AWNM Video Conference: Tech Setup, Ustream Archive and Pictures

I just wanted to share the tech setup as well as the Ustream archive and some pictures of our video conference on Friday with Daniel Pink. (You can also view the two archived CoverItLive live blogs on my previous post.)

For those that are interested, here was the tech setup. To Skype (and then eventually MeBeam, more on that in a moment) with Daniel Pink, we had a Dell computer with a logitech webcam and snowball microphone connected to it. This was connected to a projector in our Forum that rear projects onto a large screen (we were in the forum because we had four classes with a total of 110 kids or so) so that all the students could see and hear him. Earlier in the week students had submitted their questions on a blog and then Maura Moritz and Anne Smith selected sixteen of them to be asked today (due to time constraints). Each student would come down to the snowball microphone and ask the question of Mr. Pink, and then ask a follow-up or respond to Mr. Pink's questions if he asked them.

Then over on the side we had an iMac connected to a second snowball microphone and a DV camcorder which we used to Ustream the event. The Ustream audience (folks who read about it on my blog or on twitter, plus we emailed all the parents of the students in the classes) could see the student asking the question, a decent shot of the projected screen with Mr. Pink on it, and then hear both of them pretty well.

Next to that we had two Dell laptops, each one moderating the two CoverItLive blogs we had setup. We had two setup because we had so many students live blogging we felt it would be overwhelming to have them all on one live blog. The ninety or so students that weren't asking the questions had the capability of hopping on the live blog (or they could choose just to listen) - we probably had around 50 to 60 or so laptops spread throughout those 90 students, and the students could hand the laptop to the student sitting next to them if they wanted to comment.

Overall, it went well, although for the first time in two years we had some technical difficulties. We've always used Skype for this and it worked well for a while, but then suddenly dropped the call. We reconnected once for a little while, then it dropped again and then wouldn't connect. After trying for a few minutes, we switched over to MeBeam which thankfully worked for us. MeBeam doesn't have quite the same quality as Skype (a little bit of a delay and the video isn't quite as crisp), but it still worked well.

We really appreciate how flexible Daniel Pink was. When we did this last year, we had talked about using MeBeam as a backup to Skype, but we really hadn't talked about any contingencies this year (my fault). When it became obvious that Skype maybe wasn't going to reconnect, I Skype-chatted to Mr. Pink that we should try switching to MeBeam, and then gave him the URL and the room name. He Skyped back that he would, and by the time I switched over and loaded it up, he was there. We had a brief moment when his audio wasn't on (by default when you enter a MeBeam room your audio is off and it's not completely intuitive where to turn it on), but we told him where to enable his audio and then we were good to go (well, after he put some headphones on as we were getting echo). Now, none of that is rocket science, but in my experience that's more than enough to throw a lot of folks, especially when we hadn't talked about it in advance. So I was very thankful that he handled it with aplomb and didn't get flustered with the tech stuff.

Unfortunately, I'd been sick all week and had to visit the doctor later that day so I didn't get to listen to the students reflect about the experience later that day. From my perspective, I thought it went well, and I thought the students did a nice job of asking thoughtful questions. As one person noted in the Ustream chat, they were polite and respectful but not overly deferential to Daniel Pink. And, as has been the case for the two years we've done this (so four times he's interacted with our students), Daniel Pink has been very generous with his time and tries to thoughtfully address their questions.

Here is the archived Ustream (it starts about 2:45 into the archive, I hit record a little too early because I didn't want to forget!) and some pictures that should give you an idea of what the room looked like.

Join Us for the Daniel Pink Video Conference and Live Blog

Tomorrow (Friday, February 20th) our students will conduct their culminating discussion of Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. This will begin at about 8:25 am MST and end at around 9:25 am MST. This will be similar to last year, but we've made a few adjustments.

First, since we only have him for one hour this year instead of two, we'll just have selected students ask him their question and then perhaps a follow-up (last year we tried to have a mini-fishbowl discussion as well, but we don't think that will work so well with our limited time).

Second, with that many students in the live blog, it goes a little too fast and furious, so we're going to create two this year. Mrs. Smith's 2nd period and Mrs. Moritz's 3rd period will be on one live blog, and Mrs. Moritz's 4th period and Mrs. Smith's 5th period will be on a second live blog. You can either follow those links or I'll embed both CoverItLive's in this post (not sure how well that will work in practice, so jump to the links if it doesn't work having them both embedded here).

We will also be ustreaming the event - basically you'll hear the questions the students ask and Mr. Pink's responses, and probably see a really badly angled shot of the projected screen with Mr. Pink on Skype and perhaps the students actually asking the questions (it's going to be a tough angle, so we'll see).

You are welcome to observe and/or participate in the CoverItLive blogs if you wish, but with a few caveats. First, this is the students' discussion, so please don't drive the conversation. Second, please make sure you enter your real name in the appropriate spot in CoverItLive so we know who you are. Third, the CoverItLive is a place for discussing A Whole New Mind, if you wish to discuss the pedagogy or the technical aspects of this, please do that with the other adults in the ustream chat.

As always, our priority is to make this work for the students, so if we have technical issues with the ustream or anything else, we will do our best to fix them, but our focus will remain on making this work in the room, anything else is gravy.

Here's the attempt to embed both live blogs in this post.

CoverItLive Smith 2 and Moritz 3

CoverItLive Moritz 4 and Smith 5

What's the Purpose of School?

While I've certainly blogged about and around this topic before, I've run across a couple of interesting posts in the last few weeks that both address this question directly. I'm going to quote liberally from both posts, because I think it's useful to see them both on the same page.

First, David Warlick wrote after watching - and participating - in our videoconferencing with Daniel Pink:

On several occasions, lately, when working with teachers and administrators at independent schools, I�ve been asked, �What is the purpose of education?� It�s not a question that comes out of public school conversations very often. We already know what education is for. The government told us.

Education is about:

• Covering all the standards
• Improving performance on government tests
• Meeting AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)
• Producing a competitive workforce

We don�t even ask any more � and even in this season of Change (http://change.gov/), we�re still not asking that question.

Now I generalize when comparing different types of schools, and to be sure, independent schools are also governed by testing, as many of their students attend so that they can get into Harvard, Yale, or Duke (Go Blue Devils). But, again, there is a palpable sense of confidence in the conversations I witness when away from public schools � a willingness to ask tough questions.

I�ve had a ready answer to the question.

�The purpose of education is to appropriately prepare our children for their future.�

There are some implied, but essential questions in that answer:

• What will their future hold? What will they need to know?
• What are appropriate method, materials, environment, activity?
• Who are these children? What is their frame of reference?

Today, I have a new answer. My old one is still good. I�ll continue to use it. But if you ask me, �What is the purpose of education?� today, I�ll say,

"The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!"

What drew me to this answer was Karl Fisch�s teleconferencing activity last week (see A 2.0 Sort�a Day: Part 2). As I thought more about the experience, it occurred to me that this was an almost singularly unique activity � beyond the fact that students were interacting with an internationally renowned writer, exchanging thoughtful insights, and the really cool use of technology.

What struck me in hindsight was that these students were earning respect. They were respected by each other, by their teachers, by the instructional support professionals, and by the internationally renowned figure, Dan Pink. Their engagement in that activity will continue to be respected by people, young and old, who will read the archive of those multidimensional conversations.

Those students were full partners in their learning, and they were entrusted to go beyond just what was expected. They were encouraged to freely extend and develop their own thoughts, skills, and knowledge, building on their own frame of reference, pushing and pulling through conversation, and being responsible for their part of the endeavor.

Then yesterday Seth Godin wrote:

So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:

1. Become an informed citizen
2. Be able to read for pleasure
3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
4. Do well on standardized tests
5. Homogenize society, at least a bit
6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
7. Give kids something to do while parents work
8. Teach future citizens how to conform
9. Teach future consumers how to desire
10. Build a social fabric
11. Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
12. Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
13. Learn for the sake of learning
14. Help people become interesting and productive
15. Defang the proletariat
16. Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
17. Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
18. Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
19. Teach future citizens to obey authority
20. Teach future employees to do the same
21. Increase appreciation for art and culture
22. Teach creativity and problem solving
23. Minimize public spelling mistakes
24. Increase emotional intelligence
25. Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
26. Increase understanding of a life well lived
27. Make sure the sports teams have enough players

Both David and Seth, coming from different backgrounds, have some fairly negative views of what some folks think school is for, as well as some more positive views of what school should be. If you've read my blog for any length of time you most likely know the general trend my thoughts take on this, so I'll spare you my own ranting and raving (for now, anyway). But I thought these were worth posting on the same page as a good starting point for discussion, as Seth suggests:

If you have the email address of the school board or principals, perhaps you'll forward this list to them (and I hope you are in communication with them regardless, since it's a big chunk of your future and your taxes!). Should make an interesting starting point for a discussion.

Please leave a comment or do as Seth suggests and contact a school board member, superintendent, school administrator, teacher, student, parent, state legislator (Colorado), community member, congressperson (Senate, House, or possibly this link for both), or President Obama and ask them for their thoughts, without the spin.

What's the purpose of school?

Design Discussion with Daniel Pink: Setup, Pictures, Screenshots and Ustreams

In case anyone is interested, I thought I would embed the two Ustream recordings from today, as well as share a few pictures and screenshots. Since someone asked in the Ustream chat, I'll share the setup as well.

• Since Daniel Pink graciously shared two hours with us, we combined four classes down into two. Because that meant we had about 55-60 students each time, we needed a larger area than their usual classroom, so we setup in our library. In the "front" we had a computer running Windows XP and we used Skype to connect with Mr. Pink. That computer was then projected so that all the students could see him, as well as the live blog (although they pretty much read the live blog on their laptop screens). We used a logitech webcam for the video for Skype, and a Blue Snowball microphone (with a USB extension cable to get it into the group of students asking questions) for the audio. We then had logitech speakers to broadcast Mr. Pink's audio out to the room. (We did not have any feedback issues, although we did have him wear headphones on his end to help with that.)
  
  
  
  
• We also ustreamed the event. For the ustream, we used a DV camcorder connected to an iMac (for better video quality than a typical webcam, although I don't know how much difference it really makes) and a second Blue Snowball microphone (again with USB extension cable) for the ustream audio.
  
  
  
  
• We used a laptop to approve the CoverItLive comments, although that could've been done on either of the other computers if we wanted to (we brought in some extra help just in case, so we put them to work!).
  
  
  
• The students who were live blogging were mostly using our Dell laptop computers running Windows XP, connecting wirelessly to our network, although some students brought in their own laptops.

Amazingly enough, we pretty much had zero technical issues.

Here are some additional photos, screenshots and the two ustream embeds. If anyone has any feedback - technological or pedagogical - please leave a comment. And, of course, if you have any questions, leave those as well.













Anne Smith's Period 2 and 5 Ustream (and CoverItLive live blog archive):

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Maura Moritz's Period 3 and 4 Ustream (and CoverItLive live blog archive):

Streaming live video by Ustream

AWNM: Chapter 4 Live Blog and Ustream

As I wrote a week ago, some of our ninth graders are currently involved in a project based on Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. On Thursday, January 15th, our students will be discussing Chapter 4 (Design) of A Whole New Mind with Daniel Pink (see the wiki for the schedule of the discussions over the other chapters). Mr. Pink is graciously giving us two hours of his time, so Anne Smith�s two classes will be discussing with him during second period (8:25 � 9:24 am, MST) and Maura Moritz�s two classes will be discussing during third period (9:29 � 10:30 am, MST). During each period, the two classes of students will gather in the library, and an "inner circle" of students will ask questions of and interact with Daniel Pink via Skype. The students in the "outer circle" will be watching that as well as live blogging on their respective class blogs (Anne Smith's class blog, Maura Moritz's class blog).

In addition, we will try to stream video and audio of the live discussion out via ustream. If everything is working, you can go to our ustream channel and watch and listen live to the students interacting with Mr. Pink. Please keep in mind, however, that the ustream is a bonus, we will be focusing on making sure Skype and the live blogging is working, so if there are any technical issues with the ustream we won�t be spending very much time trying to troubleshoot those. (Please also know that the ustream chat does not always make it through our firewall, so we probably won�t be reading or monitoring that.) Anyone who's interested is invited to watch the live blogs and/or the ustream.

It will be interesting to see how this first discussion goes. Last year the students didn't interact with Daniel Pink until Chapter 7, so they were very much into the book, the discussions, and had experience interacting with remote live bloggers. Since they are just beginning their study of the book and its concepts at this point, we'll see if that affects their level of engagement and the quality of their discussions. In any event, we're looking forward to an engaging and rewarding learning experience for our students.

A Whole New Learning Experience: Take Two

I blogged last year about some of our ninth graders reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, and discussing it not only with each other, but with over 30 educators from around the world and Daniel Pink himself. Well, some of this year�s ninth graders in Anne Smith�s and Maura Moritz�s classes are going to get the opportunity to do it again.

If you�re really interested, you can read all my previous posts regarding our experiences with this project. But, in a nutshell, the students are reading the book and discussing it in class using the fishbowl method with live blogging. In addition to the students discussing face-to-face and live blogging, approximately 30 educators from around the world will be �dropping� in to live blog as well. They�ll be able to hear and see the in-class discussion via webcam (and MeBeam), and will simultaneously live blog along with the outer circle of students in the classroom (using CoverItLive this year). Twice during the project, once while discussing Chapter 4 (Design) and then again at the end of the book with the culminating discussion, the students will have the opportunity to interact with Daniel Pink via Skype.

The students will be doing a variety of activities along with the discussions, but their culminating project will again be a Wikified Research Paper. A Wikified Research Paper has all the components of a traditional research paper, but on a wiki so that it can include hyperlinks, audio, video, etc. It also contains other wiki pages with their research and related items, as well as the ability for others to give them comments and feedback along the way and on the final paper (although since it�s a wiki it�s never �final�).

If you�re really a glutton and want to know more about this, we have a video produced by Dana Levesque, one of the amazing instructional technology specialists in our district. It gives you a feel for what it looked like last year, including some short interviews with students, some longer interviews with Anne and Maura regarding their preparation for and reaction to this project, and an interview with yours truly talking about some of the technology aspects of this project.