Thursday, February 19, 2004
Hi Ladies,
I only saw most of you for a few minutes today, but a lot was actually accomplished.
I met in the morning with Marilyn and we talked about summer training and next year.
When I got to MLK, Brook wanted a refresher on Blogger so that she could revive the journal writing we started. When she asked me, I knew it was going to be fun. I remember the somewhat glazed look from some of you when we first visited Blogger in September. You weren't sure of the concept and the technology was intimidating. I knew that this time around it would probably take all of about 30 seconds before Brook was up an running. Having worked with the Discussion forum and gotten comfortable with the technology, the most trouble she had was remembering the password she used.
I told most of you that your web site outshines any of the other Star-W sites listed on the DOE pages. The only think that I saw that impressed me was on school in which the teachers were doing online Journal writing. Since the grant is looking for this kind of reflective writing, I think it's a good idea for all of you to revive your Blogger accounts and begin journal writing. We can do that next week, but I'm going to give you some instructions in a little while and I know you can do it yourself. If you didn't create an account that first workshop, you'll have to wait for me to help you with some of the setting information. If you made an account, here's all you have to do.
1) Go to http://www.blogger.com and log in. I'm pretty sure we all used first initial and last name as the user name. If you forgot your password, give it a try and then click on the link that says, "Forgot your password?" and follow the instructions.
2) We made two blogs that day, one of which you won't use. Click on the Journal blog and that will take you to the data entry page.
3) Just type in your entry and click on Post and Publish. (If you just click on Post, it will save your work, but not publish it to the web.)
Once it is published, it is on the web, but we have to resurrect the addresses for each one of your blogs. That's simple. After you Post and Publish, while you are still logged in, in the upper right hand corner, click on Settings and then Publishing. You'll see the URL listed on that page. Jot it down and send it to me so that I can create a link from the Star-W site to your blog.
Which brings up the next topic. I need material to put on the individual teacher pages I'll be creating. I need a digital picture of you and something you want to tell the world. There is no one right way to provide that information. It can be anything you want and it only has to be a few paragraphs. If you can have it ready by next Thurs., that would be great. If you have it before then, you can send it to me. Janine mentioned her's was almost ready to go. Janine, if you send it to me, I'll get it up and the rest of you can use it as a model if you like.
Now in the good news category, I installed Quick Office on all of the Dana's today. It took about 4 minutes per Dana. That's why you didn't see much of me today. With Quick Office on the Dana's you now have the ability to beam Word and Excel documents between your Palms and the Danas. Make sure you have your Palms on Thurs. If you can give me some time during preps, I can give you a quick QuickOffice lessons and we can beam stuff all over the classroom.
One final item... Janine said that you folks felt the first three Saturday's in May were the best dates for the last 15 hours of training. I checked my calendar. The first two weeks are good for me, but on the 14th, I'll be in NH. So, the best days for me would be May 1, 8, & 22. If there are any problems with that, let me know. In the meantime, Dina, you can pencil in those as the training days.
TTFN,
Art
(10 Star-W brownie points if you can tell me want TTFN is.)
I only saw most of you for a few minutes today, but a lot was actually accomplished.
I met in the morning with Marilyn and we talked about summer training and next year.
When I got to MLK, Brook wanted a refresher on Blogger so that she could revive the journal writing we started. When she asked me, I knew it was going to be fun. I remember the somewhat glazed look from some of you when we first visited Blogger in September. You weren't sure of the concept and the technology was intimidating. I knew that this time around it would probably take all of about 30 seconds before Brook was up an running. Having worked with the Discussion forum and gotten comfortable with the technology, the most trouble she had was remembering the password she used.
I told most of you that your web site outshines any of the other Star-W sites listed on the DOE pages. The only think that I saw that impressed me was on school in which the teachers were doing online Journal writing. Since the grant is looking for this kind of reflective writing, I think it's a good idea for all of you to revive your Blogger accounts and begin journal writing. We can do that next week, but I'm going to give you some instructions in a little while and I know you can do it yourself. If you didn't create an account that first workshop, you'll have to wait for me to help you with some of the setting information. If you made an account, here's all you have to do.
1) Go to http://www.blogger.com and log in. I'm pretty sure we all used first initial and last name as the user name. If you forgot your password, give it a try and then click on the link that says, "Forgot your password?" and follow the instructions.
2) We made two blogs that day, one of which you won't use. Click on the Journal blog and that will take you to the data entry page.
3) Just type in your entry and click on Post and Publish. (If you just click on Post, it will save your work, but not publish it to the web.)
Once it is published, it is on the web, but we have to resurrect the addresses for each one of your blogs. That's simple. After you Post and Publish, while you are still logged in, in the upper right hand corner, click on Settings and then Publishing. You'll see the URL listed on that page. Jot it down and send it to me so that I can create a link from the Star-W site to your blog.
Which brings up the next topic. I need material to put on the individual teacher pages I'll be creating. I need a digital picture of you and something you want to tell the world. There is no one right way to provide that information. It can be anything you want and it only has to be a few paragraphs. If you can have it ready by next Thurs., that would be great. If you have it before then, you can send it to me. Janine mentioned her's was almost ready to go. Janine, if you send it to me, I'll get it up and the rest of you can use it as a model if you like.
Now in the good news category, I installed Quick Office on all of the Dana's today. It took about 4 minutes per Dana. That's why you didn't see much of me today. With Quick Office on the Dana's you now have the ability to beam Word and Excel documents between your Palms and the Danas. Make sure you have your Palms on Thurs. If you can give me some time during preps, I can give you a quick QuickOffice lessons and we can beam stuff all over the classroom.
One final item... Janine said that you folks felt the first three Saturday's in May were the best dates for the last 15 hours of training. I checked my calendar. The first two weeks are good for me, but on the 14th, I'll be in NH. So, the best days for me would be May 1, 8, & 22. If there are any problems with that, let me know. In the meantime, Dina, you can pencil in those as the training days.
TTFN,
Art
(10 Star-W brownie points if you can tell me want TTFN is.)
Monday, February 16, 2004
Hi Gang,
Here's a preview of coming attractions...
In our next workshop, we will begin taking a look at the theories and tools of Tom March, one of the world's top experts on using the web for education. Tom was Bernie Dodge's graduate assistant and was the one who actually created the first WebQuest under Bernie's guidance. While Bernie has remained focused primarily on the WebQuest model, Tom has branched out and created an online template driven tool and professional development environments that allows teachers to create seven different kinds of quality web-based activities.
I've had the extreme good fortune of working with Tom for the past six years. I've already clued him into the fact that I'll be taking you folks on a journey through his material and have run some ideas by him. He's interested in what we are about to begin and I'm sure he will be available for feed back as we progress.
One of the six lesson formats he has at his site, Web-and-Flow, is called the Insight Reflector. It's actually my favorite format. Tom originally designed it as a way of getting students to do reflective writing on a social issue by visiting web sites that offer different perspectives, reflecting on the view points and writing about each. As it stands, most people view it as a high school type activity and miss the potential that lies within the technology. I see it as a way of doing all kinds of prompted writing.
The software actually offers the teacher five different places to prompt writing. By creatively using these prompts, it's possible to create some very powerful lessons. I started experimenting this morning and came up with a lesson that prompts students though a five paragraph expository essay. It actually uses a single web site and sends students to five different pages as they work through the activity. Take some time to visit the page and as you do, keep some of these facts in mind.
1) Almost everything in the activity was created simply by filling in forms at the Web-and-Flow site. The software actually generates the page and publishes it to the Internet.
2) This is only ONE type of lesson formats you will learn. You'll also learn how and when to use the other formats of Hotlists, Knowledge Hunts, Subject Samplers, Concept Builders, and WebQuests.
3) Be sure to visit the Rubric and Guide pages through the link at the top of the activity. These are critical piece of material that will make your work shine in the eyes of grant evaluators and educators in general. The form the core of the lesson and provide other teachers with everything they need to reproduce what you did. Tom has even provided links within Web-and-Flow to all of the state standards.
4) The entire activity you are visiting took just over an hour for me to create and the biggest part of that hour was spent reading the web site to determine how it could best be used.
http://www.web-and-flow.com/members/awolinsk/bats1/reflector.htm
The material you have already created at the Star-W web site is great for two reasons. First, it represents a fantastic start! (Have no doubt that what you have done is a great start.) Second, it provides a great point of reference for measuring your growth through the grant. I'm wagering your Loti tests indicate that the material you have already posted is a significant achievement. It won't be long before you are creating lessons using Web-and-Flow and when those lessons complete with rubrics and supporting teacher documentation are compared to your first efforts, they will represent a second quantum leap. In essence, in a very short span of time we can have three benchmarks that document significant growth.
What will be more difficult is to capture similar examples of student work that will document their growth.
Well, that's enough food for thought for now. I know my brain is getting fat just thinking about the possibilities. ;->
See you Thursday!
Art
Here's a preview of coming attractions...
In our next workshop, we will begin taking a look at the theories and tools of Tom March, one of the world's top experts on using the web for education. Tom was Bernie Dodge's graduate assistant and was the one who actually created the first WebQuest under Bernie's guidance. While Bernie has remained focused primarily on the WebQuest model, Tom has branched out and created an online template driven tool and professional development environments that allows teachers to create seven different kinds of quality web-based activities.
I've had the extreme good fortune of working with Tom for the past six years. I've already clued him into the fact that I'll be taking you folks on a journey through his material and have run some ideas by him. He's interested in what we are about to begin and I'm sure he will be available for feed back as we progress.
One of the six lesson formats he has at his site, Web-and-Flow, is called the Insight Reflector. It's actually my favorite format. Tom originally designed it as a way of getting students to do reflective writing on a social issue by visiting web sites that offer different perspectives, reflecting on the view points and writing about each. As it stands, most people view it as a high school type activity and miss the potential that lies within the technology. I see it as a way of doing all kinds of prompted writing.
The software actually offers the teacher five different places to prompt writing. By creatively using these prompts, it's possible to create some very powerful lessons. I started experimenting this morning and came up with a lesson that prompts students though a five paragraph expository essay. It actually uses a single web site and sends students to five different pages as they work through the activity. Take some time to visit the page and as you do, keep some of these facts in mind.
1) Almost everything in the activity was created simply by filling in forms at the Web-and-Flow site. The software actually generates the page and publishes it to the Internet.
2) This is only ONE type of lesson formats you will learn. You'll also learn how and when to use the other formats of Hotlists, Knowledge Hunts, Subject Samplers, Concept Builders, and WebQuests.
3) Be sure to visit the Rubric and Guide pages through the link at the top of the activity. These are critical piece of material that will make your work shine in the eyes of grant evaluators and educators in general. The form the core of the lesson and provide other teachers with everything they need to reproduce what you did. Tom has even provided links within Web-and-Flow to all of the state standards.
4) The entire activity you are visiting took just over an hour for me to create and the biggest part of that hour was spent reading the web site to determine how it could best be used.
http://www.web-and-flow.com/members/awolinsk/bats1/reflector.htm
The material you have already created at the Star-W web site is great for two reasons. First, it represents a fantastic start! (Have no doubt that what you have done is a great start.) Second, it provides a great point of reference for measuring your growth through the grant. I'm wagering your Loti tests indicate that the material you have already posted is a significant achievement. It won't be long before you are creating lessons using Web-and-Flow and when those lessons complete with rubrics and supporting teacher documentation are compared to your first efforts, they will represent a second quantum leap. In essence, in a very short span of time we can have three benchmarks that document significant growth.
What will be more difficult is to capture similar examples of student work that will document their growth.
Well, that's enough food for thought for now. I know my brain is getting fat just thinking about the possibilities. ;->
See you Thursday!
Art
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Hi Ladies,
I'll be meeting Marilyn at the HS in the morning to get my official ID. After that she and I will be coming over to MKL.
I've been working most of the weekend revising and updating the web site. There are some new sections named Parents, Star-W and Standards, and Odds and Ends. I also made a change on each of your Students pages that solves two problems. One of the things that concerned you was locating activities next year as you remove the links from the Student pages this year. ie. If I take down the link to my Thanksgiving stuff now, how will I find it next year. What I did was to create a sort of Archive page for each of you that will hold the list of ALL of your postings. Then when you can move any link back and forth to your Student page. The other problem that it solves is the one that is raised if your old activities are not available for other teachers and for the evaluators to see. What I did is to create a link at the bottom of each student page to Past Lessons. (I think I'm going to change that to Stored Lessons.)
We are going to need a few things from you to really make this web site take off like a rocket. First the easy part. We are going to need your smiling faces. Marilyn and I want to do some digital picture taking on Thursday. We are also going to need some biographical information from you, but that isn't something that has to be ready on Thursday. We will be using it during our next workshop as we create a home page presence for each of you at Tom March's Web-and-Flow. The activity will have you including a short bio, a statement about why you teach, your favorite quote and three of your favorite web sites. So, please start thinking about that and pulling it together. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Here's a link to may home page at Web-and-Flow that will give you and idea. http://www.web-and-flow.com/members/awolinsk/default.htm
One of the biggest challenges we face is taking what you are doing and making it usable for other teachers. The Star-W grant requires that we provide resources that others can use to duplicate the success you are experiencing. That will mean taking some of the things you have locked in your head or stored on paper and putting it into a format that can be used by other teachers. The good news is that when we start using Web-and-Flow in the next workshop, all of that is done for you by the software. All you have to do is to fill in the blanks.
It would be great if each one of you could write up one or two activities that you have found successful and put it in recipe format for other teachers to follow. Of course, the inclusion of student work samples is icing on the cake.
See you all on Thursday!
Art.
I'll be meeting Marilyn at the HS in the morning to get my official ID. After that she and I will be coming over to MKL.
I've been working most of the weekend revising and updating the web site. There are some new sections named Parents, Star-W and Standards, and Odds and Ends. I also made a change on each of your Students pages that solves two problems. One of the things that concerned you was locating activities next year as you remove the links from the Student pages this year. ie. If I take down the link to my Thanksgiving stuff now, how will I find it next year. What I did was to create a sort of Archive page for each of you that will hold the list of ALL of your postings. Then when you can move any link back and forth to your Student page. The other problem that it solves is the one that is raised if your old activities are not available for other teachers and for the evaluators to see. What I did is to create a link at the bottom of each student page to Past Lessons. (I think I'm going to change that to Stored Lessons.)
We are going to need a few things from you to really make this web site take off like a rocket. First the easy part. We are going to need your smiling faces. Marilyn and I want to do some digital picture taking on Thursday. We are also going to need some biographical information from you, but that isn't something that has to be ready on Thursday. We will be using it during our next workshop as we create a home page presence for each of you at Tom March's Web-and-Flow. The activity will have you including a short bio, a statement about why you teach, your favorite quote and three of your favorite web sites. So, please start thinking about that and pulling it together. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Here's a link to may home page at Web-and-Flow that will give you and idea. http://www.web-and-flow.com/members/awolinsk/default.htm
One of the biggest challenges we face is taking what you are doing and making it usable for other teachers. The Star-W grant requires that we provide resources that others can use to duplicate the success you are experiencing. That will mean taking some of the things you have locked in your head or stored on paper and putting it into a format that can be used by other teachers. The good news is that when we start using Web-and-Flow in the next workshop, all of that is done for you by the software. All you have to do is to fill in the blanks.
It would be great if each one of you could write up one or two activities that you have found successful and put it in recipe format for other teachers to follow. Of course, the inclusion of student work samples is icing on the cake.
See you all on Thursday!
Art.
