Because this project has grown so large, many people are involved to make it successful. TWICE continues to invest volunteer time and funding to make the project sustainable. Polycom, a manufacturer of H.323 videoconferencing equipment, sponsors the project, which allows for a dedicated contact person for questions and assistance with registration and matching the classes with each other. A team of Verification Partners from across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom laid the foundation for this project by assistance with test calls to verify the equipment profiles entered in the registration system. The matching system uses the information about how the system connects to match classes together. School, district, and regional level videoconference coordinators work hard encouraging teachers to participate, managing test calls between partner classes, and smoothing the way for successful connections. Most importantly, teachers plan creative interesting presentations for their partner classes and weather the challenges that can arise with real-time classroom-to-classroom connections.
Students Read Around the Planet
March 2011 saw high participation in Read Around the Planet. A total of 1902 classes participated, reaching an estimated 43,000 students from approximately 1300 schools. Six countries participated this year: United States (90%), Canada (8%), United Kingdom, Guatemala, and Costa Rica (less than 1% each). Four states participated for the first time: Delaware, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Mississippi.
By Janine Lim
Read Around the Planet is a celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, where students share reading activities via H.323 videoconferencing. This videoconference project is organized by TWICE, Michigan’s K12 videoconferencing organization, and has grown from 200 participating classes in 2002 to 1900 classes in March 2011. The program occurs during the two weeks surrounding March 2, and is a videoconference celebration of the National Education Association’s Read Across America. The project has been called Read Around the Planet since 2007, when international classes began participating. Since the project started in Michigan, Michigan’s participation has been the highest of any state, until the last two years when Texas and New York outranked us.
Classes participating in Read Around the Planet share their learning in many ways. Some classes act out poetry and stories; others write and share original poetry and accompanying illustrations. Some classes mail packages to each other with artifacts from their community, original writing, or treats. Others try to involve the other class in defining concepts, giving a quiz, guessing book characters, playing a learning game, or even performing a poem together. All of the sessions end with students asking and answering questions about their community and comparing their daily lives.
22 | Fall 2011 | MACULJOURNAL
While the project is very appealing to elementary classes, some secondary English and world language classes also participate (See graph). The world language classes share their presentations in the target language, and use the target language to communicate as much as possible. Spanish was the most popular in 2011 with 109 classes, followed by French (33 classes), English as a Second Language (32) and Special Education (16).
After the videoconferences in 2011, 26% of the teachers and technology coordinators completed the Read Around the Planet Evaluation form. 85% of the respondents were teachers, 8% were the school technology specialist, and 11% were the videoconference coordinator.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32