Tag Archives: discoverE

Which webinar platform for online professional learning?

Posted on October 19, 2013 by | 2 comments

A recent question came up on our Oz Teachers mailing list re which webinar platform could be or should be used  for national online professional learning. Following is my response:-

One tool will rarely suit all scenarios. Many factors affect the choice. Teaching and living in a remote rural area of Victoria, I personally feel that it is important to choose a tool that is accessible for people who experience low bandwidth.

Some considerations when choosing a platform are as follows.  Does it allow:-

  • shared presentations
  • individual logins, number of logins
  • bandwidth  -ability to manually pull back bandwidth so anyone from anywhere can participate
  • ability to record sessions and share recording
  • interactivity from participants – chat, interactive whiteboard, polling, breakout rooms for small group discussions, sharing emoticons
  • ease of use and logging on
  • use chat, voice, video etc
  • ability to share screens
  • can files be sent through the medium?
  • Moderating abilities and potential need to control the participants
  • The use of any device – fixed devices, a variety of platforms, mobile devices etc
  • And is there a cost

Having used a variety of webinar platforms over the last 4 or 5 years, blackboard collaborate is still my favourite. I use it weekly for Tech Talk Tuesday webinars where participants from across all states and many countries of the globe, including Nepal and Indonesia, have attended. This  includes participants from state and government schools, community groups and government departments. There will be problems at times with sites being blocked in individual institutions, or proxy setting issues– all of which are fixable with technical support and permission

Webinar tools that I have used include-

Tools that are free, or have a free element :-

Tools that cost:

  • Blackboard Collaborate – Victorian Education Department has purchased a statewide license for teachers in both state and private schools to use for educational purposes: classes, online meetings and professional development.
  • DiscoverE – built specifically for low bandwidth areas
  • Adobe Connect etc
  • MS Lync: available for Victorian Educators to use with a Department of Education license

What platforms have you use? Which have you had issues with? Were they resolvesd? What do you look for as either a presenter of participant in online professional learning?

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Posted in online sessions, videoconferencing, web conferencing

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From Snow to Bushfires!

Posted on March 2, 2012 by | 1 comment
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Demonstrating the windows phone

Year 9/10 students were today treated to a live linkup using discoverE with two of Lorraine Leo’s students who were to share their school. Yesterday, it was snowing in Boston, (See it’s snowing outside) when another of her students, taught my grade 4/5 IT class to program with Scratch. Today, it was our turn for extremes. A bushfire was in progress south of our school. The CFA students (who train to become junior firefighters) were on the bus to Warrnambool to work with the Station in there. Unfortunately, they were turned back as the fire was out of control at that stage.

This made a great conversation piece to start our session with Boston. We could share the online link to the  CFA fire map where the fire was clearly marked. Fortunately, it was under control at that stage.

Again the engagement of students was evident. They like to be logged on to their own computers and be able to interact in the chat and ask questions. After receiving a pictorial presentation of their school, students asked questions of each other either in the chat or live on the microphone. One of the boys from Boston, quickly went downstairs to get his windows mobile phone to show us. One of my girls mentioned that we were now into autumn. The response back was “Oh, are you now in Fall!”.

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The final minutes were spent drawing on the whiteboard where students from across the globe drew their own pics of favourite technology in real time. Amazing! Thanks again Lorraine for your wonderful effort.

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Posted in global projects, web conferencing, webcasts

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Halloween – from a Virtual Student’s Point of View!

Posted on October 30, 2010 by | 3 comments
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Learning about Halloween virtually

Fridays continue to be ‘treat’ days for my year 9/10 ICT class. This one was no exception – the four students who had not gone on a class excursion were treated to a presentation by a young student from Boston, Jim, telling them about Halloween. This included how he, his family and friends celebrate Halloween. (Halloween is not big in Australia, and is virtually non-existent in our rural area).

Our last linkup with Lorraine Leo, had suffered from voice delays, and video lag. To see if the problem could be overcome, the video frame was made smaller and any images uploaded for the presentation, resized to a very small size. It was decided to connect again with discoverE and that Lorraine would talk to my students about Halloween. To our delight one of her  grade 6 students was our presenter. Jim spoke like a professional presenter, competently sharing images and telling us about:-

  • the origins and events of Halloween
  • how he celebrates Halloween
  • the role of pumpkins and how to carve them
  • the games that are played
  • some of the costumes etc
  • the tricks and treats (lots of candy, although we call them lollies!)

My students were able to ask him questions in the chat and he capably answered them as soon as they appeared. He used the video camera effectively to show us the implements used to carve the pumpkins, showed us some of the toys and props used for Halloween. He showed us his head costume and put it on etc What better way to learn about the festivals of other countries than from a resident and even better from a student! My students wrote a blog post reflecting on what they had learnt. Thanks Jim and to your family for helping with the presentation. It was 8:30pm when Jim presented and a Thursday night. For us, in Australia, it was 11:30am and Friday morning! Also thanks again to Lorraine Leo for sharing with us and organizing this.

nb The video and audio showed worked, with no time lag this time. Students were on desktops and I was still on wireless internet on my laptop.

When I went grocery shopping that night, I noticed that some Halloween costumes, pumpkin baskets, lights etc were on display and up for sale!

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On our supermarket shelves1

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Posted in global classroom, global schools, virtual classrooms

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Taking a laptop shopping

Posted on August 31, 2009 by | 1 comment
Gorgeous Indonesian batik dress

Gorgeous Indonesian batik dress

A cluster of small, rural Prep – year 12 schools has received a Country Education Project grant to research individualised learning. As part of this project, representatives from each of the schools, visited our school to view a presentation on how Hawkesdale P12 College connects, communicates and collaborates  to and with other classrooms and students, within Victoria and  across the globe.

To give realistic experiences I had organised for my dear efriend Lorraine Leo to speak to the group for 5-10 mins from Boston, USA.  Lorraine showed the group some photos of Boston and her classroom, using discoverE, the virtual classroom software. Some staff members came up to the library interactive white board to experiment with speaking live with the audio tools and using the whiteboard tools.  It was soon our morning tea break.

After morning tea, I had organized for Andrew Rogers from Beeac PS, a small rural school to linkup with us on MS Communicator. Unfortunately, we got as far as several text comments in the chat and then the server went down. However, as I spoke about skype and its use, I noticed that Endang from Indonesia was actually online. A quick another photo resizedmessage, revealed that she was prepared to talk to us. The video call linkup worked, and to our surprise, she was not at school, but at the batik markets in Pekalongan.  It was the first day of the ramadan, so there was no school.

So, we spent a pleasant 5 mins or so looking at the batik markets, the batik sellers, the activity on the street etc. That was rather special as it showed how teachable moments can occur. The rest of the morning was spent at looking at the other tools that can be used in both synchronous or asynchronous time for connecting, communicating and creating.

Learning outcomes

  1. Test, test and always test before going live with a group. (The group arrived 45 mins early, so I did not have time to test, and Lorraine’s photos did now display properly but ended up looking like a jigsaw puzzle, which could have been due to our connection)
  2. Make use of teachable moments, wherever possible. (eg Endang and her laptop)
  3. Ask my twitter colleagues, at the beginning to get them to say ‘hello, where they are from and what they see as benefits of twitter”. I asked at the end and of course, the long list that replied was not noted as it takes a while for people on twitter to respond.
  4. Know the software before you demonstrate. I have not used MS Communicator for some time, the new format is quite different and we had issues with the server.

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Posted in professional development

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Students in a global classroom

Posted on July 22, 2009 by | 1 comment

Three continents in one classroom

On Monday, 20th July, a large film crew and a senior officer from the International Division of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development visited the school to make a short video that will be placed on the Department’s website to show the evidence of internationalisation of education in Victoria. Our school was one of five schools chosen. The video will also be shown to international visitors to the Department in Melbourne.

One of the policy objectives is  “International Education has a vision that internationalising education becomes a reality in policy and practice in the daily life of Victorian schools, thereby preparing local and international students as citizens for active interaction in an interdependent globalised world.”

Two linkups were organised for that day – one with Mrs Lorraine Leo, a teacher from Jackson School, in Boston, USA and two of her students who were on holidays in their holiday cottages, but who came online at night time to help present “The celebrations conducted on July 4th in USA”. They walked us a through a series of photos and talked about their experiences on Independence Day celebrations. The second linkup was a doubtful one. Mr Rox Cosico and his grade 7 boys, from Claret of Quezon School were to speak on their school, traditions and sports. Our students were to respond with our school, traditions and sport.  However, a typhoon in Manila had closed their school for the four days prior and there was some doubt as to whether they would be able to participate.

However, true to form, they showed up and we were able to connect and work with each other. The American contingent stayed for this next class, as well. However, the fragility of their internet connection with the weather activity meant that our sound was poor. Their Claret school principal, assistant principal and head of department were in the room with us and the principal thanked us for connecting with them, and hoped that it would continue to provide improved learning outcomes for both countries. The linkup took place in the DiscoverE virtual classroom which is software developed by Mr Geoff Kaye in Perth WA. Despite being at a Literacy Teachers conference, he spent time with us in our classroom to ensure that all went well with the software. He emailed later to say that he quickly had a group of 20 teachers cluster around him fascinated by what we were doing. These teachers could not believe that what we were doing was even possible. Mr Kaye said “What you (all students and staff involved) did yesterday in an interactive learning experience across 3 continents involving young students  has never been done on this scale before.”

I would sincerely like to thank the year 7 and 8 students who participated, Mrs Lorraine Leo, Mr Rox Cosico, Mr Geoff Kaye, Marg M, Faye M and all others who helped in this mammoth effort.

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Posted in global schools, virtual classrooms

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Connections with a capital C

Posted on April 5, 2009 by | Leave a comment
Working in discoverE

Working in discoverE

Over the last 18 months of this e-journey, I have been so fortunate in making some wonderful connections. One really valuable e-colleague of mine is Lorraine Leo, who has some amazing connections.

My classes have benefited so much. One of my aims this year is to try and give students the chance to work ‘one on one’ with students across the globe, or at least in small groups. It was also one of Lorraine’s, so on Monday, one of our grade 6 students logged onto discoverE virtual classroom software to join two students from China, one from Bangkok, Thailand and one from Boston, USA. This small group met with Lorraine and Geoff an optician. Geoff spoke to the students about the eye, using a presentation in the discoverE room. The whiteboard allowed sketches to be added. When questions were asked,  students responded via the chat. How fortunate are we, in a small country school to be able to connect to experts like this.

DiscoverE loads quickly at our school as it has been developed to operate over a slower broadband network. By pressing the CTRL key, a particpant can talk to the class with a video of their image, projected onto the monitor.

Read simmo’s post on this activity. 21st century education certainly has exciting prospects!

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Posted in 21st century education, virtual classrooms

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Global collaboration in a Web2.0 world

Posted on March 22, 2009 by | 4 comments

This post is in response to a request by Sue Waters “Can you help me demonstrate global collaboration in a web2.0 world.?” The questions are stated and my responses shown below each question.

What are some of the global collaboration projects you have been involved with? Can you include the approximate grade/year level of your students? 

 My classes have been involved in many, many global projects so I will name a few:-

 Why did you become involved in these projects and what were some of the benefits to your students?

Being a firm believer in project based learning, I love using global projects with my students and they also love to work on them. The learning outcomes can be amazing. My school is a small rural school from prep to year 12. They are white Caucasian and have limited social networks. Class sizes are small and often limited to one group at each year level. Now, they have class mates around the world. They work beyond their classroom walls. Risk taking, pushing beyond boundaries, an authentic audience encourages best practise, students want their work to look good, be spelt correctly etc. They learn digital citizenship, cyber safety and many important 21st century skills. It leads to many valuable teachable moments and allows student directed learning. Tolerance, respect for and information about different cultures.

Then Vendee Globe project took our whole school to Antarctica, via discoverE software, to speak with Jean Pennycook and learn of her work with Adele penguins. The flatclassroom project enabled three students and myself to attend the flatclassroomconference in Doha, Qatar in Jan 2009. Read the report.

The benefits to me as a teacher are as for the students, plus it gives me a chance to work with and learn from some of the most amazing educators, who lead in the web2.0 field, in the world.

What were the main web tools used to manage the projects?

The web tools have varied with the projects but include some or all of the following:-

  • Email
  • Google groups for communications and sharing of files
  • Google docs including forms and sheet
  • Wikis
  • Nings for social networking
  • Skype and skype groups
  •  Elluminate for virtual classrooms, staff meetings and staff and student summits
  • DiscoverE for virtual classroom
  • Timebridge for ease in organizing global meetings across the time zones
  • Liveblogging with coveritlive for moderated, safe chat, sharing of photos, music etc 

 What tips/advice would you give others to ensure that these projects run smoothly? 

  • Start with small, short projects
  • Communication is of prime importance
  • Commitment and dedication are essential
  • Get to know the other staff prior to and throughout the project, to gain confidence in each other
  • Do not be frightened to ask for help or ask questions of any nature.
  • Be prepared to work hard (as hard as you may have ever worked in your life) and take risks
  • Work your blogs to the fullest giving step by step instructions to classes where possible for each lesson to clarify the tasks that need to be done in your own mind and also for student reference.
  • Give out check list sheets to ensure that students remain on track
  • Enjoy the journey into the best that 21st century learning can give.

  Also can you recommend projects that you haven’t been involved with but are good examples of collaboration done well?  I would really love some examples from higher education.

 No, I have no knowledge of any tertiary or higher education, even with my involvement in groups on LinkedIn.

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Posted in global projects

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Where to in 2009?

Posted on March 9, 2009 by | Leave a comment

As we enter the third month of 2009 and the sixth week back at school, it is time that I publish my goals and possible directions for 2009. Although I have thought long about them, I need to add them on to my blog, so that I can reflect back and evaluate my progress.

My goals for 2009

  • Constantly develop and encourage the integration and successful use of  emerging technologies for use in classrooms and across our school.
  • To continue to actively seek local and global connections and work on global projects wherever possible. (Project based learning)
  • Maintain the valuable links and connections that were made in 2008.
  • To foster the notion that students  use their blogs in all subjects.  Blogs will become journals of  progess, for reflective purposes, a personal filing cabinet for all resources, evidence for digital or e-portfolios and that students voluntarily use their blogs.
  • Integrate web2.0 tools as much as possible in my subject areas other than information and communications technology eg accounting and VCE IT subjects.
  • Increasingly use teachable moments, by leaving skype open on my laptop, whenever possible, to make the most of experts who might appear and share experiences with my students.
  • Experiment with the use a backchannel for class discussions etc eg chatzy, tiny chat
  • Look at using virtual classroom software for my own classes eg elluminate for my VCE students where  I teach two year levels as  one class in 2009.  
  • Use DiscoverE  software on an increasing basis this year.
  • Actively seek out expert speakers who might talk to the students through virtual classroom software.
  • Look at and experiment with students on a one to one basis, with other global students – particularly in relation to mandarin Chinese which is our LOTE.
  • Work with my subject associations, encouraging the use of appropriate web2.0 tools.
  • Experiment with synchronous and asynchronous linkups with other countries.

Other educationalist’s goals of interest

See glassbleed’s direction for customized learning.

Specific Ideas as they come to hand

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A virtual school becomes evident

Posted on December 11, 2008 by | 5 comments
Jean Pennycook amongst her beloved penguins

Jean Pennycook amongst her beloved penguins

A penguin egg hatching

A penguin egg hatching

Today bore witness to the start of a virtual or web2.0 school. Jess McCulloch and I had teacher professional leave this year to lay the eplanks in web2.0 or virtual school. This would have to be one of the highlights of this project.

My valuable contact from Boston, Lorraine Leo connected us to Jean Pennycook, living in a tent, in Antarctica for a webcast. To ensure all went well, a backup date and time had been pre-arranged. Our primary teachers, (now there was a real purpose to use virtual classroom software, discoverE)  rather nervously entered the virtual classroom yesterday to test the sound and gain confidence in the use of the classroom. Three year 9 girls acted as the technicians (students became experts) and supported the staff. This procedure went well and full credit to the staff for their quick acceptance of this software as they had not been exposed to it before. It was agreed for management purposes that most classes remain in their own rooms and log on as their class name. However, prep/one/two were combined and the secondary students were combined in the library (years7-9)

This morning we held an early recess and logged everyone on to their discoverE  classrooms. One staff member who was absent yesterday was required to respond to Lorraine in Boston but came to me and said she had no idea how to talk or chat to her. Imagaine my surprise when at recess we were testing the sound with Lorraine and this teacher took over with utter confidence and performed the tests. After some internal gliches, we were so pleased to hear Jean Pennycook  online with perfect audio transmission. Jean talked about the penguins and her research with them. Lorraine and Jean had prepared a presentation of slides with some wonderful photos.

Reflecting back, the eplanks of a virtual school were in evidence by the following factors:-

  • students as experts (year 9 girls became the experts on sound checks, software management etc and worked with Lorraine in Boston)
  • teachers from Taiwan, Adelaide, Sth America, USA were in the classroom (global teachers)
  • several students were in their homes in the USA listening and particpating (global students)
  • Geoff the software developer from Perth was in there (virtual team involving all aspects of the linkup)
  • every class and student at Hawkesdale P12 College from 5 year olds through to 15 year olds – a broad age group whom Jean managed to keep captivated for more than 1 hour (virtual school)
  • the vast majority of our staff (including those who were not timetabled for this timeslot) were in one of the virtual classrooms.
  • each class was a virtual classroom with teachers confidently managing audio and chat questions.
  • The chat moved furiously and fast with lots of questions from all year levels. Time was allowed for our students and the global students to ask questions using the microphone.
  • Jean allowed self directed student learning to occur, in that she paused to answer the student questions, rather than always speak to the slides. The students had some great questions that not only related to the penguins but to her life and experiences in Antarctica etc (student directed learning)
  • Parents came in to our classrooms and also listened to the webcast (parents as partnerships).

A huge thank you to all concerned for this wonderful 21st century educational experience.

Listen to the recording of the webcast and read some of our other staff’ posts

grade-5-and-5-in-their-virtual-classroom1

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Posted in eplanks, virtual classrooms, webcasts

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A day in the life of a 6th grader – cross continents

Posted on December 5, 2008 by | 1 comment

What an exciting day we had today! There were three proposed linkups for videoconferencing and virtual classroom work.

This post will cover the first linkup in the virtual  discoverE classroom with Lorraine Leo and three of her grade 6 students from Jackson School, Newton, MA. These  plucky young students were in their homes linking with us via microphone and web cams and their teacher. We had set up a shared powerpoint presentation with photos relating to our schools and work. Lorraine set it up and called it a day in the life of a 6th grader.

The slides shared covered the following topics:-

  • our location
  • our school
  • our classroom
  • our subjects
  • our specials
  • school calendar

Students took it in turns to speak to the photographs. Our students also tried to demonstrate some of their subjects with a show and tell type activity using the web cam. They showed some of the science equipment, sports equipment and maths items used.

Over the time, the confidence in student speaking improved and they relaxed starting to ask each other questions on a more informal basis. The chat area was not used as most of the parties involved were intent on listening to the presenters. What a great taste of virtual classrooms and 21st century education. Thank you to Lorraine and her students.

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