Video Conferencing

Virtual Learning & Digital Communities Require Digital Citizenship & Academic Conversation

By: Meghan Thoreau, OSU Extension Educator, Community Development & STEM, Pickaway County

Live clip from our first STEM Club Meeting, Meghan Thoreau, OSU Extension Educator introduces the basics to Virtual Club Etiquette and the rules club members promise to follow. Full presentation link: go.osu.edu/videomeeting_digitalcitizenry

We covered the basics for our club members to follow while in a virtual meeting. If any members missed the meeting a recording link has been added to our Schoology classroom materials. The general topics discussed: Digital Citizen, Academic Conversation, Future of Learning, Cultural Awareness, Video Meeting Etiquette, and Schoology classroom tour. Click here to access the unit’s presentation.

The Rise of Virtual Learning

The rise in virtual learning requires extra effort from today’s students. Students have to develop added knowledge and skills to effectively use the internet and other digital technologies, especially in order to participate responsibly in social and online civic activities and platforms. Digital Citizenship is the quality of habits, actions, and consumption patterns that impact the ecology of digital content and communities. Students have to recognize that their citizenry now extends to their quality of digital engagement.

Image source: https://elearninginfographics.com/citizenship-digital-age-infographic/

Academic Conversation

Not only are there behavioral and decision-making skills required online, but there are core discussion skills that students can start practicing to develop reasoning skills of understanding content and different perspectives. Academic conversations are critical to language and content development. Some basic prompts shared with the club members are below:

Image source:http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr09/vol66/num07/How-to-Start-Academic-Conversations.aspx

We discussed the Future of Learning and how learning systems are shifting and redefining themselves, and although ‘change is a constant,’ the rate of change schools have been going through has been escalated because of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Cultural Awareness Skillset

Being aware of the many different cultures around you and afar is essential to living in a community, attending school, going to college, and being effective in your workplace – whether that be in-person or virtual. Being culturally aware is the backbone of communication and the foundation of respect. It is essential to grow as a person and be able to interact in a broader range of social groups. Being aware of cultural diversity can build confidence in a person and their interactions with others. Cultural intelligence is a 21st Century Skillset and essential to function in today’s diverse workforce!

Image source: https://www.slideshare.net/carol_sim/cultural-awareness-32849515

Video Conferencing Etiquette

We also covered some basic tips on how best to engage, communicate, and listen in virtual meetings. These tips apply in the virtual classroom as well as their future virtual workspace.

Image source: unit presentation slide by Meghan Thoreau.

  • Ensure your technology works correctly – don’t delay meetings, run a few tests prior to a virtual meeting.
  • Be on time.
  • Mute yourself when not speaking – mics pick up minor noises, like coughs, sneezes, dog barks, or typing. It’s distracting.
  • Wear school-appropriate clothing.

    A good example of school appropriate clothing.

  • Frame the camera correctly – sit eye-level to the lens and try to position yourself so that it shows your midsection and up.
  • Have the right lighting – ensure enough lighting is in the room so the video isn’t grainy.
  • Look into the camera – ensure the camera lens is the equivalent of looking into a person’s eyes.

Make sure the lighting is in front of your face and the computer is at the right level to make eye contact with its camera.

  • Pay attention.
  • Have a clean, simple, and organized background or upload an appropriate virtual backdrop.
Schoology Course Walk-thru 

We explored the Schoology course and how it organizes its resources, materials, and STEM Challenges. The materials landing page was designed to have quick links to the Zoom meeting link and club resources.

Virtual STEM Club November Kick-off: video conferencing etiquette, Schoology, bug benefits, and career paths within Entomology!

By: Meghan Thoreau, OSU Extension Educator, Community Development & STEM, Pickaway County

We have a full line up for the month of November. We’re starting with an important first club meeting, Saturday, November 7, 2020 @ 10:00 a.m. where club members and parents get to meet virtually for the first time and say hello. STEM teachers will share the club’s expectations, resource blog site, video conferencing etiquette, and provide a virtual walk-thru of the Schoology Club site.

(Students and parents please note that all Zoom meeting details can be found in Schoology’s Virtual STEM Club class! If you have any questions or issues finding the announcement please email STEM teachers.)

The following two Saturday’s will focus on bugs and learning about the benefits insects perform and provide vital functions within our ecosystems. For example, bugs provide foods for many birds, mammals, and fishes on which fishing and hunting depends. They also decompose dead materials, and reintroduce nutrients into the soil. On Saturday, November 14, 2020 @ 10:00 a.m. Jeni Ruisch, Director of Outreach and Academic Programming, Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University will be joining our club session. Jeni curates a collection of live critters for outreach activities on or near The OSU campus. During COVID-19, she is personally housing the Columbus BugZoo & providing educational outreach programs via Zoom.

She Majored in Psychology, minored in English, Pop Culture Studies, and Neuroscience. Her education focus is on human and non-human animal cognition and behavior, and professional background in husbandry. She has additional education in writing and publishing, with 10-years of professional writing experience, including three years as the editor of a magazine. Hobbies are pretty much like her job, diverse and pet friendly. She has lots of bug pets, stays busy caring and maintaining their enclosures, and also trains dogs. Jeni’s career is quirky, but throughly rewarding. Below are some photos of Jeni with some bugs at the Cincinnati Zoo. (The giant stick bug is over a foot long!)

During our Club meeting we’ll learn more about iNaturalist, an online social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity across the globe. iNaturalist may be accessed via its website or from its mobile applications.

If you can’t wait still we meet, enjoy this Life of Insects educational video by environmental steward, David Attenborough, with some arthropods!

On Saturday, November 21, 2020 @ 10:00 a.m. we’ll engage in more bug challenges and learn about Entomologist Careers and why entomologists are so important?

Video Conferencing Etiquette, Summary Writing Challenge, and Big Bang AR App!

By: Meghan Thoreau, OSU Extension Educator

Virtual STEM Club: video conferencing in a nutshell Prezi, go.osu.edu/videomeetings.

A significant part of the world population is currently on lock-down in an attempt to contain the coronavirus pandemic. People are turning to technology to go to school, to work, to communicate and stay in touch with their classmates, colleagues, friends, and family.

We held our first virtual STEM Club session last Friday through Zoom! It was great to see everyone’s faces, check-in, and teach video conferencing skills and virtual meeting etiquette; click here to review our presentation again with your child.

Young STEMist learning video conferencing skills.

VIDEO CONFERENCING ETIQUETTE (skill building)

Students learned some quick Dos and Don’ts in participating in virtual meetings:

  • Ensure your technology is working
  • Be on time
  • Mute yourself when not speaking
  • Wear school-appropriate clothing
  • Sit eye-level to camera’s lens, framing yourself from the midsection up
  • Ensuring the right lighting
  • Looking into the camera, giving audience eye-contact
  • Pay attention
  • Have a clean, simple, organized background, or upload a virtual backdrop

SUMMARY WRITING CHALLENGE

Summary writing isn’t simple. It’s a difficult academic skill. As with any new skill, especially writing skills, students need to be explicitly taught and practice. The students went through some basic definitions and discussed why summary writing is important because it improves reading skills as you pick out the main ideas of reading; it also helps with vocabulary skills where you paraphrase a reading, altering the vocabulary and grammar as you do so.

A summary is a long text distilled to its essentials. It summarizes the key points worth noting, without writing examples and lengthy details. The sentence structure and vocabulary has been changed, but the main ideas remain. Critical thinking skills are improved as you decide on the main ideas of the reading to include in the summary. Summary writing also improves editing skills as you draft and edit the summary. It’s helpful to work with peers throughout the writing and revision process – cooperative learning.

Screenshot of Time for Kids reading resource: https://www.timeforkids.com/.

The students were asked to visit, Time for Kids, and read two short expository readings, select one article to write a summary on. (Time for Kids has currently opened it’s a digital library for free!) It’s important to underline or take notes of the main ideas as students read. More details to the assignment and submitting are found in your student’s Google Classroom, logging in with their student Teays Valley email address. If you experience any issues with Google Classroom, contact, Meghan, thoreau.1@osu.edu.

BIG BANG AR APP

The students learned about astronomy, elements, atoms, and virtual reality technology in previous club programs. We thought this free App engages many of the lessons learned in a fun interactive way to learn about the story of our universe. The Big Bang AR App is available on both the Google Play and Apple stores.

This is an immersive learning App designed by Tilda Swinton and CERN scientists to take people on an “epic interactive journey through the birth and evolution of the universe” – in mixed reality and augmented reality. It takes students “back 13.8 billion years and discovers how space, time, and the visible universe came to be.” Students can see the universe form in the palm of their hand and virtually “witness the formation of the very first stars, our solar system, and the planet we call home.” This lesson allows students to learn about the microscopic building blocks that make up everything – and everyone – we know, and find out if we are made of stars. The experience ends with the student able to take a #starselfie and share it with your friends and post it in Google Classroom!

Here are a few of the student #starselfie shares:

STEM Stars!

Please stay tuned while we continue to plan and line up guest speakers for our future Virtual STEM Club programs.

Quotes above from the Apple store description: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/big-bang-ar/id1453396628.

 

Zoom Meeting Reminder

20 Online Learning Resources for Kids - Chicago Parent

STEMist – our 1st Virtual Elementary STEM Club is scheduled for Friday, 3 April 2020 at 3 PM. All students were invited to our virtual class through Google Classroom, using student school emails. All Zoom details, meeting links, meeting ID, tech resources, homework, etc. can be found on our class within Google Classroom. We provided some helpful video assignments for the students/parents to watch prior to the virtual club to help better understand the technology that we will be using before jumping into our Zoom meeting. There is also a pre-meeting quiz to make sure each student knows how to log into a Zoom meeting.

We are going to keep the first session simple and make sure everyone understands the technology, Zoom features, Google Classroom, and video conference etiquette. This is a test for us to see if our bandwidth can handle the participant number, etc.

If there are any parents or students with questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to email educators or call/text Meghan directly 607-351-5896.