CILC Symposium Corner

Meet Dale Hilton…

Dale Hilton
Director of Distance Learning
Cleveland Museum of Art

In an informative and delightful conversation with Dale, we learned that she goes to a conference with one expectation: to be updated on what’s happening in world of videoconferencing. Dale described the 2008 CILC Symposium as "refreshingly modest in scale and interactive. It updated me on the projects others are doing. I really appreciated the small size of this conference and felt it was advantageous to making personal contacts."

She found the format, panel discussions followed by smaller facilitated breakout groups, conducive to having her expectations met. "While the panel discussions reflected a lot of view points, the smaller facilitated breakout groups provided a greater comfort level to ask and answer questions. It was a very practical format for all."

Biggest Take-away
Since our original facilitator was called to jury duty, the week prior to the conference we asked Dale if she would step in to facilitate the International Birds of a Feather Group. While she graciously agreed, she was quick to inform us that this was not her area of expertise. Her reward was that she learned more about international partnerships – specifically that they require much diligence and must have meaningful goals to drive each project.

In addition, Dale discovered some alternative means of delivering content. In a conversation with Gary Dietz, she learned more about Elluminate, a tool for live e-learning and web collaboration. She also had an interesting conversation with Linda Lentz, an independent consultant for CILC, around My E-Coach, a web-based platform. Linda describes this product as "a professional learning community which can help to expand a virtual fieldtrip. It allows those who participate in a specific program to jointly create lesson plans for pre and post activities." Lots to consider!

Immediate Implementation
The Symposium reinforced Dale’s awareness of how eager teachers are for on-camera interactivities. "I think it is hard for a content provider to implement large changes during the school year, so some of my goals will be addressed this summer. I have identified teachers to approach for help in instituting additional interactivities into our programs."

She is also looking for more opportunities for classroom to classroom presentations. CMA’s new program on ‘coins as a component of local history projects,’ designed in this format, will enable students to share their own coin designs. Dale shared that there is long gestation period in collaboratively developing new programs for videoconferencing. Challenges include coordinating team members’ schedules, keeping the project on track and accommodating other perspectives as the program emerges; essentially giving up control."

From a personal perspective, Dale wants to learn more about delivering content via desktop videoconferencing. She plans to learn more about that at Connections ’08: A Content Provider Videoconferencing Symposium, at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in October, where she also hopes to present, stay better connected to other content providers, and monitor trends in distance learning.

Further Needs
In looking forward to the 2009 CILC Symposium, Dale has suggested that we include sessions on practical issues such as scheduling, marketing, implementing interactivities, and developing more multipoint conferences with an emphasis on collaborations.

Final Comments
"It was helpful to have a real community of practitioners which enabled communication to take place in a very natural and informal way."

This interviewer learned that Dale is incredibly organized. She had reviewed our questions and even made some written notes! We learned that the 30 minutes we spent together provided a good opportunity to review her notes from the Symposium, reflect on the many ideas she had captured, and offered an opportunity for her to reflect with someone else–an unexpected benefit.

Thank You
CILC thanks Dale for sharing her insights with us and with you. It is our way of helping to continue to strengthen the community of videoconferencing practitioners.

Dale Hilton
Dale K. Hilton has worked as a museum educator for sixteen years and began with the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1999 at the inception of its distance learning program. She oversees lesson production, teacher/client relations, scheduling, development of companion publications to distance learning lessons, and has extensive on-camera experience in presenting videoconferences. Her work for the museum’s Education Department includes gallery talks, lectures, workshops and development of educational materials.