What to Expect
Our live events are roughly 45 minutes long and focus on visual storytelling, in the form of media rich presentations or virtual field trips. Speakers share their stories, research, expeditions, explorations, successes, failures and more. During most events, we mix in a Kahoot! quiz so students can to further student interaction, before moving into live Q&A.
Live events are announced each month and regularly updated via our newsletters (released each Sunday evening, subscribe on the home page), the website and our social media channels (@ebtsoyp). We use StreamYard to broadcast the events as it allows us to to reach a large number of classrooms with each lesson, it is great even with poor connectivity, and there is no program that educators need to download. You can register for the events right on the lesson pages on this website.
We don’t put grade levels on our events, this is intentional! We want a large group of students to be inspired through each live event, which is why our speakers focus on telling their stories and sharing their work in very visual ways. The majority of the live events are excellent fits for grades 3-8, with K-2 gravitating towards the virtual field trip events. High school classes join regularly, often choosing the recordings of events due to more fixed schedules.
Getting Started
We now have 4 ways your classroom can join the adventure:
1) Grab a camera spot so your class can appear on screen and interact with the speaker. We generally have 5-6 classrooms joining in this way for each event. We’ll contact you within 24 hours to confirm your spot, your camera spot isn’t confirmed until you respond to our message. There’s no program to download, although Google Chrome is by far the best browser to use. Shortly before the event, we’ll send you a special link, and all you have to do is follow it to join the live event. We’re happy to do a quick test call in advance if it’s your first time.
2) Grab an audio spot so your classroom can ask questions via microphone, with your camera turned off. This is a great option for classrooms that might not have permission to appear on camera, but still want direct interaction with the speaker.
3) Tune in live to the live stream on our YouTube channel, any number of classrooms can join this way, take part in the Kahoot! quizzes, and send in some questions using the live chat. We’ll email you the YouTube link to use after you have registered.
4) Every live event is recorded directly to our YouTube channel, we have a growing library of past events that can be used by educators and students at any time: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvQkEzcH9f_9OylEdmALiWg
