"I Can & I Will" was my mantra this morning as i struggled to get Marco School connecting with Pitt Island School through a skype vidcam call. Did i say just the other day that skyping was easy? Ha ha not on a school network. I knew i would have some setting up to do but could i get it to work - well yes i could 3 hours later! I should have thought to turn off the server firewall in the first instance but no that was the last thing i thought of. We did eventually change the settings on the firewall instead of turning it off totally - so all set for the next time. Our kids used that setup time (in both our schools) to research about each other on the internet. In that time also our kids had taken photos around the school and uploaded them to picturetrail.com where the Pitt Island children were able to view them and leave comments. Our kids were really excited to be talking to the Pitt Island kids so far away though they did need some instruction on VC etiquette - not shouting, or talking all at once or saying things you shouldn't as everyone can hear you... We chatted for a little while and the kids introduced themselves but a short while in the audio on the classroom connection degraded so badly that we had to call it a day. A bit of a rocky start but all keen for another skype next week but this time on the school office computer which for some reason?? provides clearer picture & sound. In the meantime I hope our Marco kids will be updating their blogs and maybe have a few comments going around them :-)
Professional reflections on education in NZ - Dancing on the shifting carpet
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
I Can & I Will & They Did
"I Can & I Will" was my mantra this morning as i struggled to get Marco School connecting with Pitt Island School through a skype vidcam call. Did i say just the other day that skyping was easy? Ha ha not on a school network. I knew i would have some setting up to do but could i get it to work - well yes i could 3 hours later! I should have thought to turn off the server firewall in the first instance but no that was the last thing i thought of. We did eventually change the settings on the firewall instead of turning it off totally - so all set for the next time. Our kids used that setup time (in both our schools) to research about each other on the internet. In that time also our kids had taken photos around the school and uploaded them to picturetrail.com where the Pitt Island children were able to view them and leave comments. Our kids were really excited to be talking to the Pitt Island kids so far away though they did need some instruction on VC etiquette - not shouting, or talking all at once or saying things you shouldn't as everyone can hear you... We chatted for a little while and the kids introduced themselves but a short while in the audio on the classroom connection degraded so badly that we had to call it a day. A bit of a rocky start but all keen for another skype next week but this time on the school office computer which for some reason?? provides clearer picture & sound. In the meantime I hope our Marco kids will be updating their blogs and maybe have a few comments going around them :-)
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1 comment:
Rick at Pitt Island school is a great guy who is doing cool things to keep his distant kidlets connected to the wide world of info.
We had great fun connecting with them via blogging after last year's learning@schools.
cheers!
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