As the logistics of education have changed the last twenty years, the idea of taking kids outside of their classroom has taken on several new looks. Twenty years ago, if a district or school had a budget to make this happen, one way they accomplished this was by purchasing expensive videoconference equipment and positioning it in one location in a building, or investing in equipment that could move from one location to the next.
In Genesee County, this took on the face of an elaborate system of videoconference distance learning classrooms for schools within the county to share high school courses with each other. In 1997, when this option became available, it was unheard of at this level in the state of Michigan, as well as across the county. 21 school districts shared over 45 courses among 700 students on a daily basis. In 2017 this option still exists in Genesee County. In the early part of the 21st century, while the advent of online learning options propelled to yet another option for distance learning, interactive television (ITV) classes on a daily basis became “old school.” In recent years, a shift has begun again to return to greater interest in daily instruction via ITV. Students still wanted to have a teacher to communicate with on a daily basis in a distance learning environment. Within the last two years, ITV enrollments in Genesee County have begun to escalate to numbers similar to when it was in 1997!
As the ITV program in Genesee County grew, middle schools and elementary schools were set up in fixed locations in all K-8 buildings and a whole new group of students were exposed to interactive learning beyond daily classes, but a chance to meet famous authors, visit places across the country, or even the world, or even interact during a special project covering everything from reading favorite stories across the planet, meeting pen pals “in real time,” to discovering the entire United States with students across the country, celebrating holiday customs around the world, to turning Halloween into “Fall Fun Collaborations” by building monsters that matched, to finishing “scary stories” in a symposium. Then there’s the virtual field trip option to visit the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. to students learning about life in the Pacific Ocean with a real-time tour guide with video conference equipment on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The possibilities are endless. Resources for FREE Virtual Trips! …...and Link here to TWICE (Two Way Interactive Connections in Education)
Today the options to connect has grown exponentially even more, not just in Genesee County, but across the world with classrooms equipped to connect in many ways at any time, at a moment’s notice! Google has changed everything and created the whole concept of Connected Classrooms. Teachers can communicate with each other across the world, students can meet students just like them, or different than them with by simply accessing each other by entering through Google Hangouts.
Today, the classroom is no longer locked into learning from the teacher “Sage on the Stage,” in a fixed distance learning classroom….there’s a whole world of educators, programs and opportunities “across the planet’ at a moment’s notice!
CLICK HERE to see what options await as educators think “outside the box” and tell their students “Oh, the places we can go” just like Dr. Seuss!
Submitted by Martin W. Jennings, Instructional Technologist
Genesee Intermediate School District, Flint, MI
REMC 14E
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