Renaissance Charter School at Pines - The Meeting Owl

By Nicolas Bardoni, Assistant Principal

Owls have come to play a valuable role at Renaissance Charter School at Pines. In the Harry Potter novels, the Owls were a source of companionship and information. Our Owls play a similar role with our teachers and students.

Owls have been associated with magic and wisdom for a long time. At Renaissance Charter School at Pines, they are being magical in their ability to help us provide engaging distant learning, therefore, bringing much wisdom to our students.

The Meeting Owl smart video conferencing camera captures 360-degree video and audio, creating an immersive teleconference which is nearly a face-to-face experience. They even “hoot” when they come online!

Our teachers use Microsoft TEAMs with the Meeting Owl which outputs a split-screen to show other student participants and focuses on the current speaker during class. It also follows the teacher as she/he walks around the room. Instead of students staring at a full classroom on a screen and trying to figure out who’s speaking, the Owls are intelligent enough to know who is talking. It makes them the center of attention by automatically shifting the camera focus on whoever is speaking and keeps an eye on activities on the periphery, where there is motion or faces of other participants. It keeps those quadrants with activity in the other portions of the screen, allowing the feeling of nearly sitting in the classroom for those students who are attending virtually.

These Owls are an incredible upgrade from using Zoom or MicrosoftTEAMs video conferences alone when our remote students are connecting to a physical class session as well as better for the students in the classroom. Instead of staring at a laptop camera while speaking, students are free to look around and discuss questions, answers, and topics normally. It is a much better and more organic experience. These Owls improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our teachers and the students’ classroom experiences greatly. There is an inherent disconnect between a classroom full of students with a teacher and a handful of remote learners on the other end of the line. Our Owls bridge that gap, making lessons and conversations flow and making it easier to see the subtle expression shifts and body chemistry that is often lost when you are not in the room.

Bridging the gap between school and home, one “Hoot” at a time.

Renaissance Charter School at Pines is located at 10501 Pines Blvd. in Pembroke Pines. They can be reached at (954) 862-1283 or visit www.recspines.org.