By Emily Sparago
13-year-old student, SMART Board aficionado and aspiring teacher

If you’re familiar with Bridgit, then you know it’s an amazing video-conferencing software capable of many incredible things, such as screen-sharing, taking control of someone else’s display, and much more.   We all, probably, view it in the business-aspect, right?

Well, what about the educational-aspect of it? Bridgit conferencing software is also great in the classroom!

Imagine this:

A student is home sick with a common cold.  Why should he/she get marked at school as absent, when that student is completely capable of working?. All the student needs is a computer, Bridgit conferencing software and a webcam to just “virtually attend”. I think It would be a fun way to come to school when you’re feeling a bit under the weather.

The Bridgit software allows multiple students to attend a session.  They can see the classroom (via webcam) and the SMART Board interactive whiteboard (via screen-share).  The students can activate the webcam, or leave it disabled for privacy purposes.  A student has a “raise hand” option within Bridgit software.  If he/she has a question, or an answer to a question, a notification will pop up on the teacher’s side and the student would be able to actively participate…while not actually being there!

Ahead of time, the teacher can prepare the lesson – scan in any worksheets used in the lesson, prepare a SMART Notebook collaborative learning software file, and check his/her email to see who will be virtually joining the class.  The teacher can share the files to the student as the lesson goes on, just like passing out virtual papers!

Here’s a classroom scenario using Bridgit conferencing software:

Teacher: “Who can come up to the board and solve the first word problem? The perimeter of a rectangular park is 28 meters.  If the length of the park is 4 meters, what is the width of the park?”

Remote student: *Shawn raised his hand using the feature on Bridgit*

Teacher: “Shawn, would you like to complete the problem?”

*The teacher and students in the classroom see Shawn nod ‘yes’ via the webcam and because the mic is enabled within the software, the class can also hear him. *

Now, Shawn can take control of the SMART Board interactive whiteboard on his computer and show the class how to solve the word problem.  That’s another feature – taking control of the teacher’s screen.  (Students will have to use this capability responsibly.)

Bridgit software doesn’t only have to be used within one classroom – envision conferencing with two or more classrooms.  The other classrooms can be thousands of miles away!  What if students in New York write to pen pals in Canada, or even as far as Zimbabwe. And then, using Bridgit software, they can also see and talk to each other. They can learn together, at the same time.  That would be taking pen pals to the next level – technology is great!

There are endless possibilities of Bridgit in both an office setting and a classroom setting.   I would love to see these scenarios be used in every classroom!

If you’re using Bridgit conferencing software in your classroom, please share what you’re doing with it in the Comment box below. With the new school year here, you could spur on new ideas and inspiration for others using Bridgit.

Read other posts by Emily Sparago

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