Tapped In Newsletter: June 2009

...On the Tapis
June 2009
Issue 139

In This Issue

[1] Member Perspectives: Cathy McDonald and Tyrone Santiago
[2] News Nuggets
[3] Tips and Comments from the Experts
[4] Tapped In Technology Tip
[5] About ...On the Tapis

Quote of the Month: "We all need someone who inspires us to do better than we know how." - Anonymous

[1] Member Perspectives: Cathy McDonald and Tyrone Santiago

Meet Cathy and Tyrone:
Cathy McDonald is a high school Language Arts teacher at Lovejoy Technology Academy in Brooklyn, IL, the oldest African American town in the United States. The school is located in a high crime, high poverty area. She uses Tapped In as one of many venues for her students to connect with a Brasilian teacher and his classes.

Tyrone Braga Santiago is a high school English as a Second Language Teacher at CECR - Escola Parque in Salvador, Bahia, Brasil. Tyrone also teaches students who live in violent neighborhoods.

Cathy's Perspective:
After my superintendent made a trip to Brazil and toured CECR - Escola Parque in Salvador, Bahia, I connected with Tyrone Santiago, who teaches there. The result has been a fabulous relationship between us, as professionals, and our students who have learned so much about the culture of the two countries. One of the highlights of our weekly exchange is the use of Tapped In.

I was first introduced to Tapped In as a spot for professionals to meet for synchronous chat as a part of the PBS Capstone courses. As Tyrone's classes and mine already met using webcams at another site, we sought a way to move the students to a new level of thinking and sharing. They loved talking to each other synchronously, but I only had one webcam available and the 24 students had to rotate times they could talk.

The students wanted to use the synchronous chats to "get to know each other." However, it seemed there was too much going on at one time to have a meaningful discussion. As my students tried to solve the various problems, they really wanted me to stay out of it. They could handle it. Talk about critical thinking skills - they were analyzing and problem solving every step of the way. When one or two figured out how to do something, they helped everyone else.

Tyrone's Perspective:
At the invitation of teacher Cathy McDonald, I agreed to create a Tapped In account to enable our students to Interact through this site. Since last March we have been using this site as an awesome pedagogical tool. The first topic discussed on Tapped In had to do with the movie, "Freedom Writers."

Through this site, Lovejoy (USA) and Escola Parque (Brazil) students could share opinions about that movie. In addition, they could compare their own lives to Freedom Writers' characters. Their points of view sometimes were consensual, sometimes not. But the most important thing was that students could talk about themselves in a formal way. We found a perfect excuse to make them write in a formal writing language--Cathy's, by avoiding slang as they needed to be understood by their Brazilian classmates who had to translate American comments; mine, when they needed to write in a formal Portuguese so that their texts could also be translated satisfactorily into English and posted at Tapped In.

Read the rest of Cathy and Tyrone's Perspective.

[2] News Nuggets

TI member Johnathan Chase recently uploaded a video he made for his classes to introduce a new media project. Scroll down below the video for project details and additional links. Student videos should be finished (they choose their own songs) in the next week or two.
--------------------
TI member Laura Zuckerman, author of Sorbonne Confidential, would like to share an interview about teaching English in France which has just appeared on BBC's The World in Words with Patrick Cox. Select "The World in Words 55: Teaching in France." The second part is "The World in Words 56: Teaching English in France part 2."
--------------------
Diana Gainer (myself), a former Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages, who attempts from time to time to get into the Tapped In community, has a small column as a Word Geek on Examiner.com online. My mostly futile attempts to be more active On the Tapis have been thwarted by the fiendishly clever but demented gerbil infesting VISTA, the system which controls my new computer, a laptop which an equally demented hamster with bug-eyes bugged with an AMD Turion X2 64-bit processor. I have no earthly idea what any of that means except that I can't access half of Tapped In, can't communicate with anybody in the professional TESOL, Inc. group, can't watch YouTube videos, and half of my own e-mails come back to me with a message saying that they are attacks on my computer from someone evil who is trying to take over the country.

If you'd care to comment on one my equally demented columns, wander over here and enter your two cents.

If you have questions or comments about language learning, language teaching, or the infestation of computers by demented rodents, let me know your thoughts. Thank you for letting me run on at the mouth.

Diana Gainer (I actually have a BA in linguistics, an MS in sociology, and a TESOL certificate beyond the master's and I have to admit the vermin in the system have outsmarted me.)

[This was too fun to edit! Hope you enjoy Diana's News Nugget. BJB]
--------------------
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.

[3] Tips and Comments from the Experts

Tyrone Santiago wrote: Working with such an outstanding site is really a gift!! If I haven't had the chance to know Cathy possibly I wouldn't know about Tapped In. It is really a helpful tool for teachers! One important thing I have noticed is the support people [Tapped In Helpdesk] have been giving for us teachers... I myself have felt proud of being observed by the [helpdesk volunteers] of an important educational site!! See Tyrone's perspective in this newsletter.
--------------------
Dave Keidel sighed at the end of a long school year: It has been a very rewarding year for me and good ol' Tapped In
--------------------
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 or post how you use TI.

[4] Tapped In Technology Tip

Creating a K-12 Student Group
The Student Campus in TI is a safe and secure place to bring K-12 (5-18yrs of age) Students. The teacher creates the group room and assigns usernames and passwords for the students. When the students log in they land in the group room in the student campus. The teacher determines the settings that allow students access to resource areas in the Student Campus. To create a K-12 Student Group, log in to Tapped In, go to the Tapped In tab and then click on the subtab GROUPS. Choose "Create a New K-12 Student Group" and follow the tutorial. Once the group is created you can enter the group room and edit Settings/Member Management to add members and change permissions. Jeff Cooper leads a Student Campus Tour and Classroom Support discussion every Saturday. Read more details here.

[5] About ...On the Tapis

Past issues of ...On the Tapis newsletters are available online.

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.