Ok, I just finished the coolest training with Roxanne Glaser, ESC 12 in Waco, TX. Roxanne and I participated in the 123 VC Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with VC workshop last summer. We both have K-2 buildings wondering what the best use of videoconferencing is for their grade levels.
So we adapted the Jazz format to 1.5 hours! Tonight we connected 6 K-2 schools with 4-8 teachers at each site. 3 Michigan schools and 3 Texas schools.
We started right off with introductions. Every school did a cool introduction with the components we required: school name, location, mascot, weather/climate, and a unique town tidbit. They were really creative with songs, costumes and chants. Teachers who hadn’t done VC yet were on camera having fun!
Next we had several teachers share the videoconferences they had participated in before so the new teachers could hear the possibilities.
Then we really got into the fun part. We gave teachers 10 minutes to brainstorm some potential projects. They made a huge letter poster with the school name, topic, time & time zone, grade, and the preferred month. In the picture you can see the posters with the ideas. Then we did a round robin sharing the ideas, and then sharing which ones the teachers wanted to do. Voila! In about 45 minutes we had 10-15 project ideas and partners! Incredible! More later as we implement and move forward.
About Janine Lim
Janine Lim, PhD, currently serves as associate dean for online higher education in the School of Distance Education at Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, MI. She and her team support over 200 online courses, provide training for faculty teaching online, and work with the campus infrastructure support of online learning. Her department also provides educational technology and Moodle support for faculty and students. In addition, Janine is responsible for the faculty and courses of the Consortium of Adventist Colleges and Universities. Janine has taught over 15 unique graduate educational technology classes online numerous times over the past 15 years, with some classes attracting participants from all over the world. Her undergraduate teaching includes social media courses for communication and digital media majors. Janine has served on the board of the United States Distance Learning Association since April 2015.
Prior to her work at Andrews University, Janine coordinated distance education for 22 K12 school districts in southwest Michigan for 14 years. In that position, as one of the co-founders of TWICE, Michigan’s K12 Videoconferencing Organization, Janine has spearheaded popular international K12 videoconference projects such as Read Around the Planet and MysteryQuest. While still serving on the board of TWICE, she was instrumental in designing and implementing the CAPspace website for collaborative videoconference projects. Janine also served on a team of Michigan educational technology trainers providing a workshop called ATA Technology Academy.
Her current online learning research interests include successful teacher behaviors, quality online discussions, and student activity patterns in self-paced courses.
Videoconferencing Out on a Lim 
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I’m doing an intra-district Mini Jazz tomorrow afternoon with the 23 ITS representing all of our 42 elementaries. Plan on doing your project brainstorming idea to motivate the ITS to create collaborations between schools within our district. We have 3 hours so i’m also doing a Texas History Mystery simulation. Should be fun!
Sally! Good for you!! I look forward to hearing how it went!