LenMullen
Joined: 04 Nov 2008
Posts: 321
Location: Danville, NH
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 Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 10:17 am Post subject: We Didn't Participate -- We Just Watched |
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I stumbled across this TRSD promotional video this morning and thought you might want to take a peak. We spend a lot of money on technology and most people do not know what we are getting for our money. I'm not a huge fan of video conferencing. I think 99% of the value of this can be achieved with inexpensive PCs and freely available chat services. TRSD disagrees.
Here are TRSD testimonials on the wonder of video conferencing. Mr. Strange talks about how the technology prepares the kids for the annual 'field trip' to Hawaii. There are great books on Hawaii. The kids share their opinions on books they have read with kids from other schools using this technology. I think kids would benefit more from a pen pal program where the kids shared book reports via email.
This technology may have a place in our schools, but I can't think of one application where an alternative would not be more educational or less expensive.
Let's see if we can come up with a list of video conference opportunities without peer.
One that comes to mind is support of students who have difficulty coming to or performing in a classroom.
Another is to extend classrooms to home schoolers. These people pay full freight to the district and get nothing in return. Wouldn't be great if they could watch or participate in experiences that would supplement their curriculum?
Compare to what TRSD is doing...
Talk with kids in Texas about mailing butterfly finger puppets from one school to another when the butterflies would be migrating. A better project would had the kids plot the migration of the butterflies on a map, predict the arrival of the butterflies at different points on the path, contact schools along the migration path and ask them to report the arrival of the butterflies, and note the weather conditions here and at their location as the butterflies migrate. They could share pictures and videos. This would help the kids understand the reason for the migration and how it works.
Field trip to the Barrier Reef in Austrailia. No doubt this would be better experienced as an IMAX presentation in the PAC -- $13.49. Do this on a Friday night and have the kids do related work in the classrooms -- invite parents and home schoolers.
I like the idea of having authors and other celebrities 'in the classroom' but this is not feasible. Much easier to send someone to the visitor with a laptop with a camera and use one of the freely available IM chat tools. Do you Yahoo?
Connecting to a Virginia museum to learn about native americans would also seem suboptimal how about some PBS presentations or Annenberg programming in the PAC? Both are FREE.
Video Transition Conference for kids moving up to the middle school. I think the kids would learn more about the middle school by watching live classrooms. I've always thought the transition activities were a waste of time -- list teaching days for the kids coming up and the classes they are disrupting.
The kids attended a nanotechnology conference, "The students found that interesting because they weren't really sure what the word meant." Would the kids learn more about nanotechnology from listening to someone define the word or from something like this? It's actually a pretty interesting video. Take 11 minutes out of your day for a little FREE distance learning.
Mr. Strange has been learning about Native Hawaiians for nineteen years.
I think it's time to crack a book. IMAX Hidden Hawaii is on ebay for $0.99.
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"I've been teaching here for 20 years so please don't assume that kids can add, subtract, multiply and divide integers without problems. Especially subtraction, as I found that many have trouble with." TRMS Math Teacher |
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