SANTA ANA : Students Use Video to Learn from Afar

The moment Luis Ramos finished playing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on his violin, his audience 3,000 miles away smiled and broke into applause.

Luis, 10, performed on Friday during a cross-country video teleconference which linked 12 students from Santa Ana’s George Washington Carver Elementary School with students at an elementary school in Greenville, S.C.

Still, Luis said the best part of the experience wasn’t playing his violin, but getting to ask questions of other children who live in a different part of the world.

“It’s fun to talk with other kids from other states even though they’re miles and miles away. They had an accent. They talk like people from Texas,” said Luis, who is in the fifth grade at Carver.

The 90-minute conference was part of an educational partnership which Carver maintains with Fluor Daniel Inc. Fluor Daniel, which hosted the conference at its Irvine offices, has donated computers and other science equipment and also provides engineers to speak to students in the classroom, said teacher Ann Hernandez.

The partnership is especially helpful because it provides inner-city students with experiences relating to science and technology that they might otherwise miss, she said.

“These kids’ enthusiasm for the project has been just tremendous. The minute they heard about it, they jumped up and down,” Hernandez said.

During the conference, students sat at long tables and watched their peers across the country on a panel of video monitors. The Santa Ana students made several presentations including the demonstration of an electronic science project testing hand-eye coordination, and an explanation of the accomplishments of Carver school’s namesake.

Later, Greenville students described one of their favorite classes in which they studied subjects, such as French, for fun. They yelled in unison that the best part of the class is, “You don’t get grades!” On hearing that, the Carver students broke into appreciative applause.

After the presentations, students from both classes asked questions of each other, mostly dealing with extracurricular activities, the weather and school topics.

At one point, Hernandez stunned the Greenville students when she revealed that Carver students attend school year-round, with several short vacations instead of one long one.

“We don’t have summer vacation,” she explained, and at that moment 15 sets of jaws dropped wide open in South Carolina.

Preparing for the conference has been a great motivator for students during the last two weeks. For example, students used math to determine how far away Greenville is, used language skills to compose letters, and they practiced the violin for the performance, Hernandez said.

After the conference ended, Carver students said they enjoyed making friends with their peers across the country.

Michael Ceja, 9, said he wants to visit South Carolina in part because he learned that it isn’t always so sunny.

“It’s fun over there. I wish I lived there, because it snows there, and it doesn’t snow in Santa Ana,” Michael said.