Haochen Zhang live video conference in EPISD from Steve Putnicki on Vimeo.

Last week, the El Paso Symphony Orchestra hosted guest pianist Haochen Zhang, a Van Cliburn gold medal winner. One of our high schools was lucky enough to actually have Mr Zhang come in and give a talk about life in the world he lives in. His mother bought him at piano when he was three because as she was reading the "American Readers Digest" it said children that play a musical instrument develop higher IQ's. Mr. Zhang played in one of our newly installed Video Conference Distance Learning Room designed by Chris Harmon of I-2-I technologies. We connected Zhang to three other campuses. He is amazingly talented and the students were engrossed in his performance at all the sites.

Think about what is taking place, and how the students at the far sight are getting ALMOST the exact same experience as the students in the room with him. That is powerful.

On a lighter note, we all know the appropriateness of questions and importance of believing the mic is always on even if it is muted. As I was facilitating I asked one of the other high schools for a question and one of the girls asked Zhang to marry her! She was very embarrassed when she realized he'd heard her. Zhang just laughed.