Blog 4

In an article, “Video Conferencing as a tool to link colleges of education with K-12 Schools: A P3T3 Project Initiative,” by James Lehman and Rabih Razzouk explains how distance education technologies can offer capabilities that can will better students who are becoming teachers. The use of video will help diversify classroom settings that are being observed and introduce enhanced technology that is being used outside the usual classroom settings be observed in the usual observation setting. The P3T3 project (Purdue Program for Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to use Technology) is using video conferencing to connect university students who are studying education with K-12 classrooms and students. This would usually occur through a traditional field placement setting. The P3T3 project uses high quality inexpensive video conferencing equipment that is used over the internet. The equipment used in Polycom, which makes classroom to classroom and computer based equipment that can be used on a desktop. The room to room system can allow up to 4 sites to be connected with one another. This can even be thought to be used in another area of collaborating classrooms across the world or nation. ViaVideo another system produced; by Polycom is a windows-based system that allows file sharing, whiteboard, chat, and file transfer plus video conferencing. With the use of any technology there are setbacks. The setbacks found so far are interference with the school’s firewall, video conferencing requires high bandwidth (128Kbps) this is a lot of space and memory and network traffic and high use can cause interruptions and connection failure.

5 Disciplines:

Systems Thinking- The system as a whole needs to work together. In order for the university students and the K-12 classrooms to be able to observe and communicate with each other.

Personal Mastery- For the University student, who is studying education, to be able to learn from their observation experience using the new technology and observing the distance K-12 classroom

Mental Models-With the assumption of Purdue being set in a rural area, Purdue Education students were able to experience new technology and observe a more diverse K-12 classroom through the implementation of the P3T3 project.

Shared Vision- The student and the K-12 classroom learn from each other. This can occur by communicating and observing one another, through video conferencing and the Polycom system.

Team Learning- Through the creation of an opportunity with the K-12 Classroom, and the University Students using video conferencing both groups will learn from one another and the experience.

Reference: Lehman, J. and Razzouk, R. (2003) Video Conferencing as a tool to link colleges of education with K-12 Schools: A P3T3 Project Initiative: April 20, 2007, from Purdue University.

Website: http://p3t3.soe.purdue.edu/SITE_3.pdf