ASK Project

Earlier this week two El Paso ISD schools had the pleasure of being part of a video conference with Vietnam Veterans thanks to Janine Lim of Berrien ISD. This program was modeled after an ASK. ASK is the author, specialist, knowledge program organized thru TWICE - Two Way Interactive Connections in Education. ASK is an organized process that provides students with the opportunity to interview an author or a subject specialist in the topic they are reading about in a novel. For this particular conference the students had read Eve Bunting's The Wall and then had the opportunity to ask questions of the Vietnam Veterans who were in Michigan. Thanks to Sherita for sending me the pics! Be sure and check out other ASK programs from earlier this year. On a technical note, notice the gentleman in the second picture turning on the microphone unfortunately most of our video conferencing equipment does not have a remote control to mute the microphone thus someone has to physically turn on and off the mics.

Adobe Connect & Skype

The photo on the left is Adobe Connect & the one on the right is Skype. Skype had much less pixelation and it two way interactive video and audio. Our division has just purchased Adobe Connect for training purposes - the district choose this solution because on the first day of school we have thousands of teachers and attendance clerks that need to be trained on a new computer system on the first day of school. Adobe Connect is one way video (presenter) to upto 50 computers - I believe you can do more but thats all we purchased. The participants can interact thru a chat function. It takes about 2 minutes to set up a meeting and then you just send a web link to the participants. The presenter can share their desktop and documents. The reason we used Skype during this test was because I need to be able to interact with the presenter and it would of been cumbersome to use the chat feature. I'll let you know how the Adobe Connect Training goes. I know that some school districts are using Adobe Connect for their Principals meetings to save time and money.