I am fortunate to have a colleague on the other side of the school (and other side of the grades) who uses and shares her technology integration with our entire school on a regular basis. Yesterday, kindergarten teacher Gail P. sent out a link to the staff, saying that we could watch the incubator in her room via UStream, a live video streaming site.
Gail had popped a webcam in (near?) the incubator. For the entire day, as my students were working on their stopmotion movies, I kept the streaming video up on my Promethean Board so that the sixth graders could watch what was going on in the kindergarten classroom.
First of all, many of my students remember having Gail has their teacher, and so they connected immediately with the video, once they realized what they were watching. They began to tell some stories of kindergarten.
Second, as one class watched, a duck popped out of the egg. The energy in the room was like a wave of excitement as they all cheered and shouted. For the rest of the hour, they would regularly update themselves on the status of the duck, even as another egg seemed to cracking, too. When Gail herself and a few of her students appeared on the screen, my students shouted out to her (as if she could hear).
I love that Gail and I were connected through technology yesterday. That was pretty cool.
I’ll put in the embed code to the live stream, but Gail has to reset the video later on today, so here is the direct link to the ducks, if you are interested.
Live streaming video by Ustream
Peace (in the hatchlings),
Kevin
Thanks for tuning in. We had an amazing day and even after 10 years of doing this project, I am still learning. This time the lessons were about buying through eBay and shipping through the USPS (ouch,) incubation times for pure pekin ducks instead of the pekin/mallard mix we’ve used in the past, and of course the lessons in tech this new twist gave me. I saw more possiblities. Ustream has a chat window and at the very end of the day, one of the kids posted a thoughtful reply to the chatter going on. The invented spelling was great and I was pleased that the student took on big challenges with words like thanks, supporting, appreciate. Wonder if I can find the actual chat log on the site somewhere.
Well anyway, thanks Kevin for sharing with your/our students. It is fantastic having you to share tech learning with.