Newsletter: October 1998

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********** ...ON THE TAPIS **********
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Issue # 12 October, 1998
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.ON THE TAPIS is a monthly newsletter with updates on TAPPED IN
and related events. Please update us if your email address changes.

Quote of the Month:

"Dialogue launches language, the mind, but once it is launched we
develop a new power, 'inner speech,' and it is this that is
indispensible for our further development, our thinking. ... It is
through inner speech that the child develops his own concepts and
meanings; it is through inner speech that he achieves his own
identity; it is through inner speech, finally, that he constructs
his own world." - Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf
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[1] Congratulations to TAPPED IN member #2000!
[2] TAPPED IN panel at the international Tel*Ed conference
[3] TAPPED IN on a CyberPanel at Tel*Ed
[4] TAPPED IN cited In Ed Week article!
[5] A Masters course taught entirely in TAPPED IN
[6] Come to The Tech Museum and say Hi ... In San Jose or online!
[7] Anti-spam info: Hold the SPAM, please!
[8] About ...ON THE TAPIS
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[1] Congratulations to TAPPED IN member #2000!
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On Thursday Oct 15, 1998 Patricia Cheng, a High School Teacher in
Danville, California, became TAPPED IN's Member #2000! She will
receive a full-color TAPPED IN T-Shirt (what did you expect, a
car?)! A few members were on hand to congratulate Patricia when
she logged in:

Mark [to PatriciaC]: "TaDa!!!! you're our 2000th member!"
DavidW exclaims, "Get out the champagne!"
PatriciaC [to you]: "I am?"
AmySi says, "that is so cool"
DavidW says, "Congratulations Patricia"
Mark lets the confetti loose
Mark blows his noisemaker!!
PatriciaC says, "Thanks everyone. That is pretty cool."
AmySi exclaims, "Wooo hooooo!"
PattiWiz picks up Champagne.
PattiWiz exclaims, "Congratulations!"
PatriciaC accepts champagne
PatriciaC drinks a glass of the bubbly.
Mark asks, "So, how do you feel Patricia?"
PatriciaC says, "I'm feeling a little tipsy..."
PatriciaC grins
Mark asks, "so how did you find out about TAPPED IN (for our
            newsletter)?"
PatriciaC says, "My professor from college sent us the URL."
PatriciaC says, "Her name is Jeanne Bamberger, from MIT."
Mark asks, "great and what do you hope to get out of your
            membership?"
PatriciaC says, "I'm hoping I'll get cool ideas for my classes,
                 and make some connections, so I don't become
                 obsolete."
Mark asks, "OK! thats great! what kinds of ideas can we help
            you with?"
PatriciaC says, "Well, I teach math, so hopefully ideas that
                 relate to math."
Mark exclaims, "Boy you hit the jackpot today Patricia!"

.It turns out that David Weksler from the Math Forum and Amy
Silberman from the Annenberg/CPB guide to Math and Science were
both on hand to help Patricia out!

[2] TAPPED IN panel at the international Tel*Ed conference
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TAPPED IN: Real-life Experiences from a Virtual Community of
Teachers a panel at ISTE's 7th International Conference on
Telecommunications and Multimedia in Education, New Orleans,
October 29-31.

If you're at the conference, come hear:

- Michael Simkins, Project Manager of the Challenge 2000
Multimedia Project of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, discuss
how Silicon Valley teachers are using TAPPED IN as they
develop multimedia projects for their classes.

- Linda Polin, Professor at Pepperdine University, discuss
the Pepperdine University Online Masters in Education program.

- Hulda Nystrom, technology resource teacher and Associate
Educator with TAPPED IN, discuss a student online civil rights
forum that she organized last spring.

- Terrie Gray, director of ED's Oasis website, talk about
her experiences using TAPPED IN as a virtual office and
conference center for its staff and members.

- Dave Weksler, Teacher Liaison at Swarthmore College's Math
Forum, discuss how The Math Forum uses TAPPED IN for supporting
their projects, keeping their teachers in touch with each other,
as well as doing outreach.

If you can't be at the conference, drop in and talk to these
folks on-line.

For more info on Tel*Ed, see http://www.iste.org

[3] TAPPED IN on a CyberPanel at Tel*Ed
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Yvonne Marie Andres, President of Global SchoolNet Foundation's
Global Schoolhouse (http://www.gsn.org), is hosting a cyberpanel
at Tel*Ed called "The Power of Internet Collaborative Tools".
The panel will showcase ClassPoint, Caucas and TAPPED IN. Yvonne
has invited TAPPED IN Associate Educator Hulda Nystrom to
represent our collaborative tool.

[4] Read about TAPPED IN in Ed Week and IEEE
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Check out the Education Week (October 1 issue) insert Technology
Counts '98, page 45 for an article by Ann Bradley that mentions
TAPPED IN among other cool resources for teachers:
http://www.edweek.org/sreports/tc98/cs/cs6.htm

Our latest paper, "Conceptual Cornerstones for an On-line Community
of Education Professionals," is also available in the IEEE Spectrum
(August 1998).

[5] A Masters course taught entirely in TAPPED IN
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TAPPED IN Associate Educator Hulda Nystrom, a Technology Resource
Teacher for West Contra Costa Unified School District in Richmond,
California, is the instructor of a Masters course for K-12 teachers
for the University of Indianapolis entitled "Teaching Students the
Art of Dialogue in the Global Village". Want to know more? Ask any
of the teachers from Indiana, California and Canada participating
in Hulda's course: DeAnnB, JohnC, TeresaD, KarlaH, ChrisL, AndreaS,
MarleneK or LanaM.

[6] Come to The Tech Museum and say Hi ... In San Jose or online!
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TAPPED IN will be one of the featured projects at the grand re-
opening of The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California
on October 31, and November 1, 1998.

The Tech has been closed for three months and is re-opening at a
new home at the corner of Park Avenue and Market Street in
downtown San Jose with exciting new exhibits.

To get tickets for The Tech's free grand opening weekend, go to
www.thetech.org/press_resources/releases/1998/pr-openweeknd.html

We'd love to see you there. Or pop into TAPPED IN that weekend
and we'll give you a virtual tour of the Tech.

[7] Anti-spam info: Hold the SPAM, please!
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Thanks to our vigilant Director of Technology, Patti Schank, we've
taken several measures to protect you (and us) from SPAM--"junk
mail" that shows up in your email box from unwanted sources. Folks
who send SPAM often create software robots ('web-bots') that visit
web sites and harvest email addresses from them, looking especially
for addresses in an HTML 'mailto' link. For more information, see
http://spam.abuse.net/

Here are the anti-SPAM measures we've taken:

1. We've made it so that only mailing list members can submit
messages to TAPPED IN mailing lists (like meetme). Any mail sent
to it by a spamer will bounce. (Robots won't subscribe to a list.)

2. We removed the 'mailto' email address links to TAPPED IN staff
sprinkled about our website, and in their place put one contact
form and one contact email address. The contact email address is
also disguised (using spaces before and after the '@' symbol) so
that web-bots can't understand it, but people can!

3. HyperNews used to automatically generate 'mailto' links for
anyone who sent or replied to a message on a discussion. We
modified the HyperNews system so that it doesn't generate 'mailto'
links; rather it just lists the email address--but in a form (you
guessed it) disguised from web-bots. (The word "SENTFROM" is
prepended to all address. Unlike people, web-bots aren't smart
enough to remove it, and any addresses they'd gather would bounce.)

So for now you need not worry about posting messages to our TAPPED
IN lists. Unlike posting to general Newsgroups, it's very unlikely
you will be added to anyone's junk mail list as a result!

[8] About ...ON THE TAPIS
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