Hi All

Just a few quick notes of introduction and hopefully some questions? Shawn asked which system we (are using. We (Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB)  have Tandberg endpoints and a Border controller. We have been connecting to content providers such as Rene Brunet at the Biosphere, and VROC, the Virtual Researcer on Call Project, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, the Indianapolis Zoo, the Centre for Puppetry Arts and others for several years now.

We have been a part of the Ontario Ministry of Education Pilot in developing the use of Video Conferecing in the eLearning Ontario initiative in conjunction with the Algoma District School Board. We have been successful in growing the technology but still have a long way to go!

I am looking forward to meeting all of you at the conference in person andwill through via video. I hope that we can become aware of many of the divergent advancements in the use of video conference in education and make connections that  will allow us to continue with bringing a global perspective to Canadian schools.

What do you percieve to be the barriers? Any ideas or experiences that can help the group overcome the issues!

How do we continue after these initial contacts are made?The Blog/Wiki can be very effective!

Please forward along 4 slides on Power Point which outline who you are, The basics of your organization, Your contact info and what you would like to get from the symposuim. Shawn and I will put all the slides together and we will show them at the Symposuim and burn them to CD for you to take away as well as post them to this site.

Jeff Brown

The Ottawa Youth Orchestra Academy is a non-profit, charitable organization which provides orchestral training for young people in the Ottawa region. Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2007, the Academy has an enrollment of 320 students who participate in over a dozen ensembles including strings, winds, brass, harps and two full symphonic orchestras.

This year, the Academy has initiated a broadband videoconference educational program called TeleMusic. With the assistance of the OCDSB, we are planning a series of music education sessions, to be delivered during Education Week. 

As president of the OYOA and main organizer of TeleMusic, I look forward to attending the Symposium on Feb 13 and meeting others who are using this technology.

Barry De Young 

From:  Mei-Lan Marko  Rideau HS   Teacher Librarian  OCDSB

 I am the Teacher Librarian at Rideau HS and our high schools all have videoconferencing technology.  Our equipment is housed in our library and I am interested in using this to enhance student learning.  We would like to videoconference with classes in our Board and throughout the province using curriculum ideas as the basis.  It is certainly a fun way to exchange knowledge and have discussion with students studying similar units/topics. We have a large ESL population so they are quite eager to share some of their diverse experiences.   Looking forward to making contacts with other interested participants.

 My "techie" skills are quite limited but I certainly look forward learning as I go and making good use of our equipment  :)

Has anyone used webconferencing successfully in video conferencing?  We have used it extensively in our board and it works great...not as high quality, but very ubiquitous, which results in a large buy-in.  I will be talking about that in my session at the symposium.

Anyone else have similar results?

/shawn

I am the teacher-librarian at Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School in Orleans, Ontario.  My interest in video-conferencing stems informal conversations with colleagues (particularly Mei-lan) and from research for an article I agreed to research and write for the Ontario School Library Association's Teaching Librarian Magazine. 

I have been using the Linux based Isabel software for interactions with teacher-librarian colleagues and for one teleconference with another school when our local M.P.P. was visiting.  We are approaching the point when the technology will be transformed from a barrier to a faciliator of collaboration.

I am very interested in finding out how we can use video-conferencing technology to expand the horizons of the school in a way that makes the technology fade into the background and communication become the dominant element in the teleconferencing experience.

 I look forward to meeting everybody tomorrow!

 Derrick

Hi Everybody:

I am with the Renfrew County District School Board and we have a strong interest in VC but we do not have the capability. We even have trouble with Macromedia Breeze due to narrow bandwidth so our ability to communicate through the Internet is limited to e-mail, blogs, web sites etc.

We have seven high schools (5 small ones) in a large geographic area so any meetings take extra release time for teachers to drive and we have enormous mileage expenses. When we do meet it is usually a subject rep from each school and it is rare that all teachers of a subject would get together. We would prefer to see more face to face time between our subject teachers especially in the isolated subjects where there might only be one or two teachers per school. Hopefully, VC might help us.

Dave Bishop
Secondary Initiatives Leader
RCDSB

Good morning!

 I am the vice-principal at Broadview Public School in Ottawa.  I have participated in a number of video-conferencing projects with the board and within the schools that I have been at.  I have used NetMeeting, Skype and Breeze to conduct these activities.  I am interested in using VC as a vehicle for professional development and for bringing rich, authentic activities into all schools (but especially our beacon schools).

 Short and sweet!  I have to get to the symposium.

Take care,

 Brent

Hi All

Thanks to everyone EVERYONE for yesterday. I think it went very well and that the fact we were all so involved...and exhausted at the end of the day pays tribute to how we all worked at Making the Connections with others. I am writing this on the train on the way back to Kawartha Pine Ridge Distict and hope we can continue to move foward. Thanks for the dinner later as well as there was considerable buzz developing and I think we can turn that Buzz into and Loud Hum

Jeff

I would like to thank Boris and the Tandberg folks (Mark Sterling, Tim Rollwagen...hope I didn't forget anyone) for picking up the dinner afterwards at the restaurant...I know the folks there really appreciated that and your involvement and the sponsorship of the break.

Take care,

/shawn

Thanks also to Polycom for their sponsorship of one of the breaks.  Their involvement was much appreciated.

/shawn

 First, thank you to Jeff and Shawn for bringing us all together.  It was well worth it. 

Second, thanks to Polycom and Tandberg for the snacks in the morning and afternoon respectively.  As stimulating as everything was, it's always nice to take a break and chat. 

Finally, thanks to Tandberg for dinner on Tuesday evening.  It was a good opportunity to either start new or continue conversations from the afternoon.

One of the outcomes of our symposium was to have a steering committee get together in person or virtually to discuss our vision of video conferencing and how it is connected to education.  Karen Andrews, in her endnote, said that in order for us to approach government agencies and corporate sponsors we need to have a common message. 

Any ideas?  Could we adopt Alberta Education's vision?  Adjust it to reflect our situation? 

I look forward to hearing your ideas.

Karin

If you took any photos at the symposium, please send the best of them to me (kdavidsontaylor@rbg.ca).  One or two of these will be used in a article about the symposium in "Professionally Speaking"  I'm not sure which issue, but hopefully the June issue.

I will also need some people who would be willing to be interviewed.  Let me know if you are interested.  I'm counting on Jeff and Shawn of course. 

Thanks for your help,

Karin

Here are some great sites that  I have used. 

www.vcalberta.ca (see the videos!)

www.kn.att.com/wired/vidconf/intro.html - Video Conferencing for Learning

www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/%7Ejtb/jtap-037.htm - Practical Guidelines for Teaching with Video Conferencing

http://kc.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080/education/index.jsp -  Educatior's Knowledge Centre

www.d261.k12.id.us/VCing/ - Strategies for Using Videoconferencing Technology in the K-12 Classroom:
A Teacher's Digital Handbook

www.interactiveclassroom.ca

www.cilc.org - Centre for Interactive Learning and Collaboration

www.twice.cc - Two Way Interactive Connections in Education

www.global-leap.com - Developing interactive videoconferencing
across the curriculum in the UK and around the world

Hope these are useful for you all.  If you know of any others, please pass them along.

Karin

I had to drop from the symposium in order for the Endnote speaker to come in over videoconference, as I was videoconferencing in.  I also noticed that there was no recording of the endnote speaker on the web site.

sooooo ... I was just hoping someone would be willing to share their notes from the keynote.  If anyone did an audio recording< I would love to get that.

Thanks