Happy New Year! RAP Registration a HUGE success!!!

RAP (Read Around the Planet) registration is now closed with a record THIRTY classes (K-12) siging up to participate in this global celebration of reading and literacy – conducted via videoconference.

With Christmas and New Year’s rapidly approaching as registration closed, I felt compelled to devise a new way of conducting planning and process orientation – no-one had time for meetings just before break and they probably won’t just after break. With the event starting in late February – there is no time for lost momentum.

To get everyone up to speed, I opted to present Orientation via wiki. It’s not the most collaborative, interactive or full use of this mediums potential, BUT there is opportunity for discussion – AND an opportunity to expose 30 teachers to wiki’s! How sweet it is!

What’s a wiki? Here’s our RAP wiki! Just follow along and perhaps next year – when the opportunity presents itself, you too will want to participate!

Not from our school district? I am always interested in locating ITv partners – classes, professionals…. you name it – if our equipment is compatible (we are IP) – let’s talk! Email me at: achayefsky@musd20.org

ITv is a Community

As we continue to grow ITv at MUSD, I have gotten the most delightful email, from Shelley Nolin in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We met Shelley and her students through last springs ‘Read Around the Planet’. As I recall they had lots of snow and we had lots of drought! Now we are chilly at 50+ degrees (been cloudy and rainy – a very uncommon thing) and the internet reports that Edmonton was partly cloudy and 21. How DO they do it?

Edmonton, AB, Canada (Picture Courtesy of Google Images)

Shelley emailed to say she wants to meet with us again – isn’t that fabulous? Indeed, ITv is a Community, a flat community where physical distance is irrelevant.

This year I have an expectation that our students will collaborate with distant partners via blog, wiki or other Web 2.0 collaboration media.

Teaching Media Literacy is a critical component of a relevant and effective 21st Century Learning and educational environment.

Now Registering K-12 Classes for Read Around the Planet

I have begun soliciting interest for the March Global Videoconferencing Event ‘Read Around the Planet’! This year, MUSD participants will attend ITv Orientation and I think we may collaborate via wiki as ideas are developed and refined. This year we will work together more closely to develop students presentation skills (Arizona Technology Standard) And perhaps get some students blogging and podcasting about their experiences.

Well designed and planned videoconferencing events are not only highly engaging, they are content-rich with educational purpose. Click this LINK to see a sample of AZ State Standards that were addressed by ONE Kindergarten video conference conducted last year, by Katie Honeycutt’s Maricopa Elementary School students. The teacher turned this ITv opportunity into a robust pre and post lesson. (Board Celebration Brochure Summer 2007)

MUSD teachers, this year, please email me your interest no later than Friday, December 14th, 2007. I will register all staff in the RAP Portal.

Want more information on ITv at MUSD? Email me: Amy Chayefsky at achayefsky@musd20.org

More Read Across Arizona

This past Thursday, Elizabeth Reyes- Armstead’s Middle School Resource students partnered with Leticia Jimenez’ Eloy MS students. The Maricopa Wells MS class presented a reading of the Robert Frost poem ‘Ghost House‘. I am very excited to report that these two classes are now working on extension activities (email collaboration and additional meetings via ITv.)

As there is currently no ITv equipment housed at Maricopa Wells Middle School, our students took a nice 15 minute stroll to get to the HS ITv site. Charlie Hatt, Director of Transportation, said he will work with Ms Reyes-Armstead to coordinate transportation for her next event! Happily, this week’s “rainy season”weather was not in play last week!

Back to WordPress

I left WordPress for training purposes locating a very easy start-up blog site for very busy educators in WebBlog. My goal: get them blogging! I like it’s clean look and easy to navigate interface, that fit the goal. But I miss WordPress and am back again!

Here are links to my recently retired blogs, all blogs lead here:

http://learningcommunity.weblog.com/

http://maricopa-itv.blogspot.com/

Is a videoconference f2f?

Is a video conference considered to be ‘face to face’ contact? It may depend on precisely who you ask. if you asked the young participants of today’s video conference of Heidi Zimmer’s MUSD 5th graders and Marie Arrington’s 4th graders from Safford, Arizona, they might say it’s was a f2f meeting!

These students were casual and confidant and were not at all overwhelmed at the prospect of this seamless connection. Why would they be? Their lives are chock full of examples of ubiquitous technology supporting their lives; cell phones, TV, internet, mP3’s, powerful video gaming machines, videoconferencing.

Miss Zimmer’s class has been studying poetry and delighted their partners with poems they wrote, poems they rewrote to add a little ‘quirky’ humor and concrete poems (shape poems use repeated descriptive words or one individual letter that makes up the shape). Miss Zimmer’s students are talented artists too!

The students from Safford arrived in costume, each representing a different historical or otherwise famous figure. A sampling of the students shared some facts about their characters lives. This event was one of the culminating features of their studies. They had conducted the full presentation for parents after school in a setting they called ‘The Wax Museum’. Guests (the parents) would push a button next to each student and (as in a wax museum) that student would tell about themselves (or rather their character). Their teacher explained that this was how they chose to satisfy state standards on research!

Both classes had an opportunity to ask and answer questions about themselves, their schools, and life in their towns. This is event continues into next week at MUSD as several other class (K-12) participate in Read Across Arizona – courtesy of The Pinal County ITv Consortium. MUSD is an active Consortium participant and while several MES classes have participated in ITv, Miss Zimmer’s was our first class to participate from Maricopa Elementary School on our newly acquired ITv equipment. Before the recent arrival of this equipment, MES classes took a ‘field trip’ to the High School ITv Distance Learning Lab – requiring bus transportation.

Equipment was courtesy of the Pinal County ITv Consortium

Read Across Arizona is the warm up event of our annual Class-to-class participation in TWICE and NEA’s global event ‘Read Around the Planet’, held each March!