More Video Conferencing

We took part in 3 Video Conferences this week.

The Primary Sixes with De Rank Assendelft and Croftfoot in Glasgow and the Primary Sevens with De Rank Westzaan. It was pretty hectic fitting it all in.

The conference with Assendelft was plagued with popping and crackling which I think was a problem with the Assendelft phone lines. We managed to present to them before we lost the signal. The primary sixes did very well, after our last conference with De Rank, we developed a more show than tell presentation which worked well.

I think our equipment, the falcon ip might be a bit better than the Dutch kit, they do not seem to have camera control. The ability to zoom in on a child or group is a great help.

The second conference with Westzaan had a much better link, the primary sevens had developed a great presentation about the Samba music they are playing in music, introducing the instruments and playing rhythems for the rest of the class and the Dutch children to repeat. Some of the children in primary seven were away at a sports event, so that made it a bit easier too, I think 15-20 children is probably a good maximum.

The last conference was with Croftfoot primary in Glasgow, much simpler to conect too as we are on the same network.

This was a bit rushed on our side and not as well rehersed as it could be. We told them about a few different thing we had been doing including a bit about our first days in school. The Croftfoot children had described their enterprise project about this on a previous conference, we then produced a ‘Radio Show’ recording some of our classes memories of P1 and now told them some of our experences. This I guess scratches the surface of how 2 classes could work together.

A lot of things to think about and some lessons learnt over the week: KISS, show rather than tell with different language groups and plenty of practice is needed.

Over the course of the session every child in my class has participated in a conference, and I think it is heping all with presentation and audiance awareness.