Video Conference Connects Local Students to North Carolina School

As soon as the fourth-graders in Ben Peine's classroom at Pine Bend Elementary School finished performing their skit, they were honored with a resounding applause.

But the clapping didn't come from their classmates or teacher. Instead, it was transmitted via web camera from a classroom more than 1,000 miles away.

The hour-long video conference between Peine's students and a fourth-grade class in North Carolina was a moment months in the making for Peine. Earlier this spring, he and several other Inver Grove Heights School District staff members penned a $7,500 grant request to purchase three high-definition web cameras and accessories.

Since receiving the cameras this summer, Peine and other elementary school classrooms in the district have put them to good use. In addition to the video conference on Tuesday with students from North Carolina, Peine's class has taken a virtual tour of the Baseball Hall of Fame and visited with two other classrooms, he said. Students at Salem Hills Elementary School also completed a video conference with the International Wolf Center in Ely late last year.

During the conference on Tuesday, Peine's students and their North Carolinian counterparts presented skits based on a book written by Jerri Spinelli — a book both classrooms read in preparation for the conference. The classes also posed questions about the book to one another via the web cameras.

"We wanted to shrink the world a little bit and bring kids directly to other parts of the county and other parts of the world in a really authentic way," Peine said.

Technology In the Classroom

At a time when budget cuts have affected the district's ability to send kids on traditional field trips, the video conferences have helped "open up the world" for local students, Inver Grove Heights School District Technology Coordinator Lynn Tenney said.

But the conferences are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Inver Grove Heights School District's innovative employment of technology in the classroom. Earlier this year, the district received a the Minnesota Technology Leadership Team award from TIES — Technology Information Education Services — for its use of educational technology.

"This small district has taken giant steps to prepare its students for the 21st Century," the organization noted in its award. "The district is challenging old perceptions with data and trying new approaches with technology."

 The district is currently using iPods to teach students foreign language fluency , Tenney said. First-grade students at Hilltop Elementary School are also using iPads to build reading comprehension as part of another technology iniative. Interactive, digital "Smartboards" — part whiteboard, part overhead projector and part computer — also play a prominent role in classrooms across the district.

The 'digital literacy' students attain from projects like these will be invaluable for students in "tomorrow's society," Peine said. While technological skills are helpful, Tenney said, they isn't the only end goal for the district. Instead, she said, it's simply a new means by which students can learn.

"The technology isn't what we're teaching, it's the tool we're using to teach other things," Tenney said.

As for the students in Peine's class?

The video conference, they said, taught them public speaking skills and improved their knowledge of geography.

"I learned listening, and not being afraid speak in front of an audience," 10-year-old Ryan Anderson said.

"I learned how to speak fluently in front of people that I haven't been around a lot," 9-year-old Lexi Reichenbach added. "I think we should do it again, because we learned a lot of other things from the other class."

Correction: The name of the district's technology coordinator was spelled incorrectly in an earlier version of this story.