|
||||
|
January 5, 2005 meeting - continued Karl's synopsis of the sites presented forInexpensive Video Conferencing | ||||
|
Ann Arbor Hands On Museum Resources http://www.aahom.org/educators/resources.htm First I wanted to point out all the resources available to teachers at the Hands-On Museum site. When you go to that page you will see all these topics; each one provides lots of info and suggested activities related to a topic which might connect with a field trip. You choose among: Kid Molecules, Path of Light, Machine Mobiles, Conductor Detector, Shadow Play, Lifting Levers, Pulley Power, Musical Rice, Pipes of Pan, Build a Circuit, Make an Electromagnet, Marshmallow, Roasters, Creepy Crawler, Fruit Batteries, Make a Compass, and How Fast Does Sound Travel. And each one of these 16 teacher guides provides: Michigan benchmarks, pre-visit materials, vocabulary, post-visit materials, and resources. iSightEd http://www.isighted.com/ Then we started on a quick tour of ways to find educators and projects using inexpensive video conferencing. iSightEd is at the top of my list. I did have to log in to get access to individual interest profiles, projects and other resources. No cost and no obligation; requiring registration is a way of keeping track of who is using the web site, and discouraging folks who are not serious about exchanging information with other educators. First we looked at "resources" and right at the top of the list found an entry giving advice on handling firewalls. Next was a project on using the iSight camera to record "stop action" video. Among the next five projects I saw one on "switching cameras" which is a technique common in more expensive video conferencing systems and also possible with iChat AV on the Mac. Then we looked at projects. Near the top was MonarchWatch, a really great example which I have on video clips available to you. At the top of the next screen of projects was Civil War Reenactment Tour. We could read what Robert Craven had to say about that project. We could enter our own comment or question. We could go to the "member directory" to learn more about Robert Craven, or to look up other educators with whom we share interests. We elected to find more about the reenactment project by going to ALI. Apple Learning Interchange http://ali.apple.com/ At the Apple Learning Interchange I first did a search for entries which mention iSight. We found four on: preservice teachers, bringing schools together, connecting higher ed to K-12, and a service learning project documenting child labor. We elected to go to the Civil War one, an example of connecting schools together. We saw lessons, standards, student work, reflections, resources, etc. We went to "reflections" and were able to play video clips (small QuickTime files) of some comments from students and a teacher about sharing the reenactment project with other schools. Someone noticed how the kids were carrying a laptop around with an iSight camera faced in the appropriate direction to do the interviews live. So iSightEd and ALI provide two ways of finding teachers and projects using Apple's iChat and the iSight cameras. Now let's try a third way to find educators on line, still using iChat. iChatters http://www.ichatters.com/ I logged into iChatters, where I had entered my interest profile last summer when first I was preparing materials for this workshop. I also established a "buddy list" of folks with whom I seemed to share interests. Several of those ended up on my list of off-site experts for you to contact during or after the workshop. The buddy list opens up right away when you log into the site. It takes a little longer for the "general chat" list to open; it must be retrieving all the data on who is on line. There's always someone willing to respond to help you check out your iSight camera or the settings on iChat AV. We opened the folder of educators and found about twenty who were online at the moment out of 258 who were registered with that as they primary interest or occupation. You will see by the one-line descriptions that some of these are just folks who said they were interested in education. I had to do some searching to find those who really were using iChat in education. Let's look quickly at two more sources which accommodate wintel (PC) machines as well as Macs. Don't expect the video images to be as good, or sound as well in sync because of shortcoming in the PC apps and hardware, but you can have chats between Macs and PCs, and, of course, between two PCs. ChatFinder https://secure.chatfinder.com/ At ChatFinder I had registered for the free service which allows you find others by interest profile but not much else. If you subscribe for $7/month (or $40/year) to the "Elite Member Services" you also get additional tools for contacting others to arrange chats with them. I haven't had time to do more than set up a Contact List. I picked out folks who listed their occupation as Education and had interests matching those which I had entered. I recall we noticed educators all over North America and some in other countries. I don't recall opening an individual's profile; there you would have seen the list of interests, favorites, and further notes called "about me" which might help you decide whether you wanted to arrange a chat with this person. The green light shows if the person is on line. Most of the time I just sent email to see if someone was interested in helping with a workshop. iVisit http://www.ivisit.com/ iVisit is more of a collaboration tool. You can set up groups, and several members of a group can be chatting at the same time and sharing documents. A subscription is required to get full benefits. It works with both Mac and PC platforms and its additional collaboration features are worth the cost to someone setting up a group with a common goal or project. I am subscribed only for "free - lite" and don't have much experience with the service. You could make a similar "no cost" exploration of this tool by downloading the software for your PC or Mac. AOL Instant Messenger http://www.aim.com/ I had planned to show how easy it is to get a screen name for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). If you go to this page you can click on "Download Now" to get the current version of AIM. It's needed if you are connecting from a PC; if you are using a Mac, the iChat AV application takes care of everything. I went to the FAQ page for screen names (http://www.aim.com/help_faq/starting_out/screennames.adp?aolp= to set up several names for the stations in the workshop room: Pontiac #1, Saginaw #2, Muskegon #3, Ontonagon #4, Negaunee #5, Oscoda #6, Manistee #7, Owosso #8, etc. TWICE http://www.twice.cc/fieldtrips.html We made a quick stop at the TWICE web site, an excellent resource for learning about electronic field trips. At the point in the workshop I couldn't find my copies of Janine Lim's excellent two-page list of free and/or very popular visits to make. I would like it to be in the hands of anyone who is thinking about such opportunities. It provides an indication of the range of possibilities. (A shorter, more conceptual list from Janine was already in your handout.) Here is the URL of the page from which you can download the PDF of the "Two Page Selected List of Programs." It's toward the bottom in the center column. http://www.remc11.k12.mi.us/dl/ |
 Ann Arbor Hands On Museum
| |||
| See the Part One of the summary for January 5, 2005 | ||||
|
Credits for this month's
pages: | ||||
