Thanks to Tom Stevens for leaving this as a comment to our original 20 Day Challenge post. I thought I would share it in case others were looking for the instructions. Here are the updated instructions, also posted at http://www.cilc.org/c/misc/k12ivc.aspx To subscribe to K12IVC, please send a blank message to k12ivc@cilc.net with the word subscribe [...]

The March Issue of THE Journal caught my eye with “Return to Sender” by Dan Gordon. The article was once again making the case for reinventing our schools and moving from the 3 Rs (readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic) to the 4 Cs of critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. I have been working on polishing [...]

Monster Mayhem and More Video Conference Collaborations Thursday, March 17, 2011 Time: 3:00-4:00 PM Learn about a unique collaborative videoconference project. Two classrooms pair up and create a monster. Each class writes a description of their monster. Each class recreates the other class’ monster and then via video conference they compare the monsters. Other examples [...]

This week I have been thinking about all of the ways that we connect with our members (video conference coordinators and teachers). In The Beginning When I began as a coordinator 6 years ago, I used email from my laptop computer when it was docked at my desk and the phone that was also at [...]

Work has begun on the Video Conference Playground at ISTE 2011. Last year, I led a band of pirates as we shared our passion for video conferencing with others in Denver. Here are some of the pictures from last summer. This year, in Philly, the playground will be even bigger with more connections and equipment [...]

A hero is someone having exceptional courage, honor, and strength. Our teachers are our heroes. Tomorrow is the first round of Big Testing here in Texas. The atmosphere in Texas is tense. Tremendous budget cuts are looming. People who do not teach are making decisions that will impact many educators in our state and our [...]

Last week, we hosted several guests in our Whirlidub studios who interacted with our students. Our guests are carefully selected for their content knowledge and then we thoughtfully structure the interactions to take advantage of the synchronous elements of the technology. The reason that the design of a video conference is so important is that [...]

Creativity has become a buzzword in education. The first time I became aware that lack of creativity could be an issue for education was watching Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk. He made the talk in 2006 and I watched it a couple of years ago. I was drawn to the talk because I am one [...]

This post continues our 20 Day Challenge to understand the technical aspects of videoconferencing. Each January, we write these 20 Day Video Conference Challenges to share our experiences with others. In the early days of video conferencing, it was cumbersome and expensive. Today, we can have excellent H.323 quality connecting a variety of endpoints to [...]

This post continues our 20 Day Challenge to understand the technical aspects of videoconferencing. Being organized and having quick access to critical information is essential to successful connections for teachers and students. Some of the following information can be easier to understand if you take a picture of it. Key Information IP Address of video [...]