Building Bridges

Videoconferencing Connects Students and Educators Over Distance

By Kavita Rao and Andrew Kerr

Classroom teachers tasked with developing students’ understanding of and respect for cultural diversity have a tremendous resource available to them through the Pacific Voices project. A partnership between the Pacific Regional Technology in Education Consortium (PR*TEC) and the University of Hawaii’s University Center on Excellence, Pacific Voices connects classrooms in different island states through videoconferencing, making it possible for students as far afield as Saipan, American Samoa, and Hawaii to share cultural activities over long distances in an up close and personal way.

The goal of these classroom connections is to build meaningful exchanges between students. In preparing for these virtual meetings, teachers meet beforehand by email or videoconference to discuss learning objectives and outcomes. The students’ activities during videoconferences are framed by these objectives. Teachers choose major themes such as culture and the
environment for students to explore with counterparts on other islands. Comparing and contrasting the environmental challenges faced by island people and sharing information about cultures and traditions provide rich learning contexts.

In one Pacific Voices project during the 2001-2002 school year, 8th graders on O‘ahu and in American Samoa “met” via videoconference. In their first session, students from Anuenue School, a Hawaiian immersion school, and Matafao School in American Samoa got to know each other, asking questions about what it is like to be a teenager. They discovered that although they live on islands 3,000 miles apart, as 13-year-olds they have experiences in common. Students also shared traditional chants and dances and short videos they had produced themselves about their islands. By the end of the school year, students had made unique connections by watching, talking, and listening to counterparts far away.

Another interesting videoconference-based learning experience took place between students at Anuenue School and San Antonio School in Saipan. The students at San Antonio School had learned to make crafts from a Chamorro master weaver who had visited their school a few months earlier. The teacher in Saipan thought it would be a good experience for the students to share their knowledge. They presented a step-by-step lesson to the students in Hawaii. The Hawai‘i students came to the videoconference with palm fronds, as directed, and left with the crafts they had woven at the instruction of students 4,000 miles away. It was fun for students on both ends as they negotiated the challenges of instructing and learning such a hands-on activity through a TV screen.

These types of exchanges make for rich learning experiences, opening windows to classrooms far away and broadening students’ worlds. They are a product of long-term efforts by the PEACESAT and the PRELStar Distance Learning programs to develop telecommunications infrastructure and use in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific. Connecting people in this region is a daunting task. There are 10 political island states and territories scattered across 4.9 million miles of ocean. This is an area larger than the continental U.S.

How It Works
While complex technology is necessary to connect remote sites across expanses of ocean, supervising a videoconference session for a class of students is comparatively easy. For the end user,videoconferencing is as simple as people meeting and talking through a television screen.

Videoconferencing works by sending audio and video signals to a remote site. This is achieved via a camera sitting atop a television monitor and a microphone in front of the participants. The audio and video signals travel by satellite to the PEACESAT office in Honolulu. PEACESAT acts as the “bridge,” sending the signals to the receiving sites. Videoconferencing is not limited to two sites – several different locations can participate.

PRELStar has spent several years installing videoconferencing systems and training educators in all 10 entities to use them. The result is a network of facilities through which educators and health officials conference with individuals anywhere in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific for no cost. Other sites around the world can also participate at minimal cost. In the last few years, the videoconferencing system has been used for staff development workshops, meetings, classes, and other programming. Videoconferencing has proved to be a very cost-effective way to bring people together, eliminating travel costs and phone charges. In addition, the videoconference network delivers services to schools and hospitals that would otherwise be cost prohibitive.

Projects such as Pacific Voices will continue to foster teacher and student exchanges. PREL staff and local state education agencies will also continue to expand the uses of the system for planning and training so that videoconferencing’s lasting legacy will continue to serve the U.S.-affiliated Pacific in ways previously thought impossible.

For questions about classroom uses of the videoconferencing system, please contact Kavita Rao (raok@prel.org) or Andy Kerr (kerra@prel.org). For technical questions about the videoconferencing system, please contact Jim Bannan (bannanj@prel.org).

back to top