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Five Awesome Virtual Field Trips for Students of All Ages

March 13, 2012 | 11:32 AM | By
By Stephen Chupaska

One of the best things living in the digital age is being able to connect across the globe to other students, professionals, and cultural organizations who can show unique perspectives from their corner of the world. Nothing beats the real-life experience of going on actual field trips, but savvy schools and teachers have long been taking advantage of sites like Skype to give students from San Diego to New Zealand the opportunity to interact with people from all the world and to stamp their virtual field trip passports. Here are just a few examples.

  1. In what EdTech Digest called the “the best use of Skype ever,” Virginia Tech geography professor John Boyer, played host to a Skype interview with Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the Burmese resistance leader who was under house arrest for 30 years. Boyer and his students created YouTube videos asking Suu Kyi for an interview, which she granted in on Dec. 5. The interview was broadcast to 3,000 students in an auditorium on campus.
  2. At Penn Elementary School in Iowa City, teacher Andrew Fenstermaker is using Skype to escort his first-grade students on a road trip some retirees dream about taking in RVs — a tour of  all 50 states. According to an article last month in the Iowa City Press Citizen, Fenstermaker has made contact with 22 classrooms in 17 states. The class’ most recent Skype session took place with a school in New Jersey, where students on both ends practices their English and Spanish skills. And they are not just video meet and greets.  After the sessions, Fenstermaker and his class make Venn diagrams to chart the classes’ similarities and differences.
  3. Scholastic’s Web site is offering teachers the chance to take students on a virtual tour of Museum on Natural History in New York, hosted by children’s book author Brian Selznick. Selznick, who set his latest work, “Wonderstruck” at the museum, offers a guided tour of Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Skype, virtual field trip

Applying the 7 Golden Rules: One Teacher’s Take of Technology

October 4, 2011 | 10:31 AM | By

TB

In response to the article The 7 Golden Rules of Using Technology in Schools, teacher Patti Grayson wrote a point-by-point summary of exactly how it plays out in her class. Here’s her take.

By Patti Grayson

Along with some colleagues in our lower school division, I lobbied to use money normally spent on workbooks and paper instructional materials to buy a classroom set of netbooks for our students. We’re only a month into the school year, and already, Bellow’s golden rules have served me well. Here’s how they apply to my fourth grade classroom:

  1. DON’T TRAP TECHNOLOGY IN A ROOM. Best. Advice. Ever. If technology is used properly, it is a natural extension of learning – as useful as a textbook (and often more so). These days I say “Grab your netbook and…” more frequently than I ever thought I would. For students, this new way of instruction is seamless. When we are creating our own questions about a topic or digging deeper for information, they’ll ask, “Mrs. Grayson, can I get a netbook and look it up?” The netbooks have also provided the opportunity for daily keyboarding, blogging, math practice, web tool exploration anytime we have 15 minutes to fill.
  2.  TECHNOLOGY IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Can I hear an amen? Bellow points out the wellspring of teaching knowledge accessible through YouTube and Twitter, and yet many of our teachers need help learning to wield these social Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Skype, Technology in Schools, YouTube

Weekly News Roundup

May 13, 2011 | 9:43 AM | By

Flickr:WilliamC

  • Microsoft announced this week that it has agreed to acquire the popular VOIP service Skype for $8.5 billion. Skype has become an important tool for educators bridging classrooms around the world, and the acquisition may boost Microsoft’s status in the education sector (provided, of course, Skype still works on Apple computers).
  • According to the June issue of Consumer Reports, Facebook has about 7.5 million users below the required minimum age of 13. And 5 million of those users are ten or younger.
  • While teens and pre-teens may love Facebook, they’re less than enthralled with Foursquare and other location-based check-ins. That’s the findings of a recent survey by Dubit, a youth communications agency, reports Business Insider. According to the survey, 48% of teens have not heard of Foursquare, Facebook Places, or other location services, and 67% of teens who have heard of the services don’t use any of them.
  • Google has announced the semi-finalists for the Google Science Fair. Voting on these entries runs through May 20. Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Skype, weekly news roundup

Silicon Valley Execs Funnel $3 million into Rocketship

May 11, 2011 | 3:54 PM | By

TB

Students using computers at Rocketship's Learning Lab.

Silicon Valley executives — CEOs and COOs of companies like Netflix, Facebook, and Skype — have funneled $3 million to Rocketship Education this year that will be used to refine its sophisticated software system.

The money will be spent to improve four components of Rocketship’s computer software: assessment of students, the way it generates learning plans that identify what students need to learn, a scheduler that uses the learning plan to choose from a bank of lessons that’s best suited for each student, and a management system that keeps track of all that information.

With a more streamlined process, the aim is to lighten the load for teachers who have to analyze all the data for each student, and to have the software recommend better default learning plans that teachers can easily adjust for students, according to co-founder John Danner.

“There’s a sense in Silicon Valley that there’s got to be more in the way that Silicon Valley solves problems that can be applied to education.”

It’s a software engineer’s dream — or nightmare — however you look at it. Creating a system that takes into consideration 1,000 standards that students need to master from K-5, and lessons mapped to each of those objectives offered by dozens of different vendors. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Facebook, hybrid learning, Netflix, Rocketship, Silicon Valley, Skype

Weekly News Roundup

April 1, 2011 | 9:08 AM | By

Flickr: WilliaC

  • The VOIP service Skype officially launched “Skype in the Classroom,” a directory to help connect educators with others who are using the service. Skype has recognized that teachers are already using the service to connect their classrooms, and so it wanted to make it easier for teachers to find others and to share Skype lessons and resources.
  • Google Summer of Code is now open for student applications. The program gives college students the opportunity to spend the summer doing real-world, open-source programming with mentor organizations. These organizations include Wikipedia, Moodle, and many, many others. Applications are due April 8.
  • The computational knowledge engine WolframAlpha has launched two more of its Course Assistant apps: one for Astronomy and one for Multivariable Calculus. The apps are available for iPhone, cost $4.99, and beg the question: why on earth would you bring a calculator to class when you can bring WolframAlpha.
  • The ACLU has started a campaign, reports eSchoolNews, demanding that high schools remove filters that block access to websites that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities.
  • Sesame Street has launched an e-book reader for iPad. The app itself is free, and books are available for subscription. GeekDad‘s Daniel Donahoo points out, however, that there aren’t any free copies for you to sample before you buy, but he does not that the quality of the content there is high.
  • Professor Dan Cohen has just released a database of over one million course syllabi, gathered from the Internet between 2002 and 2009. The data is available for people to download, and via analysis and visualization, I’m guessing this data could give us some very interesting insights into changes in college instruction. Cohen is the director for the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, aclu, google summer of code, iPad, sesame street, Skype, syllabi, wolframalpha

Video Chats Take Students to Other Worlds

March 22, 2011 | 10:02 AM | By

Flickr: Wesley Fryer

As Skyping becomes part of our daily vocabulary — like “googling” and “friending,” it’s also being used more in schools. As a way to connect students to valuable resources across the world, schools are embracing Skype, WebEx, Google video chat, and other tools as an alternative the chalkboard generation could only dream of: conversations with astronauts, field trips to the zoo, and connecting with kids across the globe, for instance — all from the comfort of their own classrooms.

Grant funding for videoconferencing equipment in schools is becoming more prevalent, too (often, that money is federal; Tandberg, for example, is one resource). This means that more kids might get to meet peers in El Salvador, and snow days could be a thing of the past.

1) DISTANCE LEARNING.

In Tennessee, instructors at Dyersburg State Community College 11 interactive TV classrooms can teach students more than an hour’s drive away, thanks to a $800,000 USDA grant. A distance learning program in Alabama that uses webcams, big-screen televisions, and interactive whiteboards has been lauded for its ability to bring Advanced Placement (AP) classes to students who wouldn’t otherwise have access. And the Gallup-McKinley and Jemez Valley School Districts in New Mexico are each receiving $500,000 in federal grants to create a videoconferencing system that will enable students to take AP and foreign language classes as well as facilitate professional development for teachers.

2) KIDS COLLABORATING WITH KIDS.

Some of the greatest potential for learning exists with kids meeting friends across the world or across town to discuss class topics or to collaborate on long-term projects. Kids can perform in slam poetry competitions with one another through an arts program called Global Writes; a Discovery Museums science and culture exchange program allows third-graders in Acton, Massachusetts to videoconference with students from El Salvador and learn about one another’s local ecosystems; and sixth graders in Hillburn, New York are teaching kindergartners beginning Mandarin Chinese. And sometimes, student videoconferences are, in fact, conferences, like this international conference on the global response to natural disasters based out of Pittsburgh or a virtual book club meeting between middle school students in Oklahoma.

3) LEARNING FROM PROFESSIONALS.

In Orangeville, Ontario, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut told kids about his experiences in outer space via Skype — things like you can’t burp in space. Through the NASA Explorer Schools Program, schools videoconference with astronauts at the International Space Station. In New York, kids have connected with health professionals at the McMillen Center for Health Education to learn about eating disorders, while elementary school students in Ottawa got to ask questions of the author of the book they were reading.

4) VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS.

Videoconferencing means going places — real places — without having to pay for transportation or juggle logistics. Students can visit “the heart of Madagascar” through a videoconference tour of an exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, for example, watch an autopsy procedure at the Center of Science & Industry in Columbus, Ohio, or even chase thunderstorms (or at least learn about them) through a tour of the National Weather Center with Discovery Channel’s Reed Timmer. Check out this video of Center of Science & Industry’s COSI’s Storm Spotter videoconference session, in which students learn to take and use readings from barometers and thermometers to help them predict basic weather patterns and much more.

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, distance learning, Skype, videoconferencing, virtual field trips