Tapped In Newsletter: August 2004

...On the Tapis
August 2004
Issue 81

In This Issue

[1] TI Group Profile: ProActive Educators
[2] Certificates for Tapped In Festival 2004
[3] How to Become Rich and Loved
[4] Tapped In Technology Tip
[5] News Nuggets
[6] Tips and Comments From the Experts
[7] About ...On the Tapis

Quote of the Month - "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." - Isaac Asimov

[1] TI Group Profile: ProActive Educators

Many K-12 schools require their teachers to participate in Professional Development Continuing Education Units (CEU). Often, teachers can fulfill the required PD CEUs by enrolling in graduate courses, either online or at a local college or university. But there are many educators who are, for one reason or another, unable to utilize those resources. The Tapped In administration and the community members have worked hard for the past seven years to provide quality professional development opportunities in the form of the After School Online (ASO) Forums. The purpose of the Tapped In environment has been to create a professional development community of practice for educators. The international membership of over 17,000, the creation of over 600 special interest groups, the active use of the K-12 Student Campus and the dedication of the Helpdesk volunteers and ASO Moderators demonstrate that this purpose has been very successfully met!

The Tapped In administration has neither the staff nor the time or money to tabulate individual participation in the interface, nor the authority through a university or as an independent entity to issue CEUs. The aim of the ProActive Educators Group is to collaborate with superintendents, administrators, school district curriculum supervisors, and K-12 educators to establish some kind of rubric for a digital portfolio of Tapped In participation that would be recognized by educational institutions as legitimate documentation of participation in professional development activities... in other words, become 'proactive' in the recognition and documentation of our PD involvement in OUR community. Some of this documentation could include transcripts of participation in ASO activities, moderating ASO sessions, reflective writing summarizing a series of ASO sessions, and participation in the Helpdesk volunteers mentoring group. Send an email to BJ Berquist at bjb@tappedin.org if you need information on how to join the ProActive Educators Group.
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Tapped In currently has over 600 groups. To have your group featured in this new Tapis column, please contact BJ at bjb@tappedin.org

[2] Certificates for Tapped In Festival 2004

If you participated in the Tapped In Festival 2004 and submitted a minimum of three sign-in forms, you are eligible for a Certificate of Participation. The Tapped In team apologizes for the delay in the posting of these certificates, but they are finally available! You can access the link to your certificate from the Tapped In Festival web page at http://tappedin.org/tappedin/web/festival/. The certificates are in PowerPoint. If you have any problems opening your certificate, please contact Keiko Schneider at kschnei@sabotenweb.com

[3] How to Become Rich and Loved (or at least liked a lot!) - By Patti Schank

The activities of a small number of virus writers and spammers has become a big problem for the Internet. Well over 50% of email traffic nowadays is spam. A smaller (but significant) number have a virus-infected attachment.

Many of you have probably received email from a familiar or unfamiliar sender that included an unexpected attachment or a message like "The file attached to this email was removed." When you receive messages like these, do NOT open the attachments. Never open an attachment unless you are expecting it or have verified with the sender that the attachment is legitimate. When you see an attachment like DELETED.TEXT that usually means that your service provider has "filtered out" a suspicious-looking attachment for you, before the message even got to you (i.e., your mail system thought it looked like a virus attachment and deleted it).

You may also receive seemingly legitimate emails from companies that ask you to click a link to enter or verify personal or financial information, or to reply to confirm some information. Do NOT reply or click the link. Legitimate companies never ask for personal or financial information via email. This is likely a "phishing" attack to steal your personal financial information. (See http://www.antiphishing.org for more information.)

Many of us get several emails like this every day, and the longer you have your email address, the more you may get. The good news is that more and more service providers are implementing spam and virus filters to block such email. In the next few years, there will be better technologies to defeat such email, for example, by validating and enforcing sender IDs. Today's email systems cannot even verify whether messages actually come from the source shown in the "From:" line! Enforcing sender IDs will help block spam, viruses, and phishing emails that could result in identity theft. Lots of people are working on anti-spam technology - it's the holy grail of Internet software development! Whoever comes up with a way to defeat spam will become very rich and loved. :)

[4] Tapped In Technology Tip

Using the Pasteboard
Scenario A: You're logged in and participating in a discussion in the After School Room. The moderator of the session posts a 12 line paragraph of background information for you to read. The topic is popular and everyone starts asking questions. This causes the chat to scroll very quickly and just as you finish reading line 4 or line 7 or line 9, the chat jumps to the latest comment made by a participant. Other than waiting for your transcript when you log out after the discussion, there is no way you're ever going to be able to catch up with the discussion... unless... you go to the ACTIONS menu in the top right of your chat window and highlight SEND TO PASTEBOARD. This will open a small window that will contain all the text from the chat in the room you're in. This window is static, doesn't jump, and doesn't update. This means you can read that long paragraph while the discussion continues in the main chat window. When you've finished catching up, close the Pasteboard window.

Scenario B: You're in a private chat with someone and they give you some information that you want to copy right away so you don't lose it. You can't copy text directly from the main chat window or the private chat window, but, if you press the SEND TO PASTEBOARD button on the private chat window, you open the Pasteboard window that contains all the previous private chat text you've had. You can highlight the information you need, copy using the keyboard command, and then paste that information to a word document.

Both the private chat pasteboard and the main chat pasteboard have the same features and the same functions. They both let you relax and enjoy your participation in Tapped In without the stress of losing or becoming overwhelmed with information.

[5] News Nuggets

Kevan Nitzberg shares his latest literary/visual art combo musings that are now online at art-themagazine.com. You can access the article, "Without a Particular Point of Departure," at http://www.art-themagazine.com/pages/insite19.htm.
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The National Writing Project recently held a writing marathon at http://blogs.writingproject.org/mooclass/. Tapped In members Karen McComas and Michelle Gannon used Tapped In for part of the marathon. --------------------
Northwest Regional Educational Lab (NWREL) in Portland has just released a new edition of their Picture Book resource. See http://www.nwrel.org/comm/catalog.
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Tapped In member Pam Stephens recently posted a new website at http://www.artresourcesforteachers.com/index.html. Although the site is predominately to promote art resources and professional development opportunities, you might like the quick links to some lessons on the Samples pages.
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NEON (News for Educators Online Now!) included Tapped In member Nancy Willard's Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use in the Ethics and Technology article about NETS for Teachers - Standard VI(A): "Teachers model and teach legal and ethical practice related to technology use."

Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use; Nancy Willard, Executive Director. This site provides effective strategies to assist young people in acquiring the knowledge and decision-making skills needed to behave in a safe, responsible, and legal manner when using the Internet and other information technologies. (Ed. Note: Watch for Nancy's Internet Safety in Tapped In on September 16.)
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The Library of Congress seeks participants for a new day-long teachers' institute: "With an Even Hand" Brown v. Board at Fifty. To register for the Brown v. Board institute, please use the form available at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-teacher.html or contact Susan Mordan at smordan@loc.gov or call (202) 707-9203. An online version of the Library's exhibition is available at: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown
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Tapped In member Roslyn Teirney is seeking teachers/students whose schools are on islands anywhere in the world - any island. Roslyn's state in Australia, Tasmania, is an island that has an arts festival every two years called "Ten Days on the Island." During the next one (April 1-10, 2005), there is an online education event called Webbing the Islands. For more information contact Roslyn at roslyn.teirney@education.tas.gov.au
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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.

[4] Tips and Comments from the Experts

Tapped In member Mac Carlton sent this message to BJ after the festival: Hi BjB. Thanks for all of the work [the Festival committee] did to make the Festival a success. I know there had to be a ton of work done to make the Festival operate like a well oiled machine. This was the first year I attended. I went away with great ideas that I will pass along to staff in my District.
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Tapped In member Candice Cassella made this comment during a recent K-20 Science Resources discussion: I've found once you get used to the on-line environments, you feel less isolated. I'm getting my masters through a Distance program, I thought I would miss the campus recourses but I have found the on-line education to be very stimulating and fulfilling. I like the idea of an on-line professional network.
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Tapped In member and K-3+ Resources discussion leader Susan Roseman had this "thought" during a recent discussion: o O ( being a member and participating in Tapped In sessions has rejuvenated my teaching )
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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.

[7] About ...On the Tapis

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