If you have ever wanted to track wolves with scientists in the Minnesota wilderness, explore the underwater world of clownfish, Irukandji jellyfish and hammerhead sharks in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, or consult with NASA experts at the Kennedy Space Center, but haven’t quite been able to set aside the money or time to do so, now you can-as long as you happen to be a student in one of Maine’s island or rural coastal schools, that is.
Thanks to nearly $500,000 USDA Rural Utilities Service Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program grant awarded to the Island Institute last year, video conferencing units were installed in twenty-four schools up and down Maine’s coast this fall. Some island schools-for example, Matinicus and Islesford-started using video conferencing units in their classrooms a few years ago to host everything from inter-island Halloween parties to curriculum development meetings for teachers, but as the result of last year’s successful USDA grant, every island school now has access to the technology.
Schools can use the units to take virtual, interactive field trips, conference with students in other Maine island schools and around the globe, hold inter-island teacher meetings and trainings, and offer virtual professional development workshops and classes for community members. Natalie Ames, the chair of the Matinicus Island school board, says the video conferencing unit on Matinicus has saved the board money in recent years. “It has saved our school a tremendous amount of school budget dollars for travel costs,” she says. “Our superintendent no longer has to come to every school board meeting on site.”
The video conferencing units are also a critical component of the Teaching and Learning Collaborative (TLC), a teacher-driven project focused on aligning the curricula of Cliff, Isle au Haut, Islesford, Matinicus and Monhegan island schools to allow for inter-island student and teacher collaboration. Donna Isaacs, one of two teachers on Islesford, notes that students have used other technologies like Noteshare, Skype and blogs to work with other island students in the past, but that all of these tools are limited compared to the comprehensive nature of the Tandberg video conferencing unit on Islesford. “The video conferencing units,” Isaacs says, “are the right tool at the right time to enable us to move forward and realize our goals.”
Jessie Campbell, the Monhegan schoolteacher, hopes to see the technology used on a daily basis, pointing out that, “This year my school only has two full time students, who happen to be brothers. Giving them the chance to work with other students through the video conferencing units is essential. They feel connected to a larger learning community and they feel like they have peers and in their exact words, “friends.” According to Alex Tully, a third grade student on Isle au Haut, “The Tandberg is awesome because it’s like a big TV on a rack and you can use it to talk to people.”
The video conferencing units will not only provide students in the one- and two-room island schools access to a larger peer group and virtual field trips, they will also provide opportunities for students to take classes ranging from forensic science to honors courses in world religion. Ruth Kermish-Allen, the Island Institute’s education director and co-author of the grant along with Institute grant director Kathy Lane, says, “I’m really excited about breaking down the geographic boundaries to provide students with access to education opportunities no matter where they are and to allow teachers to experiment with new forms of program delivery.”
In other words, let the wolf tracking begin.
Anne Bardaglio is the Island Institute’s Outer Island Schools Collaborative Senior Fellow.