Category Archives: Inclusion

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Youthbridges Audio Skype Interview Experience Podcast

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Ten days ago we had the opportunity to link up for an interview with the 8th grade students in Lee Baber’s class at YouthBridges in Virginia. The participants included Lee’s class, my class in Sparks, Nevada – Elderbob Brannan in Texas, and Celest (a student in my class that has leukemia and attends class via video Skype) from her house. We were scheduled to begin at 9:30am Pacific time, but everytime we all got on … the Skype call dropped. Lee finally figured out that it happened every time Celest Skyped in – so she just Skype called her – I got her Celest’s phone number and Lee called it using Skype – problem solved. This was not terribly interesting for my students – but was a great lesson for them how things don’t work and you problem solve (or at least try) and just maybe you get things to work. Elderbob has posted the interview as a podcast if you’d like to hear it.

Update: Lee Baber has posted the podcast at YouthBridges too.
Lee’s students had written questions and sent them to us days before the interview so that my students could consider answers beforehand. This should have worked well, and it did, just not in the way I expected. Most of my students are second language learners and one of the things we have REALLY been working on is understanding a question before you try to answer it – ask about what you don’t understand. My students did not do a good job of this and they realized this after the interview when we de-briefed about it. They felt the questions were hard to understand – and I asked them why they didn’t notice that beforehand … they finally realized it was because they didn’t think about the questions deeply enough when we went over them in class and it wasn’t obvious to them until afterwards when they knew they had had difficulties answering them.

This is true “Messy” learning. Now I can remind them and “beat them over the head” with what happened and they will have the schema to know what I am referring to and hopefully become better thinkers – and this is just about as important a skill as I can think of – being aware of what I know and don’t know which is such a common issue with elementary students and even more so with kids of poverty and second language learners like my students. They will also be able to notice themselves that they have improved and that awareness is key. Lee and I have already talked about another possible Skype discussion and I hope we really mange to follow through so my students (and hers) can use what they learned from this experience.

Elderbob’s audio recording will be something we can go back to as a benchmark – what was good and what wasn’t. We already have reaped the benefits of this experience. We have been working for quite awhile on stories about being our shoes for an entire day. This week we read them aloud to the class and we reminded ourselves about how much easier it is to listen and enjoy an oral presentation when it is read with feeling. They did a great job.

We’d like to thank Lee and her students at Hillyard Middle School and Elederbob Brannan for getting us together.

I am posting below the debrief notes my class recorded immediately after the interview:

What was hard?

Set-up took a long time – tech issues. Made it boring at first.

Hard to hear.

We were just sitting and listening.

Not that many questions and the questions were hard to understand.

Too long between questions – dead air

What went well?

The Youthbridges students got it to work!Lots of students got to say something.

New way to use Skype – more than one person.

Got to talk about something good we have done.

We got to learn about other people in other states.

The experience of getting to talk to people we don’t know.

Felt like people were interested in something we had to say.

What could we do to improve the experience?

Work on giving more detailed answers, more articulate – explain more. People will find that more interesting to listen to.

Be more willing to answer – just try.

Speak-up – talk louder.

Think more about the questions and ask about what we don’t understand – ask for clarification. Give more thoughtful answers. This would make it less boring – be active thinkers/learners.

Have a better way to get students to the microphone more quickly.

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From The Mouths of Babes – Our Contribution To Stop Cyberbullying Day

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Click photo to see video “Don’t Laugh At Me”

Four years ago my class of fourth graders was struggling. After almost every recess there was anger and tears about teasing and exclusion from games. We spent too much time in class dealing with these issues (at least too much time during that early era of test prep fever). We had been using the curriculum we had downloaded from Peter Yarrow’s – Don’t Laugh At Me web site, so they had seen the video that came with that. They felt they could do a better job and work on getting along with each other at the same time … so we did. We read Crow Boy and The Brand New Kid and others. We wrote every line from the song on separate pieces of chart paper and taped them up around the room. We discussed what each line and word meant, and brainstormed in small groups and then whole class how to act out each line.

Next, each group was randomly assigned a line to act out. They had to decide who in their group would act out each part, decide on props and location and repeatedly act it out for the rest of the class to be critiqued. We learned the song, because we were going to record ourselves singing it – but the students did not like how it was going. Someone suggested we just use the recording of Peter Yarrow singing it – that led to a discussion of copyright law (since they wanted it posted on the internet) and how artists don’t own the rights to their own music. They asked me what it would hurt to ask … so I emailed Peter’s representative … and to make a long story short the next day we heard back that we had permission if Peter could see it first.

We shot the video – while still doing other activities to work out our “issues” – and sent a VHS copy to New York. Several weeks later we heard back that Peter had shown it at a conference in Atlanta and it had brought him to tears (he later recounted that story with the class over a conference call). When Apple Computer wanted to use it we had to get permission from the song writers – Steve Seskin and Sony Records signed off as did Allen Shamblin and his record company (later that spring Steve Seskin visited our school and sang to the school and came to my classroom for a short discussion with my class).

I have no idea how many times our video has been viewed, but over the years I have sent copies to schools and libraries in 20 states, Korea the Phillipines and The Discovery Channel.

So did our bullying problems disappear as a result? Yes … er no … well both. They got tremendously better and when we had a bad spate of attitude, even when they were in my sixth grade class … the video would always come up and we would end up talking about why we made it and much more often than not the air would be cleared and we would have at least a a day or so of attitude adjustment.

I see some of these students from time to time (they are now eighth graders) and they always ask if the video is still online or tell me about seeing it recently.

One of my best memories however was that any time we would show the video in class … even when they were big, hormone-ized, attitudinal sixth graders – about 2 bars into the song – it would start out low and then build to a sing-a-long – the class would sing and when the video faded out it would be quiet and faint smiles to grins would illuminate most faces in the room.

When this class was in fifth grade (I rolled with them to fifth and then sixth) our local PBS station asked us to make a 60 second public service announcement about racial diversity – here is a link to “Being Different Is A Solution, Not A Problem.”

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TeacherTube, Free, Easy To Use … But Is It Blocked?

Thanks to Vicki Davis and David Warlick I tried TeacherTube by uploading our “Inclusion” video there. It was viewed 30 times in about 30 minutes. As so many Web 2.0 applications it is free, easy to sign-up for, easy to use … but … is it blocked by my school district? Since it’s Saturday I’ll find out tomorrow or Monday.

Update 3-25 – I’m at school right now … and the answer is … IT’S NOT BLOCKED!!!

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Just Passed 30,000 Views and Downloads of “Inclusion” Video

I don’t check my blog statistics very often, but after seeing some recent numbers on downloads of some popular videos – like Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know” (2 million + views) – I looked up the stats on our “Inclusion” video – which is only available on my school’s web site (and there isn’t even a link on our web site yet – barely a web site, more like “a presence” – it just lives on that server – the only link so far is from this blog) – I was amazed to see it had passed 30,000 views and downloads. The last time I looked it was about 18,000. Our district’s ed tech coordinator saw me at the Nevada State Educational Technology Conference and suggested I post it on YouTube – but I don’t really have permission to do that.

I send a release home each year with my students, but the accompanying letter does not include YouTube as a possible place I might post student work. Maybe I need to change my letter. Or maybe … ?

Update 3-24-07: Via Vicki Davis and David Warlick – TeacherTube looks like a more apropo venue for our video.

Update #2 – 3-24 – OK I posted “Inclusion” to TeacherTube here is the link.

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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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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.

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Be Prepared???

Usually when I’m going to present I spend lots of time preparing and still feel like I could have spent more time and then it would have been even better. So it is ironic that Friday, when I was asked to present to my staff about more things they could do with their digital cameras and introduce wikis and some math and language activities, I had just come off 2 days that did not lend themselves well to being prepared … and so I wasn’t comfortably prepared. I had a handout with links for the things I would show them, but during recess and lunch I used up the little last minute time I had to prep, switching computers that I would present from (my overused Mac is being fixed) – meaning I would use my classroom HP – I’m not as “at home” with Windows machines so that also put me at a bit of a disadvantage. And yet the presentation was very well received and mostly came off without a hitch.

Most of the staff at my school hadn’t seen our “Inclusion” video yet, so we started off with that. They loved Fd’s Flickr Toys – and the writing ideas I had to go along with them. I made several examples before their eyes and then showed them the examples I was working on when I took my header. And then I quickly introduced them to Wiki’s – only a few had heard of them before, so I explained basically what they are and then used a new Wiki I’ve just started to put together to have them try out Wiki’s and the online math and language software they were asking about. We passed out laptops and had them try things out … and my 45 minutes were up. I had many share with me how they saw using the resources I’d shared in their classrooms right away.

HMMM, maybe I should under-prepare more often.

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“Magazine Cover” from software available at: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

This provided the brief comedic break during my presentation. Actually my daughters from a trip to Yellowstone National Park 2 years ago.

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Update and Thanks!

Well, to say the least we’ve had quite the response to our Skype and video projects! Thanks to all that have commented and showed such great support of what we are trying to do. I was especially intrigued for another reason by this comment:

AprilMJ Says:

You’ve made a convert. Being a district admin, I am initially cautious of new technologies that may tax an already overextended system… but you’ve proven that the cost is far outweighed by the benefits.

Congrats. You’ve touched more than one life.

It has only been 2 weeks, and we have only managed to Skype less than half that time – partly because we are in a heavy assessment period (11 days of testing in a less than a 30 day period) and for other reasons too – some technical, some medical. There is definitely a learning curve for all involved.

Videoconferencing works really well for certain types of lessons – brainstorming for writing (which was our first activity on the first day) works well for example – and Celest seems to be able to follow along pretty well in math – I use several web sites to have students practice multiplication facts and she is able to be just one of the students in class when we do that also. Other types of lessons we will have to work out how best to include her. I really want to try involving her in group discussions for example – and I think we can get her in music class too – the music room might be close enough to one of our wireless hubs that I can carry the laptop and web cam in so she can sing along – the music teacher is game, so we will give it a try.

The iMac computer she is using has a built-in iSight camera which I’m finding out might be a disadvantage. I can move the USB connected web cam we have in class around to show her things – even the screen on the laptop we use if necessary,  – it would be nice if she could show me what she is doing sometimes to either troubleshoot an application issue she is having or so I could see her writing as she is doing it – but that built-in camera doesn’t lend itself well to that.

My school district’s bandwidth is barely adequate so we have periods where she comes in loud and clear and times when the sound drops out a lot. Of course Friday a local TV news reporter came to do a report (she helped get the computer) and the HP we usually use would not connect at all – so I used my Mac laptop and an iSight camera – there was a constant buzz, the sound dropped out and we had to reconnect every few minutes – other than that things went well, things went well, things went well …

My other students are still “overly intrigued” by it all, so I have to shoo them away (occasionally) from waving into the camera during transitions – but I know that in the not-to-distant future this will just be what we do and become fairly transparent.

I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Learning is messy!