Little Big Classroom - East and West LearnTogether

[Anne Mirtschin]

Alvin used the whiteboard to draw the following image and asked “Dear all, please guess what is the animal showing on whiteboard” The responses quickly fell in and the chat became active at increasingly high speed.  However this was not an ordinary classroom but a foretaste of what education and learning can really be about.

A blended classroom

The computer lab nearly burst at the seams, with a mix of fifteen year 8 and 11 students, five adult guests from Hong Kong, two guests from our local GeoPark Kanawinka and 6 school staff, including our principal. This classroom mix was being taught by Mr Young Ng from Hong Kong, who was currently in Sydney Australia about the Hong Kong GeoPark. Elluminate software was used for this virtual classroom.

The adults in the classroom included Mr Alan Wong, the Director of Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation of Hong Kong and his associates  of the Hong Kong Geopark to our school and classroom. They were accompanied by Joane McKnight, director of our own GeoPark, Kanawinka and were co-students in our classroom for lesson 3 on a recent Friday morning.

Technical Difficulties

Just as our class was about to begin, the technical difficulties set in. Having just loaded Camtasia Studio onto my laptop, Young’s powerpoint presentation failed to load. Each slide had to be quickly converted to images and uploaded one at a time. Precious time was lost and I became quite anxious, knowing we were wasting Young’s time and that of our guests. To my annoyance, someone was writing on the board, whilst I was trying to upload - students know that they wait for me to let them write on the board!  Finally some slides were up but due to their large file size, took a long time to upload. Finally Young was able to commence his talk and surprise our guests with his presentation. (Young was one of the initial movers and shakers ensuring that the Hong Kong geopark became a reality.

Engagement

It was only when the lesson had finished that I realised what had happened whilst I was anxiously trying to upload the images. Alvin had decided to make a teachable moment, by drawing images and Chinese characters on the whiteboard, asking students questions in the chat and then responding to them via the chat. Our other visitors also got involved in the discussions.

As Young was sharing photos of the Hong Kong GeoPark, KM was simultaneously sharing his photos/videos on his phone with one of the year 8 students. See Special Visitors from Hong Kong a blog post by Skippy - one of the students involved.

Students were all given toys that represent some aspect of rock formations in the Hong Kong GeoPark.

Evaluation

Our visitors from Hong Kong were able to experience and witness first hand the power of webinars and blended classrooms. They are extremely keen to continue using such a platform for further educational activities.

Joane commented after the session that she enjoyed Young’s formal presentation but whilst this was happening, all this other activity was happening on the side! (The back channel or chat!)  

Students were so excited about this classroom and voluntarily brought it up when they came with their parents to our parent/teacher interviews five days later.

Explore

Both parties are keen to explore the notion of continued communication and connection for learning between the two countries, schools and GeoParks

From Boris, Director of Hong Kong GeoPark:-
We were very much impressed by the elluminate connection section you conducted and are very interested to develop something from it.  As mentioned during our short visit, we have just launched a school programme called “Earth Members” in Hong Kong.  We are glad that your school is interested to join this programme.  Another idea came up from the elluminate connection is a “global geopark E-classroom”.  We can arrange speakers from each side to speak to students of our counterparts through elluminate connections.  Students can then interact with each others including the speakers on a global level through the internet.
From Young Ng
(Elluminate) use such effective tool to share knowledge and feelings.

Personal reflections

1. If I would have known how ‘down to earth’, friendly, knowledgeable and willing to share our guests were, elluminate would have been used for a longer period of time, allowing our guests to introduce themselves, their lifestyles and their work, allowing the interactivity of elluminate and  the back channel of chat/questions etc to further enrich the learning in a classroom where everyone has a ‘voice’. There would be many teachers and many learners!
2. Save the files as a wbd file  prior to a significant webinar using my personal vRoom