Blogs and VC

So I've been trying to keep on my advertised topic for my blog - videoconferencing! But here at NECC I've been learning other things besides VC along the way!

Right now I'm in the Lessons Learned: Creating Communities Online panel session, and Anne Davis is sharing how she has been using blogs in her classroom. What jumped out for me was her comment, "I've learned more from blogs than any other inservice I've been to." This is why I'm blogging about VC! And I encourage those VCers out there doing VC to share your experiences online too! This is a way for us to learn from each other. We're still pushing the edges with videoconferencing and we need to share with each other as much as possible! As many of you know, I comb the web regularly looking for new resources and examples of the use of VC. If more of us VC people were blogging, we could expand the collaborative experiences between students that we keep saying we want to do more!

Incidentally, the panel brought Anne in via Skype. Audio quality was excellent. Maybe next year's NECC will bring in presenters with VSkype!

The other thing to consider is this - how can web blogs support collaborative VC projects? We've already dabbled in this with an ASK videoconference with blogging support by Jim Wenzloff, Macomb ISD, Michigan.

Back to the session - Tim Lauer is saying the same thing as Anne. "I wish the curriculum people were blogging" so we could be learning from the experts and the people in the trenches teaching students and working with curriculum... I like his suggestion too - that teachers write a paragraph a week about what is happening in their classroom. If VCing teachers were doing this, think how much we could learn from each other!

So if you start up a VC blog, let me know and I'll add a link to your blog here! It's not all that hard, just a commitment to an occasional reflection on your educational VC experience! You can do it!!

Tag: NECC