The idea of adding video to a telephone call is not new. It has an obvious downside. Most people would not want to be seen dripping wet out of the shower, or still in pajamas, or in the midst of a compromising social situation while talking on the phone. Yet video conferencing is slowly gaining traction. For almost twenty years, businesses have used it to foster collaboration between far-flung divisions and clients. And, as the technology becomes more robust, cheaper and ubiquitous, it is starting to catch on. Skype on mobile devices and home computers is free and people are downloading it and playing with it. If you’ve ever “Skyped” a friend you should know that it is qualitatively different from a phone call. You don’t feel obligated to talk all the time. You can even get up, walk out of the room, and return with a glass of wine. You can show stuff—what you’re currently knitting, photos of your kids, a new blouse. You read body language and facial expressions. It feels like a real visit and it has had an immeasurable impact on family relationships for the military stationed in war zones and their loved ones at home.
The pioneer organization on the use of interactive videoconferencing for education is the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (www.CILC.org). This not-for-profit was founded in 1994 for the purpose of distributing funds to schools in Indiana for project planning, equipment, implementation and the development of programs that involved interactive videoconferencing. Participants used a high-speed digital fiber optic network designed and built by Ameritech. Since that time CILC has been reorganized and has grown into a global hub for interactive videoconferencing programming delivered face-to-face in both real time and recorded for archives. Its website features hundreds of content providers for students, professional development for teachers, and collaborative opportunities between schools servicing all 50 states and 166 countries. Some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, The Museum of Science and Industry, the Bronx Zoo, the Smithsonian, the Manhattan School of Music, to name a few, have outreach programs through CILC.
The most obvious benefit is that students get to interact with experts from these top institutions for a fraction of the cost of importing them in person to your school. The tyranny of distance has lost its grip and personal relationships between learners and knowledgeable people across the globe are now happening. Ruth Blankenbaker, the CEO and visionary behind CILC says, “Written communication through the computer alone has a kind of anonymity that can allow meanness and cruelty to surface. An interactive video conference, where you make eye contact and can read body language fosters civility. People relate to each other’s humanity. In fact, we don’t really know how much added value there is when communication involves contact with the entire person but it seems to me to be quite significant.”
In the interest of full-disclosure, my company, Ink Think Tank, is listed as both a content provider, doing school visits for kids, and as a source of professional development programs for teachers. CILC is turning its “Spotlight” on us in a series of FREE webinars. The first one will be on November 30, 2011 from 4-5 pm, EST. Titled: Science Writing that Makes You Question What You Know , it features Dr. Myra Zarnowski, of Queens College, interviewing Alexandra Siy (Cars on Mars, Sneeze!) and yours truly about how to use our books in the classroom. Here’s the link with more information: http://www.cilc.org/search/calendar-event.aspx?id=350&categoryid=2&startdate=11%2f30%2f2011
The best way to learn was discovered by Socrates more than two thousand years ago in Ancient Greece: there’s nothing better than a private tutor. Among his many creative acts, Steve Jobs reinvented the private tutorial, giving people the ability to use his products as tools for the things they wished to do, which inspired me to start my own education company. Let me explain how that happened.
Back in 2008, I had a new book coming out, We Dare You! Hundreds of Fun Science Bets, Challenges, and Experiments You Can Do at Home (Skyhorse Publishing). It is a bind-up edition of previously published books of irresistible challenges to kids, stuff that looks impossible but is doable, and stuff that looks easy but is impossible. The truth behind the challenges is based on science. I’ve long believed that watching kids trying these tricks would make great videos but I was never successful at selling the rights to these activities to a TV or film producer. In anticipation of the book’s publication and with the advances in technology making the whole process a lot easier, I decided I’d learn how to make videos myself. So I bought my first point and shoot (i.e. no-brainer) camcorder and pressed my grandchildren into service, directing videos of them doing the activities.
As the footage mounted up, it became time to bite the bullet and face the problem of editing the videos. I had read that I-Movie, a program for Macs, was the easiest way to go. This meant that, as a PC user for all these years, I not only had to learn a new program and skill but I had to go into a whole different computer system. Undaunted, I walked into the Apple Store in the Westchester Mall where they are well-staffed to handle the neophyte buyer. I told the personable and well-informed salesman, Mike, what I wanted to do. He quickly put together exactly what I needed. I bought a MacBook Pro, with the Leopard OS X, 2 GB of memory, and a processing speed of 2.4 GHz. (I’ve upgraded since then and now have their latest OS) Best of all, for an additional $100 I could receive 52 hours of private instruction over the next year from their platoon of mavens called “One-to-One.”
At the beginning, I never missed a week. Always one to plunge intrepidly into a learning situation, I began to teach myself how to use my Mac. When I got stuck, I went online and scheduled a session with a personal tutor. The Westchester Mall is only minutes from my home and I quickly learned where to park and which elevator to take to the store for my tutorial session. At first, as I was learning to use the new computer, the tutors were all interchangeable young people, patient and knowledgeable. As I became more proficient in my editing skills, I was assigned tutors who knew about film editing. I went right up that learning curve: See for yourself: Here’s a video to my first one-minute video (with three of my grandchildren.)
And, if you like it, there are at least sixty more on my website. The brilliance of the concept—making private tutoring from experts available and affordable and allowing the learner to control the timing of the lessons for when they were needed—struck me as an extraordinary innovation. The proof of its success is its filled appointment schedule. Why not apply it to the world at large?
The model of Apple’s One-to-One is behind my Outside-the-Box proposal for Authors on Call. We are currently embarking on a pilot program to test its merits. I predict we are a harbinger of the future. We are reinventing the guild: Masters of art, literature, science, business, whatever, will band together to offer other groups of interested and motivated learners, timely and personal instruction via technology. Online learning is already happening, but much of it is without the personal interaction of a live tutorial. The effectiveness of a tutorial lies in the social contact between the teacher and the student. My company, INK Think Tank, is pioneering this concept—working with teachers, who are using our books about the real world in their classrooms, through their personal interaction with the authors themselves.
I hope Steve Jobs’ brainchild works as well for us as it did for him. Thank you, Steve.
Years ago, when publishing was in its heyday, established authors could sell from concept. Here’s how it worked. An author and an editor had lunch. They discussed possibilities for future projects. When the editor liked an idea s/he said, “Write me a proposal.” That was it. There was trust that the author would deliver a book that they would be happy to publish. The author walked out of the lunch confident of an assignment with money to follow. That was then. Now even established writers have to do proposals complete with a marketing analysis, detailed outlines, maybe a few well-written chapters, and loads of background material. Then they wait for the proposal to be reviewed before a full committee, which seems to be more dedicated to why they shouldn’t do a book than why they should. In these hard times, the beleaguered publishers must constantly consider their bottom line when investing in a project.
The best editors, however, still know how to imagine along with authors. We all know that every book starts with a vision—a fleshed-out idea of how to create a work. Other parts of society are not quite so visionary. As much as we would like to think otherwise, most people don’t “get” innovative ideas. The popular show, Mad Men, about the advertising industry back in the sixties understood this. Fully articulated and illustrated presentations were required to in order to leave nothing up to the imagination of their clients. They knew that even when a concept has merit and is worth a try, every innovative venture, every work of creativity, requires a leap of faith in order to turn a concept into a reality.
What, then, is innovation? I have defined it as: Creating something new from disparate existing elements used in novel ways to solve a contemporary problem while forecasting its own future growth and development. In my outside-the-box proposal, published this summer I proposed using nonfiction literature in the classroom (nothing new here), combined with professional development from the authors themselves (nothing new here) to help teachers use their books effectively, and ending up with an author visit with the students after they’ve studied the books (this doesn’t happen often but there’s nothing new here, either.) What makes this program innovative? Its scale (school-wide, many authors and many books) and the timing of the professional development—just before the books are to be used by the teachers, so they can immediately apply what they’ve learned and the timing of the author-visits with kids (just when they’ve completed studying a book). The technologies that makes such an ambitious program possible and even more importantly, affordable, are interactive videoconferencing—face-to-face conversations between the authors and the school participants and a wiki, a collective online document that chronicles contributions from all the participants and serves as a written record of the project. The authors don’t need to travel and schools don’t need to pick up the travel expenses and the in-person personal appearance fees. All of us authors know the excitement of a school visit. It is often the highpoint of a school year. I’ve always wondered how the teachers took advantage, back in their classrooms, of the energy and enthusiasm generated by these visits. I believe that my program for Authors on Call does just that. What we’re really offering, beyond expertise and excellent writing is inspiration and excitement. My problem: I needed to find a school willing to test this idea.
Dave Kaplan, principal of the Edith A. Bogert Elementary School in Upper Saddle River, NJ is willing to take that leap of faith. I met him last spring when I did the traditional author’s visit at his school. Right away, I noticed something unusual about Dave. He was truly interested in me. He attended all my presentations, including my lunch with some of the children. (You should know that this is very rare. Most principals say, “Hello,” and disappear.) I mentioned that I had this idea of a huge collaboration between authors and teachers. Was he interested? He said, “Yes.” But he didn’t get back to me until July when we could make an appointment for him to hear me out.
After our conversation, Dave emailed me: “I just typed up my notes from this morning and as I was typing, I felt my excitement really mushrooming! I'm so thrilled about this venture.... Again, I'm so pumped about this innovative journey on which we're about to embark, and look forward to working with you!” When he introduced the concept to his faculty, he asked for nine volunteers (one to work with each author). He got 28! The entire school! So far, so good. We are currently in the book selection process, where the teachers are doing the choosing. This has only fueled the excitement. The teachers had no problem “getting” the idea and realize that they are part of an experiment; that no one has done what we’re doing. Ultimately, the measures of our success will be from the students and the books themselves.
