Stop, Collaborate and Listen

(I recently attended the SC Ed Tech 2013 Conference. One of the great reasons I like this conference is that it is in my town so I don’t have to pay for a hotel! The other reason is that I connect with so many other educators. I always pick up something new from a session and if I don’t learn something new, I’m always looking at how the material is presented in order to hone my own presentation skills. For the next few days I plan on sharing the notes that I took from the sessions.)

Stop, collaborate and listen -classroom videoconference projects by Tim van Heule

How could the use of videoconferencing impact the classroom?

Virtual field trip
Museum
Zoos
NASA
Museum of London
$75-$150
Australian aquarium -$400

Classroom projects
Talk about novels with classes in other areas
Watch time zones
Red is awful on camera, so are stripes,
Holding stuff in front of camera is hard
Look at equipment
Evaluation rubric: How will you explain it to admin and parents?

Examples:
New Jersey day – Learn about SC
Spanish Harlem kids riding the subway
Wyoming
Calving season in Nebraska -snow season, riding yellow suburban Fork shoals elem. taught the civil war in 12 min.
Magpi video center
Project with Gov. School
Science lab -teaching through video
Custom lessons - how to make a shoebox fly. Do it and present back to the NASA person.
Greenville zoo – need to contact 6 weeks in advance
Buena Vista elem. research an animal from the zoo, speaker, present back to zookeeper, custom pricing

Places online to look for projects:
Skype education
Click
Read around the planet

My Takeaway:

Students learn so much more when they are interacting with real people. Rather than just learning the concepts through textbooks, let them connect and learn from others who are live in the areas they are studying or actually do the things they are learning about.

Do you connect with others virtually? Please share how you do.

Image: 'connect' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96043139@N00/2628074710
Found on flickrcc.net