Steps in Organizing a Videoconference
There is a lot of coordination that needs to be done in order to have a successful video conference.
Before you start planning ask yourself if your project would really benefit from a video conference or if the project can be done within the school using another medium. If you cannot see a benefit, other than, it would be cool, then you may want to reconsider.
1. The first step is to come up with a project idea that would truly benefit from video conferencing. With video conferencing being fairly new to the K-12 arena, this may be the hardest step.
2. The next step is to find partners to participate in your
project. Depending on the content of your project, you will want to
invite either additional classrooms to participate or an
expert/content provider. There are a few directories of video
conferencing sites available on the Internet. If you are interested
in doing many projects using video conferencing, you may want to
sign up for a couple of listservs dedicated to discussing projects
and finding partners. The Learning Space listserv is dedicated to
K-12 educators. Another listserv is hosted by Pac Bell. You can
also find content providers at their site: www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/vidconf/directory.html.
The Pac Bell listserv is open to anyone interested in video
conferencing. The majority of users are people from higher ed,
however.
3. The easiest way to share information with other
participants in your project is via the web or email. Be sure to
get email addresses as well as other contact information from all
of your participating classrooms.
4. Set a date. Sometimes it is easier to do this before you
get your partners, as their first question will often be
"When?"
5. If you are scheduling a multi-point (more than two sites)
conference you must schedule it through a bridge. New Links member
schools use MoreNet. Be sure you know what rate your partners
are able to connect. The industry standard is 384k. Be sure you
know how to contact all partners.
6. If you are working with other schools, be sure to include
a project timeline. If participating classrooms are going to be
responsible for sharing information, they need to have plenty of
time to prepare.
7. Create a conference day agenda. You want to be sure to
give everyone involved an opportunity to participate. You might
even want to rotate the order in which schools present so everyone
gets a chance at being 'first.' An agenda should include:
Start and stop time
Who is responsible for each part
Example Agenda
8. Be prepared for the worst and have paper copies of all
materials in case your equipment fails in one way or the
other.
9. Have a good time!
Click here for a three
part model to integrate videoconferencing into the
curriculum
