January 2008 — Features
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Glaser's specialty is educational collaboration through videoconferencing technologies. She currently supports 58 districts in Region 12, which serves 77 K-12 school districts and 10 charter schools. Glaser works on Monster Match and other projects with video network engineer Shane Howard, who built the Monster Match website. Howard maintains the EdLink12 Telecommunications Network, which was developed by ESC Region 12 and is housed at its headquarters in Waco, TX. The network—which provides internet access, e-mail services, voice communications, secure data exchange, and videoconferencing— has grown over the past five years. Region 12 now relies on a network based on the H.323 standard for transporting multimedia applications over local area networks. Most desktop videoconferencing systems use the H.323 standard.
Glaser and Howard are using a new social network to expand the roster of schools with which they can partner on videoconferencing projects. Aimed at educators who use the technology in K-12 environments, the Polycom Collaborations Around the Planet (PCATP) website provides a global directory and professional network of videoconferencing users. Launched jointly in September by Polycom and Two Way Interactive Connections in Education (TWICE), Michigan's K-12 videoconferencing organization, PCATP is a free collaboration tool available to videoconferencing educators. It is designed to connect individuals, content providers, and administrators to exchange ideas, conduct research, build curriculum, create programs, and collaborate with distance and blended learning spaces.
"We were being inundated with calls from people looking for collaboration partners," says Elaine Shuck, Polycom's K-12 global education director. "The site was a natural extension of our strategy to provide collaborative visual communications and resources for educators in multiple environments."
The PCATP network is for anyone using videoconferencing systems based on either of two International Telecommunication Union standards: H.320, the standard for public switched telephone networks and such dedicated networks as T1 and satellite-based networks, and H.323.
"We want to provide the resources teachers need to be successful using this technology," says Shuck. "We can't do that and say, 'If you're not buying from the right vendor, then you don't get to participate.' The message we want to deliver is, 'Let's use the technology to collaborate with anyone around the world.'"
A Network of Videoconferencers
Janine Lim, instructional technology consultant for the Berrien County Intermediate School District in southwest Michigan, and co-founder and board member of TWICE, sees the PCATP professional network as a natural development, both because of the growth of videoconferencing in K-12 and the inherent need of videoconferencers to find others with compatible technologies.
"The use of videoconferencing technology has grown substantially among educators over the past few years," Lim says. "Incorporating a global directory of people into Polycom's other available resources, including the online content access program and services, will form a community of videoconferencing users and should serve to further grow the use of video among educators worldwide."
The PCATP network was built into an existing system called Read Around the Planet, which Polycom and TWICE also co-sponsor in cooperation with the National Education Association. Read Around the Planet grew out of the NEA's annual Read Across America event. This 10-year-old celebration of reading is timed each year to coincide with the March 2 birthday of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. (In 2008 Geisel's birthday will be celebrated on Monday, March 3.)
