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Education:  Points of VIEW  - - -  Read Story

A team of eight teachers from Schenectady, Amsterdam, Ballston Spa and Scotia School districts traveled to the C-SPAN network in Washington, D.C. last week to meet with network staff and begin the development of the new "Points of VIEW" project.  Points of VIEW is a Cable in the Classroom Demonstration Project which will create a template for providing point-to-point videoconference opportunities, using and accessing the resources of the C-SPAN network. Time Warner Cable (Albany, New York Division), C-SPAN and project VIEW of the Schenectady City School District have been selected to develop and implement the project

The development team as well as, Schenectady School District Social Studies Coordinator, Nicola Petraccione, members from project VIEW and Time Warner Cable spent two days reviewing, researching, and discussing the array of resources and opportunities at C-SPAN.  Mark Farkas, Executive Producer and Maura Pierce, Producer of C-SPAN gave the project members an overview of C-SPAN's history and programming mission as well as C-SPAN's history series, American Presidents and American Writers.  Susan Swain, EVP and Co-Chief Operating Officer discussed the resources and programs including Book TV's program In Depth with Edmund Morris.  The teachers explored and learned about archives via videoconference with Robert Browning, Director of C-SPAN archives.

The team not only learned about C-SPAN in the classroom, the C-SPAN School Bus, video resources, websites and the distance education initiative but members had the opportunity to visit the Library of Congress.

Over the next months the collaborative team of teachers will continue to work with C-SPAN staff to  develop a series of eight interactive videoconference programs which will integrate all the disciplines with an emphasis on Social Studies.  The programs will be developed using project VIEW's established infrastructure, training model and paradigm. 

The complete projects will be available to classrooms through the use of interactive videoconferencing and digitally archived resources.  The projects will include explorations that will enable students and teachers to conduct real-time interviews and discussions with C-SPAN guests including policy experts, politicians, authors, and more.