella. How do you use Coccinella or how might you use it? Is videoconferencing more important than chat or a whiteboard? Or does that depend on the lesson or project, the expert/author, the grade level or group of students?

SOURCE: "Help for MeBeam" 02/12/08
SOURCE: "Coccinella: About"
SOURCE: "Coccinella: Frequently Asked Questions" 03/31/07
photo courtesy of N1NJ4, used under this Creative Commons license

Texas and Florida: Students Teaching Student-Teachers

As teachers, we usually bring experts into our classrooms to bring content, motivation, excitement and real-world experience to our students, no matter what grade level. One videoconferencing exchange between Texas faculty and Florida sixth graders shows how the experts can learn from the students while the students learn from the experts.

Susan Williams and Linda Dombchik of the Hebrew Day School and the University of Texas at Austin write for Apple's Learning Interchange about a "field trip" by UT-Austin faculty and pre-service teachers to a sixth grade science class in Florida. The unit of study involved meteorology and hurricanes. Students were challenged to invent devices that could protect hurricane-prone Florida from yearly storms. The sixth graders presented their inventions and fielded questions from the faculty and pre-service teachers during a videoconferencing session.

For the sixth grade students, the pending videoconference changed their work from busywork for a single teacher to a real-life event with experts in science and education who would be listening to and evaluating their inventions and the presentation of them. The content and scientific procedures weren't the only things the students learned:

The experts’ questions served as an assessment of what students had learned in this unit. Could students explain their inventions and the principals on which they were based? How accurate was their understanding? Would they be able to use the computer technology to illustrate their work?

For the educators in Texas, the videoconferencing project was part of a new UT-Austin program that required all pre-service teachers to purchase iBooks for use in classes and in-the-field teaching. In visiting the sixth grade class, the pre-service teachers were able to "work with middle school students, to understand how they used computers to solve complex problems, learn science content, and communicate their findings, and to understand what students of this age can accomplish when technology is used effectively."

The goal was to make teaching with technology real and to give them practical experience with what students and the technology can accomplish. This program seems like an excellent one to duplicate in college education programs around the country as technology and its use in the classroom keeps rapidly changing and growing.

SOURCE: "iSight Connects Higher Ed to K-12 Classrooms" 2007
photo courtesy of justin, used under this Creative Commons license

Teaching Mandarin in Ohio

What enhances acquisition of another language? Most would say regular exposure to a native speaker. And even better, a native speaker who is also a trained and experienced teacher. In Ohio, videoconferencing is bringing Mandarin Chinese, the most widely spoken language in the world, to select sixth grade classrooms. (English is the second most widely spoken language.)

In the Columbus Dispatch, Kevin Joy sums up the uses of a range of tools adding "spark" to classrooms in central Ohio. In addition to SMARTboards, podcasts, Moodle and MP3 players, he reports on how some central Ohio schools use videoconferencing to teach Mandarin to sixth graders. Two televisions, a camera and microphone allow Dun Zhang, a teacher at Bishop Hartley High School in Columbus, to teach live, daily, 40-minute classes to sixth graders at Trinity Elementary School near Grandview Heights and classes in Newark and New Philadelphia, Ohio.

Zhang can see and hear the students in the linked classrooms on one screen, split so everyone can see and hear each other in real time. The other screen displays Zhang's notes; an electronic pen lets her highlight particular points or trouble spots or just help answer student questions. Students like the notes display especially. A student in a Columbus classroom, Brianne, said, "You can see what she's writing. Her hand isn't in the way...You get a better view of the notes." Though students also use pen-and-paper workbooks, the class focuses on dialogue to really teach the students the language.

Trinity isn't just using videoconferencing for Zhang's class. Recently, students videoconferenced with a class of high school students in Taiwan. There are plans for other Trinity classes to virtually visit a museum and also to talk to an author. Though the videoconferenced Mandarin class has its technical drawbacks at times, like occasional screen freezes and subsequent audio delays and lack of one-on-one time with a teacher, students and staff welcome the addition to their curriculum and the excitement it offers. Another Columbus student, Valerie, said of the Mandarin class, "It's so much different than what we usually do...It makes you look smart, and you're excited to come to class."

Foreign language instruction through videoconferencing creates more options for students -- now, with the right equipment and access, schools, no matter where they are located, can offer more than French and/or Spanish -- and can level the playing field for rural school districts. Videoconferencing can also enhance language acquisition and fluency in general and truly prepare students for a more global future. There are many videoconferencing options, from VoiceThread to WiZiQ to Skype, with varying benefits (and drawbacks) for teachers and students. Our earlier entry, "ooVoo? Yugma? WiZiQ? How Do You Get Connected?," discusses a few of the free options out there.

SOURCE: "Plugged in: New technology adding spark to schools " 03/05/08
photo courtesy of kevindooley, used under this Creative Commons license