Video Conferencing

That was fun watching the video conferencing tonight. In terms of educational implications......

Get a guide to take a vid camera, a wi'fi'd laptop, and show us the sights - Museums, parks, monuments, other things.... I know that there are lightweight rigs for doing this.

Talk to the specialists. Place and time not a problem is some ways.

Get international connections and WIDEN a student's world.

Get international connections and larn them student's pruper Ainglish....

Get national connections and DEBATE issues.

Get national connections and share ideas regarding books, projects, etc....

Conference with other like minded teachers and set up a TLC group.

Talk to parents.

Talk to people making the news. Do an earth science unit on the Solar System and get Dr. Hawkings to video conference. How cool can that be? Get one of our Senators (I'd prefer Feinstein) on line. See if we can't get the Governator on line for 15 minutes. If you don't ask, you won't get for sure, but in this day and age I don't think that certain politicians would want to have it leaked out that being SO into education and modernization that they turned down meaningful chances to talk to students. Especially as a video conference would guarantee that time issues and security issues would be virtually nil.

Ultimately, this is the vid phone we have seen in science fiction for years. With the ability to do this on a laptop, you can literally put one in your bedroom, and have to remember NOT to turn on the light when you answer the call.

Was nice to see the presentations. Especially the first one on audio books. Her name escapes me, but I remember her as being very 'new' to computers and rather nervous about them. It's interesting to see that as "emerging technology" when the text book "Words Their Way" talks about tape recording books, and having k-2 students "read along" as well as for assisting ESL students. It is emerging technology, just the synergism represented was interesting. Especially the comments that the textbooks all have audio tapes available. For students whose fluency I would like to improve, I would wonder if one way to do that is to have them do audio tapes for books that lower grades use, as a community work/help project. And if there are any copyright issues - a) I don't care and b) don't want to know. Ignorance is bliss.

The video conferencing was nice. Only problem with it being on the same night as our covering video conferencing is that I feel that my thunder was stolen for my blog. See above. I think they made most, if not all the points that I made.


Seeing the final was informative. Based on the TLC, with two projects, not sure which way to go. Could do a vanilla PowerPoint then MovieWorks as a one-two punch. Or could do a PowerPoint and then a collaboration project. The idea is give a faculty the needed info, then push them to use and work together. Interesting thoughts either way.