More Good News! I would like to thank and congratulate all of the students and teachers who participated in the nearly fifty videconferences conducted at the High School Distance Learning Lab during the 2006-2007 school year (K-12), and the Administrators who support them!
MUSD is an active member of the Pinal County ITv Consortium based at CAC (Central AZ College), which links a multitude of Pinal County Schools, CAC and ASU via ITv. MUSD has had a Distance Learning Lab for a number of years and each year we happily retain many of the previous year’s teachers and recruit an increasing number of teachers new to ITv (Interactive Television). The keyword, this program continues to prove its sustainability!
This year, MUSD ITv conducted many classroom-to-classroom connections (MUSD class meets via ITv with a class elsewhere in the state or world) through ‘Read Across Arizona’ and ‘Read Around the Planet’ – sponsored by TWICE and NEA as a celebration of reading and literacy. Read Around the Planet. We partnered K-12 classes with students from a variety of AZ schools and far flung locations such as Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and more!
MUSD ITv also conducted several Provider Content events, these are events organized by professional providers such as Museums, Zoo’s and content experts. We brought Philadelphia Museum of Art to Kindergartners from MES, Chef’s from New York Institute of Technology to Maricopa High School Culinary Arts Students, Museum Curator from the USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor to MHS students, an autopsy for CTE students interested in pursuing careers in medical fields.
Middle School students blogged with partner classes in Oklahoma and Australia, collaboratively reading author Jim Stovall’s book ‘The Ultimate Gift’. The culminating event of this many months long activity was to meet the author, via ITv, along with 8 other classes form around the world.
MUSD ITv connected Maricopa parents, teachers and interested community members to a county-wide Meth Awareness training hosted by Pinal County, broadcast from CAC but locally hosted by MUSD SRO Officer, Deputy Kent Ogaard. Deputy Ogaard remained long after the ITv event concluded to answer the questions of concerned participants.
We conducted Professional Development for teachers hosting the Pinal County ITv Consortium’s Annual Tech Academy. Maricopa broadcast to Central AZ College, Eloy and Ray our keynote speaker Dr. Chris Johnson, PhD (U of A ret.) as he led an incredible discussion called ‘The 21st Century Learner; Coming to a Classroom Near You’. Dr. Johnson helped teachers and administrators to envision and better understand the technology based lives our students live and how we can better engage and challenge them through the use of appropriate yet critical 21st Century Technologies, in the classroom.
We also participate in and present the implementation and successes of MUSD ITv statewide at a variety of high profile conferences, such as MEC, AZHSRI, WOW and PEAK.
There are amazing things happening at MUSD with ITv. Gina Pinch (MUSD Director of Technology), Jack Wallbrecht (MUSD CTE Director) and I just conducted our annual ITv Celebration opening the June 27th School Board Meeting. While these events are indeed engaging, we also provided the Board with a handout showing how the Arizona State Standards in virtually content-areas can and are being met through well planned and structured videoconferences.
This year was not unique, we saw more volume, but we do these types of events every year! teachers invite parents to join their students and I am delighted to report that each year more and more parents accompany their students to these amazing events!
If you would like to learn more, feel free to contact me:
Amy Chayefsky, MUSD Technology Integration Specialist, ITv Site Contact at email:
achayefsky@musd20.org
Brochure from Celebration is available on the District Homepage www.musd20.org, Current News. There you will find some exciting news about ITv at MUSD for the 2007-2008 School year.
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