Sunday, March 07, 2004
Last week I introduced the teachers to Contribute and they LOVED it! They aren't the only ones. I'm seeing all kinds of uses for it. This message I just sent off to the WWWEdu mailing list tell some of the story of what went on last week, what I'm trying to do with the Star-W web site and what might be happening in the future.
At 07:09 PM 3/7/2004, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Am giving a presentation next week in D.C. on "Tools for Collaboration" and
>would like to invite you to use, add, critique
>http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/consult/collab/cctool.html
>.
Hi Debbie,
Wow! Did you say you were going to present a seminar or to teach for a
semester? You have a wealth of material there that would take far longer
than a day to digest.
Your material on Information Literacy and 21st Century Literacy was
particularly interesting to me. As a Big6 trainer, I immediately
recognized all of the elements of the Big6 and other effective problem
solving methods, but the way you have aligned the process to the student
competencies and curriculum design is wonderful.
I've been a tool nut since I first found computers in 1979. Your collection
and categorization of tools is extensive. I have used and loved many of
them, but unless I overlooked something, I think you may have overlooked
something. Additionally, I'd like to add one new tool to the list. What I
think you may have overlooked is CGI/Perl scripts. It may be because they
are not tools for individual teachers, but in the hands of a web master
tasked with providing tools for teachers it can be powerful. I'll address
that in a minute, but first I'd like to tell you about a tool I just
started using about a week ago and I think it's the greatest thing since
sliced bread. It's Macromedia Contribute.
It allows a web master to create a site and then allow users to manage
their own portions of the site by editing what exits or copying a page
changing it and making appropriate links to expand their site. All of this
is done through a browser interface with the ease of word
processing. Another neat feature is that they can create pages in Word and
import them directly into a blank page on the site.
I'm using it in an NCLB grant project (Star-W http://www.starw.org ) in
which I am mentoring eight (soon to be twelve) 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade
teachers, by helpoing them infuse technology to improve literacy. I
created the web site for them and they are now getting ready to take over
their own areas. They will be posting a variety of lessons, keeping
journals, and doing whatever they like. I gave them a 15 minute lesson on
Thursday to half of them and no one had a problem with it. The first thing
they did with it was to post their bios. While they are all stressed and
under pressure preparing for a high stakes test in about a week, they are
excited about the ease in which they will be able to post and manage their
own on-line worlds. Some of them have already built significant content on
their teacher pages.
Because of Contribute and other tools, the web site will not only become a
place where they send the kids. It will become a central part of their
learning environment. I'm utilizing CGI scripts in many of the standard
formats, but by doing it creatively and within an environment in which the
teachers and students will be working on a daily basis, the tools will
become utilitarian rather than decorative. I installed a free discussion
board which the student and teachers are using for response journal
writing, puzzles of the week and poetry writing. The entire district will
be taking a series of technology surveys which I originally made and placed
in ProfilerPro, but have since moved to keep everything in one basket. I
just installed a chat room this afternoon where the teachers can conduct
inter and intra class chats and other activities. All chats will be logged
and student responses over time can serve as data for evaluation. Of
course there's the obligatory guest book link on the home page (which I
invite all of you to sign), the feedback form, and the search page, but the
most exciting thing is yet to come.
Next week I will combine the power of Contribute with CGI scripts to allow
teachers to crank out template based forms in a way never before possible.
In this case they will be developing a wide range or reading a writing
activities. For the geeks, here's the way it will work.
I have created a template page for each teacher with ten text input boxes
and configured it work with FormMail to send whatever is input to each
individual teacher and placed the template their directories. They just
fire up Contribute, navigate to the template, create a new page based on it
and begin editing. They can delete any of the text boxes they don't want
and insert text, pictures, or links anywhere. If they want students to
look at a picture and write a paragraph, they would delete nine text boxes,
insert the picture and instructions, and hit the Publish button. If they
wanted to prompt students through the creation of a five paragraph essay,
they would would delete five boxes and write whatever instructions they
needed before each of the remaining five and then hit Publish. They can
create Internet Scavenger Hunts and other activities. Here's an example
that I did for them after at the request of one of the teachers who wanted
a St. Patrick's day reading for detail activity for students and some
computer literacy skills for her 4th
graders. http://www.starw.org/html/stpatcastaldi.htm This is what the
blank form looked like before using Contribute
http://www.starw.org/html/wprompts.htm .
At 07:09 PM 3/7/2004, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Am giving a presentation next week in D.C. on "Tools for Collaboration" and
>would like to invite you to use, add, critique
>
>.
Hi Debbie,
Wow! Did you say you were going to present a seminar or to teach for a
semester? You have a wealth of material there that would take far longer
than a day to digest.
Your material on Information Literacy and 21st Century Literacy was
particularly interesting to me. As a Big6 trainer, I immediately
recognized all of the elements of the Big6 and other effective problem
solving methods, but the way you have aligned the process to the student
competencies and curriculum design is wonderful.
I've been a tool nut since I first found computers in 1979. Your collection
and categorization of tools is extensive. I have used and loved many of
them, but unless I overlooked something, I think you may have overlooked
something. Additionally, I'd like to add one new tool to the list. What I
think you may have overlooked is CGI/Perl scripts. It may be because they
are not tools for individual teachers, but in the hands of a web master
tasked with providing tools for teachers it can be powerful. I'll address
that in a minute, but first I'd like to tell you about a tool I just
started using about a week ago and I think it's the greatest thing since
sliced bread. It's Macromedia Contribute.
It allows a web master to create a site and then allow users to manage
their own portions of the site by editing what exits or copying a page
changing it and making appropriate links to expand their site. All of this
is done through a browser interface with the ease of word
processing. Another neat feature is that they can create pages in Word and
import them directly into a blank page on the site.
I'm using it in an NCLB grant project (Star-W http://www.starw.org ) in
which I am mentoring eight (soon to be twelve) 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade
teachers, by helpoing them infuse technology to improve literacy. I
created the web site for them and they are now getting ready to take over
their own areas. They will be posting a variety of lessons, keeping
journals, and doing whatever they like. I gave them a 15 minute lesson on
Thursday to half of them and no one had a problem with it. The first thing
they did with it was to post their bios. While they are all stressed and
under pressure preparing for a high stakes test in about a week, they are
excited about the ease in which they will be able to post and manage their
own on-line worlds. Some of them have already built significant content on
their teacher pages.
Because of Contribute and other tools, the web site will not only become a
place where they send the kids. It will become a central part of their
learning environment. I'm utilizing CGI scripts in many of the standard
formats, but by doing it creatively and within an environment in which the
teachers and students will be working on a daily basis, the tools will
become utilitarian rather than decorative. I installed a free discussion
board which the student and teachers are using for response journal
writing, puzzles of the week and poetry writing. The entire district will
be taking a series of technology surveys which I originally made and placed
in ProfilerPro, but have since moved to keep everything in one basket. I
just installed a chat room this afternoon where the teachers can conduct
inter and intra class chats and other activities. All chats will be logged
and student responses over time can serve as data for evaluation. Of
course there's the obligatory guest book link on the home page (which I
invite all of you to sign), the feedback form, and the search page, but the
most exciting thing is yet to come.
Next week I will combine the power of Contribute with CGI scripts to allow
teachers to crank out template based forms in a way never before possible.
In this case they will be developing a wide range or reading a writing
activities. For the geeks, here's the way it will work.
I have created a template page for each teacher with ten text input boxes
and configured it work with FormMail to send whatever is input to each
individual teacher and placed the template their directories. They just
fire up Contribute, navigate to the template, create a new page based on it
and begin editing. They can delete any of the text boxes they don't want
and insert text, pictures, or links anywhere. If they want students to
look at a picture and write a paragraph, they would delete nine text boxes,
insert the picture and instructions, and hit the Publish button. If they
wanted to prompt students through the creation of a five paragraph essay,
they would would delete five boxes and write whatever instructions they
needed before each of the remaining five and then hit Publish. They can
create Internet Scavenger Hunts and other activities. Here's an example
that I did for them after at the request of one of the teachers who wanted
a St. Patrick's day reading for detail activity for students and some
computer literacy skills for her 4th
graders. http://www.starw.org/html/stpatcastaldi.htm This is what the
blank form looked like before using Contribute
http://www.starw.org/html/wprompts.htm .
