Eye on the World

	Eye on the World
Flag of the USA and Allagash the Moose who visited France		Flag of France and Balinou the Whale who visited the United States
Sharing and Learning through Video Conferencing

First Grade Students' Bright Ideas
for Great Classroom to Classroom Video Communication:

1. Stand in front of a nice, neat area to conference. Clean up the area before you start!
2. The person speaking and showing something should stand away from the rest of the class so that they are the only one on camera.

3. Write down what you want to tell them and your questions before the conference starts.

4. Have things to show the other class to help them understand and to make it more interesting.

5. Press "talk" to talk to them. Wait for the button to turn green.

6. Speak slowly. Just say a few words at a time. Talk loud but not shouting.

7. The teacher can type in the "chat window" what you say, so the other school can read it while they listen to you. It is easier to understand then.

8. Listen carefully. Don't talk all the time or you will not hear them start speaking.

9. Don't be silly or make faces in the camera.

10. Only wave to say hello at the beginning and to say goodbye at the end. Try to say hello and goodbye in their language, too.

compiled by Fisher Mitchell Grade One Students

Our first grade class video conferenced with a first grade class in France following the helpful tips found in the chart above. We learned about each other's country and culture by having a "show and tell" time using our web cam.

This year we compared weather, clothing, fun activities and animals in Maine and France. Below you will find some of the information we gathered and see some of the clips from our exchanges.

Fun in Maine
Click here or on the picture to see a video clip showing a bit of our video conference with France about Fun Activities in the USA. We brought in balls, skateboards and snowboards to show them!

Click here
to see what we drew and wrote about Fun Activities in the USA.

Animals in Maine

To get ready for our video conference about animals we each researched and wrote about an animal in Maine.	Lobster by M.F. A lobster is red and black. They eat mussels, crabs, clams, worms, snails, flounder and other lobsters. It lives to be 100 years old. It's awake at night. They live in the sea. It communicates by snapping its claws.
Then we drew pictures of our animals in Appleworks.
Using our information, we wrote acrostic poems about our animals.	likes crabs or fish but it doesn't like people swims with its tail everywhere and runs with its legs in the sea. by M. F.

We shared our information about Maine animals
with the first grade students at their school in France.

Click on the thumbnail pictures of the video conference.

Click on the seagull to read all of our
Maine Animal Reports and Maine Animal Acrostics

About France

Some things we've learned about France through our video conferences:

They didn't have snow in March, but they do have some in the mountains. We saw someone with a ski jacket. They ski there.
They play basketball. They have a basketball court on the playground. They had tar or cement for a playground surface.
The weather can be cool but not cold there. They are wearing light vests.
There are wild horses in the mountains.
They skateboard, but the road is too busy for them to skateboard to school.
They play Hide and Seek like we do.
They go snowboarding also. One of the parents teaches snowboarding lessons.
They have vultures. A student there has a vulture feather.
They have mountain goats. They make cheese from the milk.
They have pigeons like we do.
It is not the same time zone there. We have to come in before school to video conference with them.

Animals in France

Click here or on the map of France to see a short clip of a video conference in which first grade students in France shared their animal information with us.

A student in Guethary, France, shares information about le pottok, the wild horse in the Basque Country of France.

Click on the horse picture to see more information they sent us about wild horses. Watch out! Some of it is in French!

Concluding Questions and Answers by students about the VC Experience

Resources for Video Conferencing:

What time is it in other parts of the world?
Check here for help with video conferencing times:
World Cities with Times
or
World Map with Times

Would you like to video conference with us?

Send a message to Mrs. Smith's Class.

We use iVisit to do our video conferences with other countries.
Download a free "Lite" version of iVisit here if you are interested.

Assessments and Learning Results associated with this project:

MAP Task, Social Studies PreK-2: Constructing a Map
LAD Task, Social Studies PreK-2: Fun with Maps

LAD Task, Science PreK-2: My Seasons Book

MAP Task, ELA PreK-2: Be a Detective

MAP Task, ELA PreK-2: You Are a Poet, You Know It, Now Show It

See what other Standards are covered by this project::
Eye on the World Sees the Maine Learning Results

Here is what a video conference looks like on the computer screen.

This is how the video conference screen looks. See the next pictures to find out what all the little boxes are on the screen.

	This is where our room is on iVisit.com. It is hidden from visitors unless they know we are there.

This is the "Chat" window, where we type what we will be saying. This way there is no misunderstanding and classes speaking another language understand it more easily and have time for interpretation.

Students' Page	See the students' work, links to video clips, reports and resources
Teachers' Page	Video conferencing tips, links to assessments and resources
Animal Resource Page	A page of links to lots of Maine animal web sites
Student Q & A	What student learned through the video conferencing project
Fun Things to Do	What do we do for fun in the USA?
Animal Reports	Read our Maine animal reports
Maine Learning Results	List of Standards that were addressed through this project