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Lines and Patterns Handouts

Innovativeness/Uniqueness

Lines and Patterns is an innovative IVC program that combines a highly interactive videoconferencing experience with dynamic web 2.0 applications. The result is a new, reproducible, way for teachers and content providers to team up and collaborate to improve the learning potential of traditional “virtual field trips!” Lines and Patterns follows the core belief of Kigluait Educational Adventures that educational videoconferencing be dynamically interactive and explore subject matter that can be taught in no other way. This is accomplished by asking participants and presenter alike to examine their respective environments, find (and capture) images- lines and patterns- that are the comparable, and then explore the “why’s” and “what ifs” that those similarities bring up. Following the actual videoconference, students and presenter continue their discussions through a variety of web 2.0 tools that also allow individual teachers to extend out the conversation to other students and classrooms around the country.

Proven Success or Potential for Future Success

While one of the “funnest,” Lines and Patterns is only one of many programs that Kigluait Educational Adventures offers that blends the use of IVC and Web 2.0 technologies. The mixing of these two mediums is a fundamental principal to increasing and improving the learning opportunities afforded students participating in a distance-learning, “virtual field trip,” style learning event. In the past 3 years since Kigluait Educational Adventures adopted this- easily learned- format of programming, we have experienced an annual growth rate of greater than 200%! The majority of which can only be attributed to “word-of-mouth” marketing- which we take as affirmation toward the effectiveness of the type of program formatting.

Integration of Technology

Lines and Patterns is primarily a visual program, breaking down the abundance of visual stimulus we are bombarded with daily into fundamental elements. To help us do this, on the presenter side, we use a wide variety of techniques; a green screen, digital still camera, a wireless video camera- allowing us to get outside and freely roam around the environment, and plain old pencil and paper are just a few. On the student/participant side, we encourage still camera use, innovative use of the IVC camera, paper/pencil, and water colors (don’t worry, for this presentation we’ll rely on the IVC camera, your drawing skills, and maybe even your cell phone’s camera!).

After our IVC meeting we rely on web 2.0 tools. Our online Moodle classroom is the portal we always start out from but go on from there to utilize just about anything you can think of from Twitter to Wiki!

Fulfillment of Educational Mission

By combining typical “one-shot” virtual field trip IVC programming with the dynamic expanding world of Web 2.0, the Lines and Patterns program really presses students and teachers alike to take a new look at their environment and their relationship to it by opening up new lines of on-going communication between people from all types of different landscapes. And of course the program (and all Kigluait programs) is (are) tied to national learning standards for both educators and students.