What an exciting day - we just finished our first Day of Jazz. This is the third Jazz training I've been involved with/facilitated. "Jazz up your Curriculum with VC" is by far the most comprehensive staff development training to immerse teachers in video conferencing. This morning the teachers did a variety of exchange projects- these are great point to point classroom vc projects - exchange projects are easy, fun and get the students engaged and can easily be adapted.
One part of Jazz is a blog for all the participants to share their reflections - I would like to
share this one from Crystal: "When I woke up this morning I had no idea that I would be chatting with people in Ohio and deep Texas, and I never would have thought I would have visited a rain forest in Arkansas. I am extremely excited to see how the rest of the week unfolds. I will definitely use videoconferencing in my classroom next year."
The rainforest Crystal is referring to is Greenbush they are a "content provider." They modeled a VC lesson for our teachers at the seven jazz sites - Lisa at Greenbush even sent each site Madagascar Cockroaches - we had an activity sheet and had to find out information about the cockroaches & then there was a Q&A. The teachers were just like students in a vc with Greenbush.
There are many content providers and many searchable databases to find a virtual field trip that best suits your classroom. Most content providers do cost money and you will need to allow enough time to get it organized ie purchase order, test call, pre activities. Under the searchable database you can search for free content providers. Most all content providers have pre and post activities. Check out the Teachers Content Providers Choice Awards for 2007 & 2006. This list is a great place to start to looking for a content provider for a virtual field trip for your classroom.
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