Friday, March 2, 2007

World Video Conferencing

One of my favorite television ad campaigns promotes Cisco System's TelePresence.
This one's my favorite: check out the video. Staring contests are great fun, but think of the possibilities for collaboration, exploration, and interactivity that are created by virtually connecting a classroom here in Commerce City with classrooms across the nation and the globe.
While I'm just beginning to learn about the TelePresence system, I know enough to realize I want something like it in our classrooms.
Is there any teacher who wouldn't like to offer students (let alone him/herself) a chance to build relationships spanning the globe? Now more than ever, we have the ability to equip our classrooms for collaborative learning and real-world problem solving.

1 comment:

Joseph Miller said...

For the future of learning there is no question that this would be a good investment. I wonder if we can't start to use some of the low tech options in the mean time on project (Skype for example).

What really compels me is the idea. What would a math collaboration look like? I have a vision of classrooms in Viet Nam sending challenges to our students in solving real-world problems. Perhaps sometimes they would even share presentations (saved and streamed or live with presentation software--I like the live learning solution from Elluminate (http://www.elluminate.com/). Could you imagine a student presenting to their colleagues in China why they solved a problem the way they did? The Chinese could chat or use a mic to ask a question.