Playing the role of students,
participants experience popular
videoconferencing formats,
such as Read Around the
Planet, a celebration of reading;
Monster Match, a descriptive
writing exchange; MysteryQuest, a geography game;
and ASK, a literature-based
program in which students
interview an author or specialist.
Here’s a list of tools you’ll need to begin videoconferencing:
h H.323 or IP room-based videoconferencing system
h Skype for facilitators’ back-channel chat and participants’ chat to support their
small-group planning meeting via videoconference
h Google Docs for facilitators to share files and for participants to write lesson plans
h Flickr to share photos of the workshop and to enhance the feeling of learning
together across the distance
h 123vc.wordpress.com, a blog to reflect on learning
h Twitter to continue the conversation throughout the school year
Thinking about participating in a Jazz Workshop? Begin by reviewing the website at
www.123vc.org to see the tools and technologies we use. You will need access to
a training facility with the ability to do at least two H.323 videoconferences.
Learning within the community is enhanced by the continual
introduction of newcomers. The newcomers provide inexperience.
Their involvement encourages reflection.
The Lead Facilitators’ Role
A new facilitator is often overwhelmed with the complexity of the
workshop and the details that must be
attended to. The lead facilitators start
by giving new facilitators simple tasks,
such as preparing an introduction to a
simulation or debriefing a simulation
using an existing PowerPoint overview. As new facilitators gain skills,
they begin to contribute knowledge,
handouts, and resources to improve
the quality of the workshop. As they
learn the components of the Jazz
Workshop, they learn the culture of
the workshop, the ways we integrate
videoconferencing in the curriculum,
and the foundational beliefs of constructivist learning and collaboration.
In the first year of facilitating the
Jazz Workshop, the newcomers get the
big picture or broad view of what it is
all about. After they understand how
the workshop operates, the facilitators
compare notes and learn professional
development techniques from each
other. Web 2.0 tools, such as Skype
chat, facilitator blogs, and Twitter,
contribute to the circulation of information and knowledge within the Jazz
learning community.
The professional development
model of the Jazz Workshop would
not be possible without the collaborative technologies that connect us. In
addition, we sometimes meet each
other face to face at conferences,
where we strengthen those relationships. The benefit to our participants
is an incredibly diverse and engaging
workshop.
Janine Lim has been coordi-
nating videoconferencing for
22 school districts in southwest
Michigan since 1999. She is a
cofounder of Two Way Inter-
active Connections in Educa-
tion ( www.TWICE.cc), and
she teaches online classes about using video con-
ferencing. Read her blog about videoconferencing
at www.vcoutonalim.org.
