The Heart of Learning: Connecting People

  Rich, engaging learning happens when students interact with adults who care about them and the content that the students are studying.

The Questions

How can we connect students and teachers with passionate people who are experts in the subject matter and skills that are being studied in any given class at any given time, throughout the province? 

What technologies could we use to make that happen? 

Is there an organization in Canada that already does this? How do they make these connections? Does it work? 

How can we capture these interactions to create usable learning content that could be integrated into both face to face and online learning environments? 

Our First Steps Towards the Answers 

The EXCITE project aims to use video conferencing in its many forms to connect both students and classrooms to experts across all of the five sectors we have identified.  Video conferencing is integrated directly into most laptops and through tablets and smartphones, is becoming mobile. 

ADLC was fortunate enough to be introduced to the right partner at the right time.  Virtual Researchers on Call (VROC), a program out of Ontario run by Partners in Research, has been connecting classrooms in Ontario to experts in the STEM fields for the past several years, with great success.  We have partnered to bring this model to Alberta and have formed VROC Alberta.  VROC Alberta will be the organization that will try to connect experts to Alberta classrooms and students as a major element to the EXCITE project.  More about VROC Alberta and the types of programs it will offer in another post.

The last piece of this puzzle to fall into place was a new digital infrastructure from Cisco Systems called Show and Share.  The Show and Share environment will allow us to capture, meta-tag, and share all of the interactions between the experts and the classrooms that participate in the VROC Alberta sessions. We will then be able to edit this content and repurpose it for use in ADLC online courses and to share with every school in the province.  

That is the theory.  

We have the Show and Share hardware and software installed and ready to be tested.  Our friends at VROC have a working system in place that we have used to pilot our ideas for the last 6 months.  

We are now getting ready to roll the VROC Alberta idea out to a wider group of schools and teachers.  

Let's see how we do.

Jason