A post from D'Arcy resonated with an effort I am thinking of starting next year to promote the sharing of classroom technology activities among teachers from different grade levels. D'Arcy links to the Viral Professional Development project, where Jennifer Jones writes:

The primary goal of VPD is to grow a culture of sharing, where instructors learn from each other and spread the knowledge throughout the organization.

This is exactly what I have in mind. While our school is tiny compared to a university, teachers nonetheless work primarily within their own division (elementary, middle, high school). Yet, we have teachers at all different grade levels investigating technology in a similar manner. What potential exists for the use of multiple media, small handheld recorders, and social web tools. We even have one who has carried his technological toolset from the high school to the elementary.

Teachers do not have a lot of common time to spend talking face-to-face, especially across school divisions. They have a lot more opportunity to interact online, to complement and enhance occasional in-person meetings. As I learned from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, I need to find a half dozen or so who will form a committed core group to keep the momentum going. Ewan McIntosh stresses the importance of getting the technological part right the first time.

I'll give this a try in the late summer and early fall. Building Learning Communities ought to build my enthusiasm to put some effort into this.

tags: professionaldevelopment, learning, community

A high school teacher is seeking international partners for an election class he will teach next fall. Do you know of anyone who is thinking along the same lines, especially in Central or South America (fewer time zone issues)? Do you have other good election sites with an international focus to add to the following list?

When History Happens

Taking IT Global

Global Education Collaborative Ning

ALA Election Web Sites

Skewz: All Sides of the Story

Voices Without Votes

tags: election, globaled

I am considering activities to run with our faculty at tomorrow's end-of-year meeting. Do you have any thoughts about which might be particularly effective? What other ideas do you have?

1. Tech Showcase: A few teachers each highlight a successful, technology-rich activity and explore the connection between the medium and teaching/learning. This could help promote sharing of ideas among departments.

2. Top 10 Disruptive Technologies: We may lead off with the article, to provide context to breakout groups and frame one aspect of the challenge facing us.

3. Theories of Learning: Behaviorist, Cognitivist, Constructivist, Connectivist. Framing T&L within these four theories may help teachers design new activities that incorporate technologies. I can provide an example of each one, rooted in subject-specific curricula. Some points of emphasis: teachers typically incorporate multiple theories of learning to provide curriculum to students. Over the years, educational theorists emphasized each of these theories at one time or another. Increasingly, student learn through their networks: a high degree of connectedness to resources and peers characterizes their learning landscape (provide examples). Schools that do not take acknowledge and take advantage of this may appear “artificial” or “irrelevant” to students. Teachers may design new, technology-rich learning activities by: 1) identifying a curricular objective that they would like to teach better next year; 2) choosing the learning theor(ies) that would best support this learning objective; 3) designing a classroom activity or project that would help create this learning environment; 4) Taking advantage of new literacies in our students: personal learning networks, visual information. This presentation could preface departmental discussions.

4. Tech survey results. We have at our disposal an upper school parent laptop survey, upper school student laptop survey, and eighth grade student technology survey (blog articles coming soon). Our middle school head has particularly recommended that the upper school teachers should take a look at the responses of their incoming students for next year.

tags: techintegration, connectivism, disruptive, technologies

The PNAIS TechShare planning committee would like each member school to articulate its technology philosophy and future plans. They hope that answering these questions will inform the technology planning efforts of other member schools. The committee asked us to think about where we are now and where we are headed. I responded to their questions as follows:

1. Describe your school's technology philosophy.

Catlin Gabel technology resources support the educational mission of the school. We aspire to a high standard of excellence, delivering systems that work reliably and with high quality. We anticipate and plan for new opportunities and empower users to investigate new applications of technology, solve computer problems, and collaborate with IT staff. We carry out our work with a support orientation and high integrity. We make decisions in order to minimize the environmental impact of computer use.

2. What is your vison for classroom technology five years from now?

To continue to deepen its application to teaching and learning in a variety of forms. All teachers will list their curricular and pedagogical goals for their classes, consider how technology could help meet these goals, and regularly attempt new, technology-enriched activities. The forms will cover the range of available technologies, such as touch surfaces, the social web, data-collection devices, audio and video publishing, and so on. Teachers will feel fully supported by IT and empowered to design and attempt new, technology-rich activities in their classes. Teachers will participate in an active community of practice with their colleagues both within the school and beyond.

3. Do you have teachers willing to adapt curriculum to utilize technology innovations,or asking for technology so that they can?

Yes, though I would use language such as “employ technology to support curricular goals in their courses.” I would say that a large minority of teachers change curricula as they employ technology in their classes. We will know better after the completion of an upper school laptop program survey next week.

4. Explain how you support teacher innovators.

We consider all teachers to be potential innovators and therefore approach them about the same. We respond quickly and definitively to teacher requests for advice and support, including appearing in their classes to assist a teacher with technology-rich lessons if desired. We encourage all teachers to thoughtfully consider how technology could support teaching and learning in their classes. Often, innovation comes from surprising sources — not necessarily the most technically advanced individuals. We encourage all teachers to share their work with technology with their colleagues in both formal and informal settings. We encourage all teachers to actively seek professional development opportunities here and outside the school.

5. Describe your technology professional development plan for all employees.

The school offers three sources of funding for professional development: individual, department/division, and schoolwide. Individuals have an allotment of funds to spend where they prefer. Divisions and departments have funds to undertake professional development efforts for some or all of their members. Schoolwide initiatives such as All Kinds of Minds are also available. The school does not have a separate plan for technology professional development nor specific requirements for how much technology PD individuals should undertake.

6. Define the infrastructure (wiring, traffic capacities, switches, severs, wirless) changes you will need to make to support the five-year vision you described above.

We feel that we already have in place the baseline infrastructure to support this vision. We will continue to make incremental changes, such as introducing a wireless controller to enable better management of our wireless network, piloting small form-factor laptops such as the eeePC and 2Go to assess their potential for the classroom, and investigating social web site tools for our intranet and public-facing web sites.

7. What changes in human resources will you need to make to support that vision?

We are meeting our needs for the immediate future. We will continue to assess the workloads of our employees and request increases as appropriate.

tags: technology, curriculum, integration

Isn't this more consistent with the pursuit of learning? Thanks, Stephen. danah will be pleased.

In a move that will disseminate faculty research and scholarship as broadly as possible, the Harvard Law School faculty unanimously voted last week to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free, making HLS the first law school to commit to a mandatory open access policy.

Under the new policy, HLS will make articles authored by faculty members available in an online repository, whose contents would be searchable and available to other services such as Google Scholar. Authors can also legally distribute the articles on their own websites, and educators here and elsewhere can freely provide the articles to students, so long as the materials are not used for profit.

source: Harvard Law School

If more schools of higher education do this, then we may have some hope of bridging the research-practice divide. Practitioners do not have the funds or the time to subscribe to expensive academic journals and the proprietary databases required to search them. Most researchers spend precious little time alongside schoolteachers, and when they do, it's primarily to collect information, not share wisdom. What if teachers could Google for research studies that inform their practice? What if teachers set a standard for themselves to ground their pedagogical strategies in research? Yum.



tags: openaccess, research, highered

Many thanks to SEGATech for their review of 3D Cell Explorer. They write:

If you’re teaching anything about cellular functions or know of students who are trying to gain a better understanding of the subject, speed on over to Richard’s site. The 3D Cell Explorer has instructional videos that explore topics such as:

* the cell membrane,
* mitochondrion,
* mitosis,
* meiosis and more.

This site provides a great means of demystifying the workings of living systems by helping students visualize what’s going on at the cellular level.

(source)

Also note that you can embed the movies on your own site, putting the power for teachers and students to make use of the videos in their own work.

SEGATech is a gem, recommending a steady stream of useful technology resources for education. One of the first blogs to land in my aggregator, they have stuck.


tags: 3dcellexplorer, cellbiology

This week, 25 students begin their "senior projects," volunteer internships around town in environmental, bike, journalism, and many other types of organizations. The senior projects coordinator asked me some weeks ago whether students should blog about their work. I replied, "of course!" First, I asked what the students used to do in past years and attempted to determine how well that would translate to blogging. Students had before completed weekly reflections and sent them to their advisors for comment. The coordinator wanted these reflections to be more visible within the school, so that other students could gain ideas for their work. Blogging seemed like an excellent fit.

I had been waiting for an opportunity like this. We run both Moodle and Drupal on our intranet, both within a "walled garden" -- restricted to our students, employees, and parents through authentication. Moodle is for discrete groups within campus (classes, clubs, committees), whereas Drupal is for community-wide content. This clearly fit the description of "community-wide," and Drupal automatically provides a blog to each user. It seemed ready to go.

I provided a how-to article to explain blogging to new users. I was pleased to include blog writing tips gleaned from a variety of sources.

• Write a distinctive subject line.
  
• Use a conversational tone.
  
• Keep paragraphs short.
  
• Vividly describe your experiences. Which of your experiences are most compelling?
  
• Link to organizations or articles you reference.
  
• Post images when you can. They really do say a thousands words.
  
• Invite your readers to comment.
  
• Determine a writing schedule and stick to it.

I found it a little tricky to explain to teachers how to directly find the blog of a specific student. Drupal's default search looks for content, not users (does anyone know how to modify this default behavior to include user names?). Thinking that most people would miss the Users tab in the search results, I created a new menu item that links directly to user search. I didn't want to use the node profile module, which would take on a lot of overhead and unwanted features just to make users searchable. At our school, students don't need to modify their profiles much -- they don't rely on the intranet to describe themselves around school!

Nearly all teachers prefer to find out about new student blog posts by email notification. We use the subscriptions module to add "subscribe blog" and "subscribe post" links to each post. This also permits the author of each post to automatically receive email notifications of comments to their content. This is essential in this environment, in which blogging is new and people are unlikely to check the web site frequently to notice new blog posts and comments.

If blogging takes off here, RSS subscription may increase in popularity. Given that our entire site is login protected, we require the HTTP auth module to use HTTP instead of web authentication for specific URL paths. This allows RSS readers and "podcatchers" such as iTunes to subscribe to login-protected Drupal feeds.

I didn't require students to tag their posts with particular keywords to separate them from other types of blog posts, mostly because no one else is really blogging at this time. I don't really see an easy way to do this, as requiring people to select from a list of tags would seem too strict. Does Drupal have a group blogging feature other than Organic Groups? It would be great if blog posts off a specific link automatically gained a particular tag.

A half-dozen students have posted in the first day. One challenge is completion -- the system does not have a strong disincentive for those who do not post regularly. After all, the students have volunteered to undertake a senior project in the first place. The writing itself has been pretty lively and interesting so far -- one student even included an image! I will watch closely for the development of each student's blogging voice and look for signs of impact from writing to the community in this fashion.

Reflective blogging occupies the middle space in the senior project, between proposal and final project. We may extend the online support for senior projects by collecting proposals and final projects online as well and linking all three content types together for others to review in the future.

Do let me know your lessons learned from similar student blogging or Drupal configuration experiences.


tags: blog, internship, pbl, drupal

Should document cameras be ubiquitous in the classroom? A colleague pointed me to the following article, to which I penned this response.

I take away three significant uses of document cameras:

• Magnification: in classes that work frequently with very small objects, a document camera may show more detail/be more convenient than simply passing the object around the class.
  
• Sharing student work: in classes that frequently share student handwritten/drawn work, a document camera may increase the convenience of making the work of an individual student visible to the entire group.
  
• Manual manipulation: you can project a piece of work as you draw on it.

Playing devil’s advocate, a document camera would provide little advantage in the following situations:

• The class shares objects of larger size (can be easily seen or too large to fit under the camera).
  
• Holding the object, not just seeing it, has high pedagogical value.
  
• Students complete work to share with small groups, the teacher, parents, or themselves, not the entire class at once.
  
• The teacher doesn’t spend much time teaching from the front of the class.
  
• The teacher prioritizes aural or text-based instruction over visual.
  
• The class is primarily organized around student-led projects.
  
• The depth of the object is important (3D vs. 2D).
  
• The classroom is physically organized around “activity centers.”

I guess I find document cameras a good fit for the teacher-directed or whole-group classroom, not for the project-based, small-group, or student-directed classroom. Your thoughts?



tags: elmo, visualpresenter, documentcamera

I spent a productive and exciting day at Marin Country Day School, attending one of the occasional meetings of the Bay Area Independent School Technology Network (BAISNet). The day focused on Web 2.0 in schools in two sessions, a morning group meeting and then several breakout groups. You'll find the meeting outline and notes at WikiSpaces.



Edward (Bay School, formerly of KQED) and Michael both focused on student and teacher use of wikis at their schools. Michael referred to wikis as "bulletin boards" within his school, a helpful use of an old metaphor to explain the function of a new technology. I regularly wrestle with the competing values of reducing our intranet to a small number of tools and providing the best tool for each purpose. Both WikiSpaces and MediaWiki do a better job of keeping the discussion forum close to the wiki than do either Moodle or Drupal.

Barbara focused on VoiceThread, which I was happy to see for the first time. MCDS elementary students posted photos and drawings of themselves and various subjects and then commented on them with audio. I like how Voicethread supports multiple source media, so that users may post content in the media they happen to have or best fits the subject matter. The Voicethread team also seem to have paid very close attention to adjacency in their user interface. They cluster the icons for submitted comments closely around the original post and display user tools just underneath.

Hoover, Joanne, and Tracy from Sacred Heart focused on their use of Moodle. SacredSF has over 200 Moodle courses, an impressive rate of participation in taking courses online using this platform. Hoover also demonstrated that they have teachers using Moodle at a high level -- one was making use of at least six different types of Moodle objects. Discussion forums at SacredSF also seem very active.

Barbara encouraged people to join the Independent School Educators Ning (ISENet) as a way to extend our network beyond the friendly confined of BAISNet to an international audience. It's quite possible that the launch of ISENet will answer my longstanding question of where are the independent school bloggers. Though still small in number, it is helpful to forge connections with the leading national figures in one place. I have great hopes for this social network, even while no relishing the need to judge whether to post a blog entry to my blog, the Ning, or both. Perhaps I will use it only when seeking feedback on specific questions.

I also hope that the new BAISNet Wikispace that Barbara started will really take off. It is well past time to build documentation and hold certain discussions in a wiki rather than all via email. It's time to end the practice of starting the annual email-based discussion on "topic x."

I was pleased to receive positive feedback to my use of connectivism to demystify the appeal of Web 2.0 tools to a small number of wildly enthusiastic educational technologists. Hoover questioned whether connectivism is just a different word for social constructivism, and I pointed him toward the idea that constructivism, even within a social context, finds the source of learning within the individual. Connectivism posits that learning takes place beyond the individual, within the network itself. The network learns, primarily by taking over the functions of information storage and retrieval from the individual.

I was also pleased that a dozen attended a roundtable discussion entitled "Take your web site to 2.0 with Drupal." In a complete shift from three years ago, we now have a critical mass of school technologists frustrated with the limitations of commercial school web site providers and seriously considering open-source alternatives.

BAISNet meetings happen serendipitously, usually when email discussion on a particular topic reaches a new high, or when someone realizes that the group has not held a meeting in many months. Flying down from Portland for the meeting was totally worth it, both for the specific knowledge I gained today, the feedback I received on my new ideas, and the reminder that the Bay Area has a truly valuable concentration of independent school technologists who understand how to share information for the good of the group. Kudos to Barbara for organizing this meeting and Hoover for shepherding this group for many years (and driving me from the city to the meeting and back!).


tags: edtech, techintegration, drupal, moodle, connectivism

Web 2.0 Adoption In Schools

Presentation given at BAISNet Web 2.0 meeting


Who Participates?

Poll: Who reads the NY Times online? Uses Blogger? Wikipedia? Facebook?

Slide: Five-year trends

Slide: Total known Moodle sites



Top 10 U.S. web sites

1. Google

2. Yahoo!

3. Myspace

4. YouTube

5. Facebook

6. Windows Live

7. EBay

8. Wikipedia

9. MSN

10. Craigslist




Slide: Who Participates



Introduction

Why does a small, wildly enthusiastic group embrace Web 2.0 for teaching and learning, yet the majority do not? A growing club of international edubloggers seek to redefine education using Web 2.0 tools. Students have quickly adopted Web 2.0 to meet their social needs. Yet, only a minority of teachers have embraced Web 2.0 to support teaching and learning in their classes. Almost none employ Web 2.0 in their own professional practice. Why is this so? There must be good reasons, right? Seeking to understand these apparent contradictions may help us better understand what Web 2.0 actually is and what long-term potential the tool has for education.



Connectivism (George Siemens, 2004) may help explain the difference between observing Web 2.0 tools from a distance and embracing them.

• A new theory of learning impacted through technology


• Knowledge continues to expand exponentially and at an ever-increasing rate


• Learning happens in a variety of means, some informal and some through personal learning networks -- what some have termed "School 2.0"


• Focus on the process of knowledge acquisition rather than knowledge itself.


• Challenges the notion that all learning takes place inside the individual



• Technology takes over the tasks of information storage and retrieval ("Hold on while I Google that.")


• Emphasizes skills of acquiring knowledge, making connections, seeing patterns, and making decisions.


• Leadership: highly-connected individuals who help facilitate knowledge flow within the organization.

Potentially Connective Technologies

• Learning environment, learning community


• Blog, wiki, podcast, forum, social network, (video) chat, microblog (doesn't have to be web!)

Examples (focusing on enhancement)

• Summer Reading, Sustainability/Recycling



• Trip Planning Project (kmz file?)


• Reconstruction and Civil Rights Songs


• Pirates of Penzance


• Image galleries


• Becoming a World Class Negotiator


• Knowledge I gain through blogging: school Drupal sites, Riffly, Web Site Baker, K12 Online Conference, EduCon 2.0, connectivism



• The importance of reflective practice in professional improvement: forum diaries, A Window into Gaza

Conclusion

• Still seeking to understand

Suggestions

• BAISNet


• Kassblog blogroll


• Independent School Educators Ning


• Powerful Learning Practice


• Mercy Corps in Gaza

tags: web20

part 3 | part 2 | part 1

Some students wrote on their Skype video chat experiences.

I shook with excitement as I sat down in front of Richard Kassissieh’s laptop to talk face-to-face (via skype video chat) with students from the Gaza strip. I had the opportunity to talk to the deputy chief of affairs for the Palestinian president, as well. We even interviewed with Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig’s list. All of these conversations left me with an unshakable feeling that I have finally left the darkness of ignorance and illuminated the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I can hardly believe that every day we as Americans wake up unaffected by the events occurring daily in Palestine, and one can only imagine the thoughts running through my head when I had to respond to a Gaza student’s question: “How does this conflict affect your daily life?” It hurt to answer truthfully, and I felt sick to the core of my morality. Winterim of 2008 left me enlightened to something that the world community must stop turning a blind eye toward. I thank the organizers of the Winterim program for allowing me to have these experiences.

The moment I remember most from my winterim, is when we had a live
video conference with teenagers from Gaza. Getting to school at 7:30 in
the morning was a small price to pay for such an opportunity. Our
questions were pretty scripted in the beginnning, resulting in an
expected conversation. Then, all of a sudden, the questions started to
get more spontaneous. The discussions gained passion. A moment that
stuck with me is when one of the adult leaders in Gaza stepped in. We
had asked about their relationships with Israeli students and they had
claimed that they knew none. The teacher said that she had Israeli
friends when she was a child and that times have really changed. That
moment definitely stuck with me and I was quite moved by that
experience. If the only Israelis the teenagers ever see work as guards
at check points and harass them, of course they are going to have some
amount of hatred towards the other side. They were not able to
sympathize with both sides as we were in our safe Catlin classroom.
Even though everyone preached messages of compromise and peace it was
quite clear that those kids felt the Palestinians had gotten the raw end
of the deal. They felt their people had lost their dignity. I feel
like I'm an educated teenager who knows more about the world than an
average one, but hearing the emotion from another my age on the issue I
studied in a history book, brought a new facet to my understanding. The
limitations in those children's lives, in many ways being trapped in a
small arid portion of land, Gaza, and the electricity restrictions made
me learn more about my freedoms and opportunities and how I should jump
on them. It was definitely a memorable experience and I strongly
suggest having a similar winterim next year. It does not have to be
about the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, but to learn this much about
any conflict in the current world is an enlightening opportunity.

Although I really enjoyed the mock peace conference the highlight of my week was talking to to a group of young Palestinians in the Gaza strip. Getting their perspective on the issues surrounding the conflict was a real eye opener for me, however I think the greatest part of that experience was being able to see that they have hope for a situation that seems almost hopeless.

What would it be like to converse with your nation’s supposed enemy? Are you supposed to support your nation’s beliefs, or are you supposed to empathize as a human? During my time in the Winterim How to Become a Better Negotiator, I experienced the thought process and emotions that occur when one views an especially disturbed and convoluted conflict through facts and reason. This Winterim not only helped me improve my modest grasp of the middle-east conflict between a western influence with questionable but subtle primary intentions and a collectively strong desire for Muslim independence, but it taught me how to rethink a conflict without personal beliefs or culturally based conceptions interfering, filtering, or muddying. To rationalize a vicious clash that intertwines religious and emotional aspects with economic and political desire seems generally unthinkable, but the easily understandable content we reviewed and the impressive array of powerful speakers that joined us proved to our Winterim body, as a whole, that the capability of conflict resolution through negotiation is generally eventually obtainable. While I sat in Vollum with Richard, Peter and my negotiating companions, it became apparent to me that this topic was not grudgingly presented as a hopeless view on middle-east conflict, but influenced the teachers as much as it concerned and affected the students. By the end of Winterim, our group, including the teachers, had unconsciously opened up and bonded over the intensely intellectually stimulating discussions regarding Palestinian rights and Israeli opinion. Our group connected over an influence that changed all of us. At lunch, we conversed and laughed together as if we had been together for at least months. Most Winterims rode roller coasters or ate sushi downtown. While they may have simply enjoyed a nice temporary break from academic inspiration, my assembly bonded over a serious conflict, and even though this bond may not be permanent, I believe that this Winterim I attended, How to Become a Better Negotiator, is the type of experience that changes mindsets and creates individual passion. This knowledge and comprehension defines what a Catlin student yearns for, and this experience, although not as "fun" as watching movies in hollywood, will stick with me and my Winterim-mates for the rest of our lives.

A teacher asked me for help with her desktop slide show the other day ... which included shots of her family and friends. What did this have to do with teaching and learning? Nothing at first. However, once we got the desktop slide show sorted out, the teacher described how students love to learn more about her family by looking at the rapidly changing slide show (a new pic every 5 seconds) and asking questions about the subject of each shot. Next, the teacher said that she would love to create a similar slide show of shots from her classroom. Then, I explained how we had created an online photo gallery for school community members to post photos. Within a few minutes, we had posted a number of field trip shots online! It didn't take long for our work on family photos to turn into a vehicle for sharing classroom work with parents and the school community!



tags: iphoto, techintegration

part 2 | part 1

The videoconference activity derived much of its power from its consistently student-centered qualities. The students spoke directly to each other for the entire two-and-a-half hours. As a teacher, it was extremely easy -- in fact, most natural -- for me to step out of the way and let the students do their thing. Other activities in the week required some teacher intervention to sustain momentum or remain productive. This activity, so captivating, rich, and authentic did not.

At times, students asked questions that made me wince, because they were potentially embarrassing or insensitive. However, these questions were always authentic, and our peers in Gaza responded to such questions both kindly and firmly, in a manner far more powerfully educative than I could have ever mustered. Students gushed about the experience afterward. Many commented that they were unaware how little they knew about the living conditions in Gaza. They showed a lot of courage asking questions and seeking to learn more.

part 1

Today, I would like to explore the visual richness of our online, distance interactions using Skype. How did video make the experience many times richer than similar interactions using discussion forums or audio? Perhaps the answer lies in the importance of body language in communication. Many times during the conversation, our students picked up subtleties from our guests through body language. When an individual was excited to make a comment, we could see hear leap from her chair, slide over to the microphone, sit upright, and take a sharp breath before beginning to speak. These visual cues communicated the energy behind the speaker's ideas before she even opened her mouth. Similarly, when our students asked really tough questions, we could see a slight slump of the shoulders, a downward gaze, and an awkward pause while they considered how to formulate a reply. When funny moments occurred, we could see smiles and laughter, even from a distance of 6,000 miles and one blockade.

We know that the brain simplifies the visual information our eyes take in so that we may make sense of it. In other words, our brains only process a fraction of what we actually see (can someone help me find a source for a study of this?). It may follow that, even though video is only a partial representation of a room in a distant location, it seems real enough to us. As the videoconference grew longer, we became increasingly accustomed to the dynamic and effectively communicated challenging concepts back and forth. The richness of the videoconference made a meaningful exchange possible.

This successful experience completely changes the rules for future global education initiatives at school. I used to think that virtual exchanges were the next best thing to international trips. Now I find that they are equally valuable, though different in nature. When we think about our lower school students, who are unlikely to travel as a class to any faraway land, we assume that their experience is going to be less rich than that of our middle and upper school students. Now, I imagine a curriculum in which students would Skype each other weekly, at a predetermined time, building deep relationships and exploring meaningful curricula over the course of a year or longer. The nonexistent cost, immediacy of contact, and regular scheduling give videoconferencing at least equal potential as short international trips to support meaningful learning. Of course, virtual exchanges may also enhance actual trips, as students get to know each other before traveling and keep in touch after the trip is over.

I can't wait to get started ...


tags: videoconference, globaled

This morning, we successfully held a 2-1/2 hour discussion between students at Catlin Gabel and in Gaza City, Palestine. Mercy Corps runs a program called Why Not Youth, an Internet-based curriculum to facilitate greater understanding between Oregon and Palestine. I entered the activity with two uncertainties: How familiar could students get with each other through Internet video? Would the technology even work, and what would we do if it didn't?

The experience far exceeded my wildest dreams. At first, the technology teased me with hints of success. We showed up at school at 7:00 a.m. (5:00 p.m. in Gaza). For a good 45 minutes, we watched the Gazans' Skype status flicker on and off. What could be going on there? Power outages? Internet connectivity issues? Would the lesson be a bust? We got video first, to murmurs of excitement from our people. Then the audio clicked in ... and out ... and in. We were off and running!

For a distance of thousands of miles, using free Skype technology, the quality was absolutely amazing. We must have been getting at least 5 fps video rate and telephone-quality audio. Every 20 minutes or so, we got completely disconnected but reestablished contact within about a minute. In a way, the interruptions helped remind us how remarkable this connection was. If you don't have it yet, get the latest Skype upgrade. The video compression is far superior.

The students on both sides prepared questions in advance, mostly so that the Palestinian students could find the English vocabulary needed to clearly express answers to complex questions about freedom, elections, and the press. For the first hour or so, the conversation proceeded in relative formality. Each group asked a question, and the others responded.

In the second hour, the magic really began. To my amazement, the students on both sides demonstrated a growing familiarity with each other. They laughed at jokes and awkward moments. One student played the oud. Our students admitted they didn't know anything about the Oscars. They challenged each other with serious questions. Our students came to grips with how little they knew about life in Gaza. They sympathized with the plight of being virtually imprisoned in a 39 km strip of land.

Hyperbole thrives in the blogosphere. I truly try to avoid it. Today, I need to make an exception. The connection we were able to make between Oregonian and Gazan students today far exceeded my expectations. I truly believe that this represents a new frontier in global education. The technology is finally accessible enough that we can make exchanges between people in very different life circumstances, connections that truly challenge assumptions and teach in the most powerful manner. It is going to take me days to fully process what we experienced this morning. I can't wait to plan the next one.

Also read part 2 | part 3 | part 4


tags: videoconference, globaled