Tapped In Newsletter: November 2003

...On the Tapis
November 2003
Issue 72

In This Issue

[1] Member Perspective: Doug Peterson
[2] Tips and Comments From the Experts
[3] Tapped In Technology Tip
[4] News Nuggets
[5] About ...On the Tapis

Quote of the Month - "A true leader inspires others to lead themselves." - Ari D. Kaplan

[1] Member Perspective: Doug Peterson

Doug is the Computers in the Classroom Teacher Consultant for the Greater Essex County District School Board in South Western Ontario. He maintains the GEC Computers in the Classroom website at http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/d&g/ and posts a monthly newsletter on the site. There are lots of goodies online at the GEC site for teachers, including the Webquest Locator.

Doug has taught Computer Science, Business Applications, Mathematics, and Accounting at the secondary school level. Now, Doug teaches and supports Greater Essex educators as they work with computers, technology, and students. Doug has been a speaker at conferences such as those held by the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario, Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning, and the National Educational Computing Conference.

Doug's Perspective
Using computers is a great deal like being a parent. Sure, you might take a parenting course through a community service but, for the most part, you parent just like your parents did. The problem though, is that many of us learned about computers with punched cards, graduated to CRT screens, and mastered JCL. These are hardly directly applicable to the technology available in the year 2003!

So, how do you stay on top of things? The answer is by constantly reading and researching. The best way to learn about the technology is to use the technology and so I subscribe to and read mailing lists voraciously. One of the lists that I read regularly is Edtech and like clockwork, there would be these posts about this Tapped In thing. In the beginning, I figured it just to be some mass advertising of an educational gimmick. Of curiosity or boredom, I visited the original Tapped In and it was OK, but nothing that overly excited me. Then, along came Tapped In 2 and the functionality was definitely intriguing.

Read all of Doug's Perspective on our member perspectives page.

[2] Tips and Comments From the Experts

Tips and Comments from the Real Experts: the Members of Tapped In, features members' reflections on and use of Tapped In.
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Mark Horney is introducing his classes to Tapped In and comments: One student has already been to something [an event scheduled on the calendar] and reported, "I actually learned something!"
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Aaron: I am a pre-service teacher and I have techniques and websites being thrown at me every week. It's nice was nice to have someone walk me through this. Thanks BJ!
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Heidi: This is actually my first discussion, but I was surprised at how easy it was to work with. I have enjoyed it very much.
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If you have a comment or experience to share with the Tapped In community, please submit the information to BJ Berquist at bjb@tappedin.org.

[3] Tapped In Technology Tip

Student Accounts for the Student Center
When you create a group room in the Student Center, you will be prompted to complete a form that will generate student accounts. The duration of the accounts can be modified. You will be given auto-generated user names that start with the name you give the group, include numbers from 01 to XX (the size of your group), and end with st (student). Once these accounts have been created, you can go to your student group room /Settings/Member Management to edit the names of each student. All student user names will end in st. Students may then log in as members of Tapped In with the user name you have given them and the password you have chosen.

[4] News Nuggets

Global Learn Day VII will be Sunday, November 16. Tapped In members Vance Stevens, Teresa Almeida d'Eca, Michael Coghlan and Barbara Dieu will be making presentations this year beginning at 10 am GMT. One of the directors/coordinators of GLD is Tapped In member Andrew Pincon. For the entire GLD schedule see http://www.talkingcommunities.com/tc/gld7/speakers.htm. For accessing the login page for all channels and to volunteer for help desk support, if you are so inclined see http://www.talkingcommunities.com/gld7/. For the schedule and Agenda for the Portuguese and Spanish Channel see http://www.alado.net/dwes. And as a redundant link for those who enter the Sunday Webheads audio session we will have a link to the Webheads login at http://www.alado.net/webheads.
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Tapped In member Buthaina Al Othman's note on the question "What is the Difference? ESL vs. EFL" has been published in ESL MiniConference Letters. See http://www.eslminiconf.net/mail.html
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Lesley Farmer, leader of the monthly discussion group Targeting Librarians!, has a new book out from Libraries Unlimited! Student Success and Library Media Programs. See http://www.lu.com
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Tapped In member and ArtsConnected discussion leader, Kevan Nitzberg, has a new article up at art-themagazine.com dealing with the relationship of trees to both artistic interpretation and our view of ourselves in the world. See http://www.art-themagazine.com/pages/insite17.htm
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Tapped In members, Diane McGrath, Judi Harris, and Becky Fisher have articles in the November 2003 issue of Learning & Leading with Technology.
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Do you have a News Nugget about yourself or another member of the Tapped In Community? Send your News Nugget to BJ Berquist at bjb@tappedin.org.

[6] About ...On the Tapis

Past issues of ...On the Tapis newsletters are available on our web site.

Contact us if you have any questions about your subscription, password or user name, or if you have any news items that you want to share with the community for ...On the Tapis.