Video conferencing in the curriculumCase study 5: Lea Junior School, Slough - narrative poetry writing

Schools involved:
Lea Junior School, Slough
Hawkes Farm School, East Sussex

Aims of video conferencing
We were awarded money by BT Futuretalk (promoted by the Guardian Newspaper) to run a project with the aim of writing a narrative poem in conjunction with Hawkes Farm School in East Sussex. The methods of communication to be used involved video conferencing alongside email, message boarding, phone and fax.

Curriculum context
Key Stage 2 literacy. The group of children involved were volunteers and only one hour a week was timetabled; other sessions took place at lunchtimes and after school.

Planning, research and preparation
Initially the groups communicated by email and eventually message boarding; video conferencing was not up and running until later in the project. Both groups spent some weeks reading from 'The Oxford Book of Narrative Poems', looking at subjects, style, form etc. Next, both groups came up with ideas for the story, and eventually a plot was agreed, with various amendments and additions.

The groups collaborated on the opening, and then each group was allocated part of the story, which they wrote on their own. There was collaboration again on the ending, editing and redrafting.

At the beginning of the project, neither school had video conferencing equipment, so some time was taken to find and acquire the right equipment which was within our budgets. That was the simple part. Hawkes Farm School in East Sussex had the advantage of a very technologically literate deputy head, Mr M.Thorn, running the project. Lea Junior School had computer literate, but technologically illiterate Mrs MacDonald running their end, Therefore, Hawkes Farm had their equipment up and running quite quickly. Lea Junior took a very long time.

There was a saga of problems and, at first, there was no one in school or out who could solve them. Luckily, Mr Mike Griffith, of Global Leap, eventually came to our rescue, but even then we spent a few interesting hours trying to make it work. (see 'Technical Issues' section).

Another simple, but very significant problem was finding a time slot to suit both schools. There were all sorts of limiting factors, such as use of room, different lunch hours, availability of children and teachers, and the inevitable technical problems; even when we were both finally up and running there were still one or two glitches at both ends.

Details of the sessions
The aim of the sessions was for the two groups of Year 6 children, each of 10 - 12 in number, to confer about the poem at various stages during its conception and the writing process. At our end, some attempt was made to prepare the children for what they might want to discuss, but there was very little time for this, and often the children became tongue-tied.

The camera was small, with a limited range, so we had three chairs in front of it, and the children took turns to sit there with the rest standing behind. I was in the background, trying not to interfere (very hard!), but prompting when necessary. At Hawkes Farm School, it was quite often the case that only a few members of the group were there at any one time, which made taking group decisions difficult.

It became clear that, even with a specific project, discussion and conference via a video link was not easy. Each session was also quite short because of fitting into each other's timetables, so no writing could be done whilst using the link. Ideally it would have been great if, for example, each group could have got together for a whole morning to work on the poem, and perhaps had ten minutes video conferencing at half hour intervals throughout. With hindsight, nominating a couple of 'spokespersons' for each session might have made them more successful.

It may be that the nature of the task militated against very successful video conferencing. For two groups of Year 6 children to conceive, plan and negotiate agreement on a creative composition at long distance via a video link was perhaps somewhat ambitious. The normal socialising, moving around, going 'off task' for a while, using body language and facial expression when negotiating agreement were either not possible when video conferencing, or somewhat stilted and artificial. If we had been able to prepare more of a 'script' beforehand, for a task with preset limits, it might have been easier.

Nevertheless, video conferencing without doubt supported the project, and made the use of the message board more viable (which became our main, and most effective communication tool) because the children had 'met' and talked with each other. However, I have to say that there were times when I felt very frustrated and powerless over my inability to get the video conferencing to work. I felt I was letting Hawkes Farm School down, and, (quite understandably), that no one else in school perceived how worried about it I became. School staff all have their own responsibilities and problems, and, quite rightly, have more pressing priorities. Without the help of Mr Griffith, I do not know what I would have done.

Technical issues
Some of the problems we had were to do with my computer and I have absolutely no idea what they were! Perhaps it is significant that the technician who then worked on our school computers has since moved to Greece! I also have memories of feeding cable from my room, up corridors, out of windows, over a roof, and into the IT room more than once in the time when we were trying to make it work.

As I understand it, eventually the only thing stopping us video conferencing was the fact that we have only one ISDN line and many extensions. The video conferencing would not work from an extension, so each time we had a session, I would have to go to the control box in the IT room and fiddle with wires, so that the ISDN line was directly plugged into my computer, and everyone else in school was unable to use it whilst the session was taking place.

At the end of the session I would have to rush back and return everything to normal. We did try trolleying my computer and video conferencing equipment up to the IT room and having sessions there, but the layout of the room made it very difficult, and we would still have had to do the fiddling with connections.

From her description, it seems that the method Helen used to videoconference was to unplug the computer network from the ISDN connection and plug in the videoconferencing system using an extension cable that stretched to the room she was conferencing in. The computer network would still have worked, apart from being able to link to the Internet. After the conference she had to unplug the video conference system and reconnect the computer network to the ISDN connection. Inconvenient, but not too much of a problem.

Helen's problems were caused by the fact that she wanted to video conference via a network point in her classroom, but couldn't. This is because the computer network cabling is linked to the ISDN line via a router to provide Internet access for computers on the network, it is not directly connected to the ISDN connection. Helen wanted to connect her videoconferencing system to the ISDN via the network cabling (using the network point in her room) to avoid the problem of running long lengths of cable to the ISDN connection. It is possible to video conference this way, but the network point needs to be 'patched' directly to the ISDN connection by re-plugging the cabling so that the signal does not go through a hub, switch or router. Although possible, this should only be done by those who understand what they are doing and how the cabling is configured in their school. Making a mistake can damage computers and other devices on the network.

Editor.

Outcomes

• The production of a narrative poem entitled Haunted Hollow which is on the Hawkes Farm School wesbite
• Communication and exchange of ideas between children from two very different catchment areas.
• The children developed their ability to discuss, amend, learn from each other, compromise, negotiate and agree the terms of the project.
• The children learnt a lot about methods of facilitating communication including websites, message boarding, video conferencing, faxing and emailing.

Helen MacDonald
Lea Junior School

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