This week was the best yet for Skypeing Celest into class. Last week she Skyped-in a total of maybe an hour and a half (there are other issues besides leukemia I can’t share – think poverty and ALL that goes with that). But this week she spent all day Monday with us and almost all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday was Valentine’s Day, Celest had sent hers in with her little sister, so as we passed them out students made a pile in front of her on the computer and we turned the camera around so she could see the goings on. A student from her table group read a few of them to her, then we sent the rest home unopened with sis at the end of the day.

Three days a week is going to be our schedule I think – she gets chemo on Thursdays and that wipes her out for Friday, so that’s going to probably be the norm. She hangs in pretty well with us unless she needs extra attention – that is sometimes difficult because of sound issues. I might have to get her headphones with a built in microphone – background noises at her house often lock-up the sound intermittently – that and the inconsistency at times of our connection. Sometimes we lose her about every 20 minutes or so – the students in her table group just seamlessly reconnect (takes about 10 – 30 seconds) and we just keep going. I do sometimes help her with things while the rest are at recess.

I mentioned in an earlier post that local TV news came and did a story about what we are doing – the one day that the connection was horrible of course – I did give them a copy of our vidcast on digital tape, so it will be interesting to see if they use any of the scenes from our video. They are broadcasting the story Tuesday night. They have given me permission to record and stream from our web site so I’ll let you know when that is available.

This week we will only see her Tuesday and Wednesday because of the holiday and next week we have CRT testing all week – but then most of our testing is done.

I shared with the class many of your comments from our video post – I really had to work hard to impress on them just how important and groundbreaking and just generally cool what they are involved in is. They get it to a point, but this is becoming just one of the things we do, kind of a regular part of the day after three weeks – so they’ve “been there done that.” When my class four years ago made such an impact with our “Don’t Laugh At Me” video, that class got tired of the attention they received. Someone would come to give them “another award” and I would have to talk to them for 20 minutes or more before the presentation about being gracious recipients. I guess it’s a fourth grade thing?

Many have asked me to post updates like this one from time to time and I will.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 10:46 am and is filed under Change, Digital Video, Education, Inclusion, Skypecast, Student Access, Technology, Video Skype. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.