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 some of his favorite exhibits, such as a diorama on the North American wolf, a giant mosquito model and the Hall of Meteorites. Predictably, there are also plenty of subtle plugs for Selznick’s book. Be forewarned. Update: Scholastic will offer a free live webcast March 29, 2012 on a new virtual field trip to Ellis Island following the paths of immigrants as they arrived.
4. In New Zealand in November,  two representatives from the Kiwi education firm Learnz, were planning to climb to the summit of Muller Hut, one of the mountains Sir Edmund Hilary trained on prior to his famous ascent up Mount Everest.  More than 3,000 students from 100 schools around the country watched, some even decided to lay out sleeping bags in “preparation.”
5. According to a recent story in the Redlands Daily Facts, students at Rialto Middle School in Rialto, Calif. used telepresence video boards to watch Chinese dancers perform live  at El Cajon High School in suburban San Diego. A school board member there called the video boards, which were “laid down” by Cisco Systems  “Skype on steroids.”

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 media tools effectively. At our school, we’ve added a half-day of “connected learning” professional development each month. In addition, our 6-member digital learning leadership team is available after school to organize sessions in the computer lab or work one-on-one with teachers.
3. MOBILE TECHNOLOGY STRETCHES A LONG WAY. As an elementary teacher, I don’t see much of this in my classroom, but we have worked to revise our middle and upper school policies to take advantage of opportunities presented by the wide availability of mobile devices. Many of our teachers are now allowing students to utilize these tools for recording lectures and presentations, as e-readers, for research, etc. Our journalism students are even tweeting school news on their cell phones.
4. THE NEW ‘F WORD’ IS FEAR. It’s so true — many schools are in a “fear” mindset. We’re fortunate to have an IT department that does not block YouTube, Twitter, and other great learning sites. Our filters are strong, but if something is blocked that can be useful in the classroom, it usually just takes a quick email to get the site approved and unblocked. Am I fearful of being replaced by cheaper delivery systems? Not at all. I know that developing children into knowledgeable and successful adults is not about content. My role is to teach students how to learn. Do I worry about them knowing more than I do? Nope. The amount of stuff to know about today is mind-boggling. We learn together and from each other. Want to get a kid excited? Let them teach yousomething.We’re also working hard to get parents on board. We had a technology night where we spoke to parents about Internet safety and digital citizenship. Our students are learning about these things in their computer resource class, and daily in our classrooms as they use technology. There simply must be time in the curriculum to teach students how to validate sources, represent themselves online, and create a positive digital footprint.
5. TECH TOOLS ARE NOT JUST A PASSING FAD. Technology is ever-changing, but that doesn’t mean we can refuse to invest in it. Knowing this, our school has opted to lease our netbooks. If they become obsolete or something better comes along, we can adjust. If they have the opportunity for constant exposure and practice, students become proficient at applying their general knowledge of technology to new tools. Our role is to teach them the proper way to carry out the learning that the tools help enable. They will naturally adapt as new technologies emerge. Adam Bellow is right in saying that we are all natural lifelong learners.
6. MONEY IS NOT THE PROBLEM. This may be the one place where Bellows and I disagree a bit. The money to provide sufficient digital devices to access the Internet makes an enormous difference in the seamless integration of technology. Just this week, my class Skyped with students in a less well-supported school as part of the Global Read Aloud Project. The class did not have a webcam mounted over a Promethean board as I do. Instead, the students gathered around the teacher’s laptop, using a $10 microphone. They had to move about more and share the mic. The teacher made it happen — she took advantage of the free technology  to involve her students in a literature experience with others across the country. We all gained some great insights by sharing our interpretation and predictions about the book. But those kids in that school were clearly on the wrong side of a digital divide. Money is a problem in their classrooms.
7. INVITE EVERY STAKEHOLDER TO THE CONVERSATION. This is critical. Every stakeholder deserves a voice. At our tech night, parents voiced concerns and suggestions that helped us improve our teaching and our support for their children. Students are stakeholders too. In the classroom, the kids (who are frequently more tech savvy than we are) come up with great ideas and ways to use technology and share learning. Students should always feel encouraged to say, “What if we….”

We’re off to a great year!

Patti Grayson is an elementary teacher at Virginia’s Hampton Roads Academy and a member of her school’s digital learning leadership team. This year she’s looping with rising fourth graders. She blogs at Patti’s Ponderings and contributes to the group blog Voices from the Learning Revolution. Follow her on Twitter @pattigrayson.

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.
• Inside Higher Ed reports on a new survey by Student Monitor that finds that print textbooks are popular on campuses — far more popular than e-books — due in part to a thriving textbook rental business. 24% of students say they’ve rented at least one textbook this year, up from 12% this time last year. Only 5% say they’ve purchased a digital textbook.
• Disney subsidiary Playdom, an online gaming company that makes a number of popular children’s games, has agreed to pay the FTC $3 million over charges that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by illegally collecting and then exposing children’s personal data without receiving consent from parents.
• At its annual developer conference this week, Google announced a “new kind of computer” — a cloud-based netbook-like laptop based on its new operating system Chrome OS. These Chromebooks will be offered to schools via a $20 per month per student rental program. MindShift raises questions that schools should consider before signing the 3-year contract.

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.

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.

“There’s a lot of nuts and bolts work to just make it simple for a student to sit down, log in, and start working on the right lesson at the right time,” Danner said.

Though it stands to be improved, so far the system seems to be working. According to Danner, 90 percent of students who are below grade level move up to basic proficiency or beyond within one year of entering a Rocketship school, Danner said. So far, there are three schools in San Jose with plans to add two more next year. Danner expects to grow the network across the country.

With its heavy emphasis on high tech engineering to resolve a lot of the logistical issues, support for Rocketship from Silicon Valley shouldn’t come as a surprise — and that’s exactly Danner’s goal.

“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,” he said. “Education has been this monolithic thing that’s been left on its own, there hasn’t been a lot of innovation or significant disruptions. And without that, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to get a public education system that’s the best in the world in the next 10 or 15 years, which is what we need to be competitive.”

The appeal to donors comes from the fact that Rocketship approaches education with a tech company’s perspective.

“And now Rocketship needs to deliver on that and show that we can develop a better system and reinvent the way a school works and scale it in a way that’s higher quality,” he said.

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.