Concetta Gotlieb's blog
Video Conference Reflection: Student Led Conferences
Today was the first day of the Speak My Language video conference series. The conference as I've discussed on my blog before is designed by students for students.
I think overwhelmingly it was a really good day and an amazing learning experience. There are so many things to explore and think about these video conferences when done in the right way cover so many learning outcomes in such an authentic way. For example distance, place, identity, talking and listening and of course the topics included in the conference. The four key things I've taken away from today are:
- Buzz created - teachers and students are talking about what could be
- Context - we need a way to provide a bit of background about all the schools that are participating
- Kids love asking questions - we need to think about dynamic learning spaces that manage this
- Follow-up - people want to get involved - we need to ensure we are clear about the next steps
Aims of the conference:
- To expose teachers and students to their first ever VC experience
- To expose teachers to the possibilities of using their Connected Classroom in their program
- To allow students to talk about video conferencing projects they are involved in
- To allow students to talk about other interesting ways they use technology in their classrooms
The speakers:
- All did a excellent job especially considering it was the first time they had used the VC and many had very large audiences.
- Spent a number of sessions creating presentations and practicing their skills in using the VC.
- All seem to have learnt a lot from discussing what a video conference is and how they can be used.
- All enjoyed practicing their presentations with other schools.
- Presented on a variety of topics (today we heard about: breakthrough technology eg special satellites, planting Indigenous gardens, using video conference equipment to tell Indigenous stories)
- The Indigenous garden & storytelling sessions were very very popular 10 schools or more in each. That's a lot of students. Perhaps we can run these sessions again, but we will need to think about how we use these excellent resources wisely.
The participants:
- Were very interested in the other schools.
- Came up with very clever questions.
- Sometimes didn't realise they were on camera and didn't behave as well as they could.
- Talked with me about the projects they had heard about outside of the classroom.
- Want to do more with the VC and are going back to the classroom to talk about it some more.
- Were a bit frustrated by the number of schools participating because they didn't get much of a chance to speak, or it was difficult to compete for airtime.
- Had lots of questions we didn't have time to answer because there were so many questions from the schools.
- Some thought the content wasn't exactly what they were after and that the schools could have provided more examples of things like letting them listen to one of the Indigenous stories.
The organisation:
- Providing a roll call notebook where the schools moved their school name from the 'attending' column to the 'present' column was a great use of the video conference & IWB. Next time we will just have 1 slide for this because participants tend to want to look through the slides themselves & this can be a bit confusing.
- Providing the 'next steps' was difficult for two reasons a) because at the end of the conference everyone gets a bit restless and wants to leave b) because we didn't provide clear information about where to go for more information. I think we need to provide a webpage with links, the presentation uploaded and directions for participating. This link needs to be provided upfront so that schools understand that they can get involved & they listen for 'how to be involved'.
- We didn't have a Google map organised or build in much time for talking about the locations of the schools involved. I think for lots of students this would have helped them understand the purpose of the video conferencing equipment.
- Because we are not inside most of the classrooms the follow-up - what could be stuff was a bit lost. At mum's school they are having a few discussions over the next week or so about how they can apply the knowledge from the session they attended, what feedback they have about creating video conferences and also what kinds of conferences they would like to see in the future. However this is a process, not an event and we need to work out an ongoing way of communicating and sharing information from these types of sessions.
- We should investigate the Student Response Network as a way of interacting using the IWB because I have a feeling it sits above the desktop sharing.
Tags:
student content
macict
connected classroom
video conference
Posted at 07:06PM Jun 23, 2009
by Concetta Gotlieb |
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Posted by Debbie Evans on June 24, 2009 at 09:40 PM CST #
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