Category Archives: Video Skype

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Home Sweet Home

I got word today that Celest is home much earlier than expected from her hospital stay out of town and feeling good. I’ll report back when she makes it back to class (via Skype). We haven’t seen her in about a month.

My school district is re-doing the attendance boundaries of the schools here because they have gotten out of whack because we are growing so fast. Where Celest lives is one of the areas that have been moved out of my school’s area – she is zoned for a different school and we have been told we cannot take “variances” which allow students to attend a school they are not zoned for. However they are willing to make an exception in Celest’s case because we offer her services she is not apt to receive at her zoned school. Since I’m rolling this class next year to fifth grade she could still be in my class and we could still Skype her in. That’s the good news. Now we just have to get the right people to fill out the right paperwork to make that happen.

Zoning is messy!

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A Hit and a Miss

I finished the last of four  4 hour classes I taught on Flickr, blogs, wikis, writingfix.com, digital video, TeacherTube and Skype (and a few other things) last night. To demo Skype I made a connection with Chrissy in New Zealand. I had never met Chrissy or been to her blog, but she was the first to answer my request. What a way to make my point of how easy using Skype is. I typed in her Skype name, clicked on it and 10 seconds later there she was along with her class. She announce that she was from our future since it was 11:30 Wednesday for her and 4:30 Tuesday for us. She shared how she uses Skype with her students – making connections with other classes in other places and that was it. Just simply cool. I sent her a thank you email and expressed the hope that we could possibly have our students work on something together, especially since the time zones make that possible.

On the other hand, I was supposed to join the WOW2 usual Tuesday night chat to demo how that works by having Cheryl Oakes, Jennifer Wagner, Sharon Peters, & Vicki Davis respond to a question or two. I entered the chat just fine but every time I tried to listen in I was knocked off their site … I’ve been on before … from home, no problem. I was running late and didn’t have time to problem solve for long – so I apologize if I disrupted things there : ( – Dang and my track record was doing so well too.

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Video Skype Demo Tuesday Anyone???

Tuesday evening from 4:00pm to 7:30 pm Pacific Daylight Time I’ll be teaching the last of four sessions of a class called: I Want to Integrate Writing, Technology and Field Experiences Into A Crammed Curriculum. How? to 17 K-12 teachers. The night’s topics are TeacherTube, digital video and Skype/conferencing software. I’d like to be able to do a demo of Video Skype but my usual helpers are not available. Is there anyone able to join us for just 1 to 3 minutes? Intro yourself, tell about how you use video conferencing, other ways you see value in using it. If you think you can help out leave a comment with your Skype name and email address and when you are available (I’m looking at between 4:15 and 5:45 PDT) I’ll get back to you ASAP.

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Inclusion Update 4-25-07

I’m afraid this week’s update is not good news. Celest has been sick from her Chemo for weeks and that has developed into an infection that has progressed to the point that she was airlifted to a San Francisco Bay Area Children’s Hospital that specializes in treating leukemia last week. Now we hear that she will probably be there for a month … at least. This is a potentially life threatening infection. She has had this happen before and come out OK. Please keep her in your prayers.

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Maybe My Class Is Doing The $100 Laptop Pilot For The US

Will Richardson and Chris Lehmann have posts today about the $100 laptop program in Nigeria. I commented on Will’s blog that it reminded me a lot of what and why I’m doing a pilot 1:1 program in my own classroom with 7 year old iBook computers. The screens are small and the screen resolution is even smaller and the CD player covers fall off occasionally, and they’re not “wicked fast” – but we are using wikis, Skype, Flickr, blogs, and much more. And actually we probably have a lot in common – 90% of my students receive free and reduced price lunch, few have access to technology at home, and the laptops we are using probably aren’t worth much more than $100.

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See any parrallels here? Hmmm … do you think they have access to Skype? What’s the time difference between Nigeria and Reno?

We have all lamented and wondered when the US will see the light and begin to implement 21st century tools in education at a much higher level than we do presently. I wonder if this program in Nigeria just might help us here. If the $100 laptop initiative begins to take off and the media covers 3rd world children using 21st century tools in meaningful ways, maybe, just maybe, people in this country will wake up and notice that it is not happening here and that will be the catalyst to jump start us on our way.

Learning is messy!

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Send Celest A “Cyber Get Well Card”

Celest has not been feeling well for weeks now. The doctors have changed her chemo and apparently it is not sitting well with her. Thusly we have not had her “join” us via Skype on a very consistent basis lately : (

We decided today to send Celest a kind of “Cyber” get well card – so most of the class managed to post a “feel better” comment to her lone blog post. They think it would be helpful if as many people as possible would also leave comments – so if you can leave her a short “get well” comment and/or a word of encouragement and tell her where you are commenting from It would be appreciated. You can read the comments her classmates left her so far also.

We have been blogging and commenting quite a bit this week also, so check out some of the other students’ posts as well if you have the time.

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Skype Web Site Blocked – But Not Skype – I Can’t Wait To Find Out Why!

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Last week part of each my 3 presentations at The Nevada Education Technology Leadership Conference was about Skype audio and video-conferencing. So this week I got emails from a teacher in my district wondering how I bypassed school district filters to use it. To make a long story short what I eventually realized was that the Skype web site is blocked by the school district (it wasn’t as late as January the last time I downloaded Skype to a computer at school) but using Skype is not blocked. If you already have the software installed you can get out – no problem. So I just found the teacher an alternate site to download the software – but I haven’t heard back yet to see if she has been successful.

We tried to figure out why access to the Skype web site would be blocked. The only idea we had was that IT is afraid of the impact of having “too many” teachers Skypeing (whatever that threshold is).

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Nevada Education Technology Leadership Conference

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Update 2-28 / 10:30pm
Link to my conference Wiki.

This weekend is our state technology conference. Ian Jukes is the keynote speaker Saturday. From the conference website:

The theme of this year’s conference, Technology: The Great Connector , suggests the wide range of influence technology has on learning. Sessions and workshops will reflect this. Topics will include –
Connecting to Curriculum: student use of technology in design: robotics, art, buildings; integration of technology resources into classroom activity
Connecting to Leadership: preventing student plagiarism (defining it and preventing it through use of online websites such as turnitin.com), implementation of technology plans; becoming “highly qualified”
Connecting to Creativity: student productions (yearbook, newspaper, etc), innovative uses of PowerPoint, ActivBoards, and other tools.
Connecting to Each Other: blogging, using online resources such as think.com

I’m doing 2 presentations – a 60 minute presentation Saturday called “Tales From A Model Technology Classroom” (the classroom is a model – we might get there later). And Sunday I’m doing 2 hours on “Blogging and Other Web 2.0 Goodies.” I’m hoping to have a wiki for both presentations done in the next few days.

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The Inclusion Story Continues

Even though she doesn’t want any of the credit Wendy Damonte co-anchor from KTVN Channel 2 who reports this story made the contact with Renown Health that got Celest an iMac computer. The Children in Transition Program of Washoe County, Nevada, used grant money to pay the monthly fee for the high speed internet connection at Celest’s house – and AT&T installed an extra phone line in her house and installed the DSL for free. Click the photo below to see the newscast streamed. Click here to see a higher quality download. With permission From KTVN Channel 2 Reno, Nevada.

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Inclusion Update 2-19-07

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.