Monster Match 2007: Behind the Scenes

November 1, 2007

That is Shane in the hat with the mustache!

The Numbers: 86 classrooms, 33 buildings, two states, 1,800 students, 172 monsters

Technical, Scheduling, and Support: Shane Howard and Janine Lim, bridging and Skyping–at least 33 building coordinators/teachers encouraging and helping others in the building

Supportive Technologies: Email, Skype, PBwiki, Joomla

Moderators: Paula Yezak (Temple ISD) and Roxanne Glaser (and Shane had to hop in to help on one session on Halloween!)

Website and Photos: Shane Howard (www.edlink12.net/monstermatch)

Project Coordination: Roxanne Glaser

Each iteration of the project brings a new dimension, new collaborations, and new use of supportive technologies. Ruth made a comment about mash-ups last week and I am going to take you “behind the scenes” of Monster Match 2007.

Shane created an entire website devoted to the project (www.edlink12.net/monstermatch) where we place all documents, photos, schedule, training videos, etc. New this year was the online registration form built in Joomla. Each participating teacher completed the form which was emailed to Shane and then forwarded to me. Yes, we used two different email rules to move the registrations.

The conversation in our office during this period of time went like this. <sound of email> “Hey, I got another one! Did you get it yet?” “No” “How about now?” “No” “Now?” “Oh, wait, yes, there it is!”

We know this is not the most efficient way, but it did two things for us.

1.) I was not creating each teacher with information on a tiny Post-it.

2.) All information came in in a uniform manner and was easy to group and sort.

Not so good thing: Info was in individual emails and I had to copy/paste info into wiki and then had to manipulate it again to create a mailing list.

Next came the matching: I printed each building on a different color paper and started making matches. It took about 3 hours to get a good start on this. I matched time/date and either one grade level above or below. I ended up with about 3 or so leftovers and Janine offered to find three classes for me. Finally, we matched all the classes. Two teachers dropped out leaving two more leftovers, but I matched those two together.

Communications: The trick for Monster Match is the exchanging of descriptions. Last year we used email and the teachers were supposed to copy me on the message when they shared the descriptions. I had over 300 email messages trying to track down descriptions and to make sure they had the descriptions in time. Angela Conrad (in the purple wig, too) used forums for her teachers to post descriptions and that got me thinking and I figured out that a wiki might work!

New this year: PBwiki for the schedule and descriptions! Love it! monstermatch.pbwiki.com

1. Using an upgrade to Gold PBwiki, I could lock the front page so that the teachers could not edit my work or schedule. I had a page where coordinators could make notes. Janine and I used this and a couple of my building coordinators.

2. Out of 86 teachers, I had 4 requests for assistance and only one instance of someone placing the description in the wrong portion of the teacher page.

3. I did not indicate that it was a wiki in the instructions. I told participants we were going to “post descriptions online”. It needed only the wiki password and looks like Word. Easy!

4. RSS feeds + page history = SUCCESS! I monitored my bloglines account and kept the ones where teachers were updating the page. I was able to find the two parts that teachers had overwritten, go back in and post them and then LOCK the page.

5. Online evaluation to improve the project next year! And the feedback is rolling in. Thank YOU!

Videoconferences: Last year, we had all classes dial INTO our bridge into a “testing conference”. Shane would check audio/video and then move them into the correct conference.

• This year with our new scheduling software, Shane had to build a separate conference for each connection. He built them to dial OUT to the sites. Conferences would run for 28 minutes. One minute break and the next conference begins.
• We used Visual Concert with Polycom 7000 VSX for both moderators (Paula and Roxanne) and it worked great.
• One school could not connect because a squirrel chewed through their lines. Seriously, that is what they told Shane.
• One school used their old VTEL and did just fine, but are now getting a new Polycom!
• All schools did a great job with camera angles and microphones. Only one time was it painful with a butcher paper monster headed toward the microphone!

What I was running on my laptop during the conference:

• Firefox browser with four tabs open: descriptions from the wiki, mapquest to show the schools’ locations, online stopwatch, and bloglines
• Two Powerpoint presentations: the opening with the procedures and some jokes, the closing thanking them for participating and more jokes
• MGC manager to mute and unmute my video and to watch connections
• Skype to check in with Shane and Janine
• Music to play when the Powerpoint was going
• Outlook to check email for questions from teachers or site managers about other projects.

This detailed behind the scenes look is written to help us learn how to run projects. So many people do the staff development to show teachers what to do in the classroom, but someone has to be the Angela, Ashton, Janine, Lori, Roxanne or whomever is putting the puzzle pieces together and directing traffic!

Look at the number of students participating during Monster Madness! 3,820 students…almost at the 4,000 mark.

• Angela Conrad’s Monster Exchange in Humble ISD-56 classroom, 1,120 students
• Lori Colwill in Dallas ISD-12 classes, 220 students
• Ashton Graham in El Paso ISD-34 classes, 680 students
• Roxanne, Shane, and Janine in Michigan/Texas-86 classes, 1,800 students

If you have tips and tricks for coordinating large projects, please share them. If you are looking for a fun event to get teachers excited about curriculum videoconferencing…this is it!

Posted in Monster Match