Webcam Woes

"Please stay tuned... we are experiencing technical difficulties." THIS seems to be the current motto for my classroom.

As previously stated, Wesley and I have tried (on multiple occasions) to collaborate with our technology but have hit many brick walls. Persistence is key. I have no doubt that we will work out the kinks and have an awesome collaborative classroom environment. My worry is when? If I had a genie in a bottle- I would wish for more hours in a day. Then I could finally have enough time to sit and perfect all of my technology skills, among other things.

In my graduate courses for my teaching certification, one of my professors was adamant about being prepared: "Always prepared, often OVER prepared" she used to say. Never more has this rung true than with the integration of technology this year. I can capture and lose their attention in a matter of seconds- depending on how prepared my technology lesson is.

Granted, there are days when you are ready to rock and the technology doesn't cooperate. Our WizIQ session was a perfect example of that. This is when I come full circle to persistence. I started the year gun shy, afraid that if I wasn't fully prepared that I shouldn't use my technology. I soon realized this was a silly justification (almost like saying I shouldn't pull out my Spanish/English dictionary in the middle of class) We are all learners, and the students seem to become more invested when they understand that I am learning along with them. I have now realized that my students have more patience and dedication for the implementation of technology than I do. They'll wait quietly while I figure it out, that is, if they aren't already helping me.

First Collaborative Project

Just before Halloween Kate and I connected our classrooms for a cooperative project. Using the online WizIq service, we tried to share a lesson on the four basic math operations between Kate's second-grade class and my fourth-grade class. My class created math problems, in both English and Spanish, and discussed how to teach the math to the younger, but no less eager, students.
Well, the lesson did not go as smoothly as we would have hoped. While we did test run the WizIq service ahead of time, multiple problems still cropped up on the day we tried it. Kate scheduled the lesson, but we were unable to share control at the same time. Her students' work solving the problems never appeared on my Smartboard, so we couldn't quite guide her students through the problem. We also couldn't get me webcam video to appear on her board, no was the sound clear enough to really be helpful. Needless to say, the lesson did quite meet our expectations. Still, our students were very engaged by the experiment, and we look forward to try again sometime this month with another collaborative project. Have any ideas about another service where we could work together online?