Jaz Dhillon teaching in front of the Polycom VSX video conferencing system |
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“Russell the crow eats 16 worms a day. If you’ve got to look after him for eight days, how many worms will you need?”
It’s a straightforward enough maths question, and the Year 5 pupils in St George’s School in the Ladywood district of Birmingham are quick to raise their hands and come up with an answer. What makes this class unusual is the fact that the maths teacher, Jaz Dhillon, is actually several miles away in another school in the Birmingham area. The two schools are linked together on a regular basis by using video-conferencing technology.
Jaz is head of teaching and learning at Athena, the Excellence in Cities project in Birmingham, and she has been using video-conferencing to teach literacy and numeracy classes since she joined Athena in 2001.
The Worm Eater is just one of a series of maths challenges that Jaz has developed for her video-conference classes, and which she teaches on a regular basis to several schools in the area covered by Athena. She has even taught classes in the US and other countries in order to demonstrate the power of video-conferencing.
The schools in the Athena zone have achieved significant increases in literacy and numeracy results in the past three years, and while Athena director Geoff Turrell doesn’t claim that video-conferencing isn’t the only factor in that success he is adamant that “it is part of the strategy”.
Of course, in many ways the Worm Eater is a fairly conventional maths class, and it’s easy to argue that such a class would be just as effective if Jaz were physically present in the classroom herself. Indeed, in the past, Jaz’ job as a maths co-ordinator did involve teaching in several different schools. However, the use of video-conferencing allows Jaz to make more efficient use of her time. She no longer spends time travelling from school to school, so she can spend more time teaching and – just as important – preparing classes in collaboration with the class teachers in those other schools. As Geoff Turrell says, “It allows us to deliver a finite resource – skilled teachers such as Jaz – to more schools”.
But video-conferencing isn’t just a matter of managing resources. Jaz’ experience has taught her that video-conferencing can also add a new element to her classes that makes them even more effective than conventional direct teaching.
“The first time we did it - it was fascinating to see the children’s responses,” she recalls of her early experiences at Athena. “If it were an ordinary paper-based class they might not bother trying to solve the problems so much, but with video-conferencing they definitely have much more of a go.” This improvement in concentration has been confirmed by a number of the class teachers that Jaz collaborates with (the normal class teachers are always present during the video-conferencing class, and they work with Jaz to prepare the presentation for the class).
Earlier this year, Jaz used video-conferencing to teach a class that had a reputation for being difficult. “The teacher really noticed the difference,” says Jaz. “Their accents changed, they spoke more politely – it was amazing.” This effect is even more pronounced when the technology is pushed further, allowing Jaz to simultaneously link up with two classes that are in separate locations.
“It’s an audience of their peers,” explains Geoff Turrell. “We find that the concentration and preparation that the pupils put into the class is even greater when two classes are involved.”
Jaz acknowledges that there may be an element of novelty in all this, and that “they’d get bored with it if we did video-conferencing every day”. However, her video-conference classes are only intended to complement conventional classes, and not to replace them. Turrell believes that around five per cent of the curriculum could benefit from being taught via video-conferencing.
The service also helps Athena achieve one of its other goals. Part of Athena’s work involves gathering data to identify specific areas of weakness, such as fractions or money calculations in maths. Jaz can then tailor her video-conference classes to focus on those specific areas. She can also use video-conference classes to focus on particular pupils. When teaching at the Year 5 level, Jaz teaches whole classes as a group, but with Year 6 pupils she will gather smaller groups of pupils for lessons where she will focus on specific topics that are causing problems.
What do you need?
The most important part of any video-conferencing system is a high-speed broadband Internet or ISDN connection, which can cope with the large amount of data generated by the audio signal. Fortunately, most schools now have access to high-speed network connections, as well as computer monitors and TV screens. This means that your primary additional cost is the video camera system itself.
Athena uses a Polycom VSX 7000 group video-conferencing system, which costs around £4,500 and is suitable for large-scale conferencing sessions with classes of up to 40. Smaller scale systems are available, starting with low-cost webcams that cost less than £100.
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