To the uninitiated, video conferencing is all about earnest business folk in spectacles impressing each other with flipcharts. However, as Arbour Vale School's Global Leap day demonstrated recently, this wonder of communication technology also has great educational potential.
On 29 February this year, Arbour Vale special school in Slough was the unlikely hub of a video conferencing marathon involving hundreds of participants around the world. Facilitated by Arbour Vale's equipment supplier, PictureTel, whose headquarters also happens to be in Slough, the day began at 6.30am with a virtual tour of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, then moved through Japan, Belfast, Venice, Prague, Romania, the USA and Africa before ending at 10.30pm back in Australia. On the way, it took in NASA astronauts, Save the Children workers in Kosovo, South African game wardens, animals in Melbourne Zoo, a miraculously resurrected Amy Johnson speaking from London's Science Museum, mathematicians from Cambridge University, the Global Leap official poet and a pair of local folk musicians.
Up to 20 schools were able to take part in each session, and thousands more were able to observe the event via the Internet. The session causing the greatest stir was a 'virtual Prime Minister's question time' with Tony Blair, during which school children from Iceland confronted a relaxed-looking PM with their worries about Sellafield, South African children asked how Britain could help them get a better education, and students from Sussex learned that science had not been Mr Blair's strong point at school.
Master of ceremonies, and the man who had the original idea, was Mike Griffith, a teacher at Arbour Vale. He became enthusiastic about what educationalists call 'distance learning' when he was involved in a European video conferencing project three years ago. He devised Global Leap 2000 as a 'shop window' to show how 'technology can break down cultures and bring pupils to people and places they would probably never otherwise meet or experience'. Teachers, he points out, can also share ideas and expertise this way.
Rachel McCormick, another Arbour Vale teacher involved in the project, says the facility is particularly useful for children with special needs. 'One of the most important things for our pupils is communication. They need the confidence to go out and talk to people to acquire social skills.' Arbour Vale takes children with moderate to severe learning difficulties, from nursery age to 19. Some of the older pupils use the Internet, but, Ms McCormick says, they need a great deal of support to use it successfully, especially when they also have physical handicaps. With video conferencing, though, the main problem is shyness, which is quickly overcome.
For staff operating the system, the biggest problem is to find people to talk to. There is no central register of establishments with video conferencing facilities, so schools have relied for contacts on client lists provided by their equipment supplier. One of Mike Griffith's aims in organising Global Leap was to find more contacts and to set up an international on-line directory of equipped schools, organisations and places of interest. The result, www.Global-Leap.com was launched by a slightly bemused PM at the end of his discussion session.
The attraction of video conferencing for younger children is its ability to supply a window on the real world a fascinating antidote to the passive consumption, airbrushed images and rehearsed relationships of television. It was good to witness the untidier, humanising moments on Global Leap day Icelandic children yawning during a talk, then clapping along to Slough's guitar-and-spoons duo; the Prime Minister of Great Britain sitting with a mug of coffee while chirpy students in Colchester asked after Cherie and the baby.
PictureTel's least expensive video conferencing option is the PC-based Intel Proshare system. The initial cost of 505 covers the PC conversion kit, video camera and microphones. Then there's the cost of a specialised ISDN telephone line between 100 and 200, depending on the provider. The system can be set up by anyone with a good understanding of computers, so there is no installation charge. Contact PictureTel UK Ltd at 258 Bath Road, Slough, Berkshire SL1 4DX (01753 673 000).
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