and here is our first one

One school that has embraced this concept is Northwood school who have used their system to access reources such as the Museum of London and the Greenwich Maritime Museum 

If you visit this page you can see some of the uses the school has put their video conferencing equipment to.

With the easy access to ADSL within most countries and 98% accessibility to ADSL within this country, the only requirements now are a simple computer, a webcam and speakers. Most of these are easily within the financial reach of most schools in this country and in fact most schools already have these facilities if they choose to use them.

This is used to promote the use of foreign languages and understanding  different cultures.

This can either be a long running collaboration between two schools or as a one off event.

An example of a long running collaboration can be found at:

Shireland Language college

Younger students have shared information and family photos, whilst older students have discussed their favourite types of music and issues of common concern. Older students have compiled questionnaires for each other, which have been discussed during video sessions. Other students shared in the experience of the Cologne Carnival, when they found their German friends dressed up for the celebrations.

and an example of a one day event at an American school can be seen here

http://www.pvhs.k12.nj.us/atw/atwindex.asp

the goals of the one day event were as follows

1) to enhance the awareness of the interrelationship of the various cultures of the world

2) to raise tolerance of different value systems and cultures

3) to encourage and foster student-to-student exchange and increase opportunities for both students and teachers to experience activities focused on global awareness

4) to become effective and responsible contributors to problem-solving and to decision-making processes at individual, community, national, and international levels

5) to aid students in exhibiting reflective attitudes toward their personal values, the values of others, and the cultural values evident in their own and other societies

6) to bring youth face-to-face to meet and to discuss world issues that affect and unite us all

7) to develop and apply skills related to acquiring, organizing, evaluating, and using information technology as a communication tool

to increase opportunities for both students and teachers to experience activities focused upon national and global awareness

9) to learn about the historical background of all countries involved

10) to access online teaching resources via an interactive website

 

for more informtion on video conferencing for schools can be found at

Global Gateway

and the JANET website offers a service to help schools and other educational and cultural establishments get started with videoconferencing and finding other schools to collaborate with.

http://www.janetcollaborate.ac.uk/

Here is an exampe of a flash animation of convection that doesnt work cos wordpress sucks

http://tre.ngfl.gov.uk/uploads/materials/19383/convection.swf

These animations are often available for free, or can be purchased for use from sites like http://www.yteach.co.uk/ another useful resource is video sites such as Youtube where videos of experiments can be seen that would not be practical to perform in schools for safety of cost reasons.

heres another no working one that means we will install wordpres on a proper server

[flashvideo width="425" height="350" filename="http://www.teachertube.com/flvideo/21942.flv" /]