Video conferencing in the curriculumCase study 2: Chalvey Early Years Centre, Slough - early years storytelling

Schools taking part:

Chalvey Early Years Centre, The Green, Chalvey
Arbour Vale Special School, Slough

Background

The Chalvey Early Years Centre is an education establishment with wrap around care. We have 160 full time equivalent places for three and four year old children and a special needs resource for assessment purposes. The children who attend the assessment unit are age 3 -5 yrs. The Centre offers wrap around care for the nursery children and the local infant school, ie breakfast and after school care plus holiday clubs. We are open 48 weeks in any year. The staff consist of teachers, all trained or experienced in the early years, qualified NVQ 2 (NNEB) and some LSA assistance.

Our client group is 87.7% ethnic minority groups, the main group being made up of Pakistani families. We are in a nationally recognised area of deprivation, supporting one parent families, asylum seekers and many families where English is an additional language.

We are part of an EAZ and have accessed ICT facilities through them including our video conferencing equipment. We are complete novices at using video conferencing and have gained our knowledge from 'playing' with the equipment, in true nursery practice, and having Mike Griffith of Global Leap to instruct us and guide us through.

Aims

• Experience of being on television.
• Communicating with other children in other settings.
• Sharing stories across the airwaves.
• Learning some new songs.
• Training staff to use equipment and feel comfortable about being 'on camera' as storytellers.

Curriculum context

Foundation Stage curriculum Areas of Learning: Communication, Language and Literature, Personal, Social and Emotional, Knowledge and Understanding of the World.

Storytelling has an important place within early years. It is essential that we introduce children to storytelling and books as early as possible. The use of video conferencing is another resource to encourage children to listen and enjoy stories.

Preparation

Members of staff involved: Head teacher, ICT co-ordinator, NNEB (responsible for story sacks).

The idea was to have a two or three way link with other early year settings to share stories and singing activities. We intended to introduce a number of children over a period of five weeks. In the event, all five links were with Arbour Vale.

We planned for each session to include a story, some songs and an opportunity to ask questions of the other setting. The children involved from our setting were chosen on the day and we did managed to include a number of different children who we felt were ready to participate in the experience.

One week before the sessions.

• Trial run with Arbour Vale, connecting to Mike. No children involved. HT and ICT co-ordinator and NNEB involved from our end. The NNEB read a story across the link to give her the practice and to see how to change the environment so that all involved would have a good view of the story. We had decided to not use props, as we had originally planned, as these proved too difficult to manage.

Day before.

• Confirmed with the storyteller she was ready with a story as stand by in case Arbour Vale are not ready with a story, and selected up to 10 children to be involved.
  
• Checked with ICT co-ordinator that she was ready.
  
• Reminded the staff about the video conferencing link, especially those staff whose room we were going to use.

The video conference

We set the room up in the way we had practiced. 30 minutes before the link was due, we set up the link to confirm that it was working. 10 minutes before the link the children were brought in and seated. We had seven children for this session (others were away or did not wish to come in as it was a strange environment to them). The children participating had the chance to see themselves on television and then settle down to the new environment. The story reader settled herself down and got the children ready for the link.

Our first story time session went very well. The children from both settings said hello, as did their teachers. The Arbour Vale teacher had agreed to do the first story and so the children were turned to watch the storyteller. During the story the children were very settled and were responsive to the questions asked by the storyteller.

The children were not put off by the short time delay in the sound or the picture. They did not comment on this. While the story was being read, the children could see a close up of the book on the screen and not the other children, so there was no distraction.

Once the story was finished, the storyteller asked questions and both sets of children had a chance to answer some.Next we shared six songs, three chosen by each school, lead by the storyteller. The storyteller also taught us a new song, which we all enjoyed.

Good byes were said and confirmation from the children that they would be back next time.Some of our children went back to their teachers and told them about the experience.

We followed this session with another four video conference links with Arbour Vale over the next six weeks. Each week, we agreed with Arbour Vale who would read the story the following week.

STORIES: If we were telling the story, the storyteller chose it. We used big books as the pictures were easier to see. One member of the staff wrote her own Christmas story as we did not have a big book of Christmas stories. She produced the big book by scanning and enlarging the pictures and text.

SONGS: The songs were selected by the children during the session. These tended to be those old favourites like 'Twinkle Twinkle' and 'Baa Baa Black Sheep'. However as we were in the festival season, EID, Divali and Christmas, the children wanted to share some of the new songs learnt around these festivals.

QUESTIONS: The children who wanted to ask questions of the children we met on the video conference link were encouraged to do so. As the sessions unfolded this did not always happen as the children we linked with were special needs and communicated through signs and through their teachers. The equipment was not as sensitive as the human ear and some of children are very quiet speakers.

Technical issues

• The bridge was not always effective. The connection between us and other schools sometimes failed (no picture or sound).
• Video image and sound were generally okay.
• Our original Swift site was not functioning. No picture. Mike came in to change it.
• We lost one storytelling session due to lack of signal. This was cancelled well before the children came involved.
• Our technical ability improved with coaching from Mike, which helped to enhance the experiences.
• The microphone was not always sensitive enough to pick up all the children's comments as a number of them spoke very softly. Teachers had to interpret.

Learning outcomes

• Children were very excited seeing themselves on television. We spent some time exploring this experience.
• All the children watched and listened attentively.

Areas of Learning
Stepping Stones

• PSE: a positive attitude to a new experience; remembering to talk about a significant happening after the event; having an awareness of, and showing an interest in cultural experiences.
• Communication, Language and Literature: listening with enjoyment; responding to stories and songs; using talking to recall and relive a past experience.
• Knowledge and Understanding of the world/Exploration and Investigation and ICT strands: showing an interest in why things happen and how things work; showing an interest in ICT.
• Knowledge for three staff on use of video conferencing equipment
• Interest shown by some of the nursery staff in use of video conferencing equipment.

Areas of potential development

• The sessions worked well for us and we would not change the organisation or delivery. However I will be encouraging other staff members to take on the story reading, working within their group time and develop a link with another school on a weekly basis.
• We need to get more schools interested in a regular spot of storytelling and encourage them to link up.
• We also think the video conferencing link would be useful to contact other early years practitioners and meet with them to share expertise and knowledge.
• We all enjoyed the experience and the technology, although it is very time consuming especially when things don't work.
• We will continue with this work and involve more adults.

Kate Makinson
Chalvey Early Years Centre

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