Keystone Conference

The Avon Local Schools and the Lorain County Distance Learning Consortium will be presenting in Indianapolis. Dave Miller and I will be sharing our consortium themes, projects and the teacher in-service programs. We were delighted to see that one of our favorite content providers (Cosi Toledo’s Andy Campbell) will be our session moderator.

The Keystone Conference will be a great opportunity to promote collaborations with other states and organizations. The conference looks to be a great program again this year. If you have not had a chance to see line up, check out http://www.keystoneconference.org/.

Got fiber?

Avon’s story time program took a turn to the odd with all three programs having to be rescheduled due to fiber being removed from the telephone poll at Avon East. Yes you read that correctly the fiber from the telephone poll to the building was missing for about 13 hours. Adlephia cable was able to rerun the cable into the building and all was well again but not in time for the scheduled calls.

In hopes that the school could be online for one or more of the after programs the program was kept on the schedule. Although Avon East could not participate the program went on with Magnolia Schools in Texas. We look forward to working with them again with the rescheduled connections.

Schools interested in becoming part of our story program can contact the Avon Local Schools at HieronymusP@avon.k12.oh.us

New Projects and Opportunities

While today was supposed to be my day off, it became another great day of opportunities to improve student learning through interactive videoconferencing.

Story Time:
Today I did a test call and short meeting with our friends at the Magnolia ISD in Texas for our Story Time Program schedule for September 30, 2005. I will be reading the Giving Tree to Kindergarten and second grade classrooms in a multipoint videoconference.

The Story time program is a program designed for teachers and students new to videoconferencing. After this program we will discuss other applications and usage of the delivery median to enhance student learning.

We will also be working with Rose Tree Media in Pennsylvania in the morning.

Artifact Exchange Project:
We also had the opportunity to meet with our new collaborative partners from Battle Academy for Teaching and Learning in Chattanooga Tennessee. Students from both schools will learn about their community and each others by sharing clues and collecting artifacts which will be sent to each others schools. This program will start in October and finish in December.