Tapped In Newsletter: October 2006
...On the Tapis
October 2006
Issue 107
In This Issue
[1] Tapped In Library Oversight Committee
[2] Tapped In Technology Tip
[3] Pioneers and Explorers
[4] News Nuggets
[5] Tips and Comments from the Experts
[6] Support for Beginning Teachers
[7] About ...On the Tapis
Quote of the Month - "When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either." - Leo Burnett (1891 - 1971)
[1] Tapped In Library Oversight Committee
To ensure that the Tapped In Library contains only good quality resources, an oversight committee of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Classroom Teachers, Researchers, Librarians etc. is being formed. If you are interested in joining this committee, watch your November calendar for a Library Oversight Committee ASO. All Tapped In members are welcome. If you have questions, send us a comment.
[2] Pioneers and Explorers
Have you learned about a program, tool, or interactive website that you feel is really useful for educators? Share your discovery with the TI community. Your comments about sites listed will be appreciated. Judi Fusco, TI Community Director, has submitted our first entry for this column. Judi asks, "Do you think teachers (especially NBC candidates) might be interested in Transana? I haven't used it, but I just heard about it and was very interested."
Transana is free and Open Source. It was developed at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, where it continues to be maintained and enhanced. It is widely used in the education research community, where video is an integral part of most researchers' methods. Researchers in many other disciplines also find it useful in their work. Transana runs on Windows in both single-user and multi-user versions. Macintosh versions are in Alpha-Test release, and work quite well despite one significant flaw. Transana was originally created by Chris Fassnacht. It is now developed and maintained by David K. Woods at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Send your Pioneers and Explorers information to BJ Berquist at bjb@tappedin.org.
[3] Tapped In Technology Tip
Creating a K-12 Student Group
To create your own K-12 student group, log in, click on the Tapped In/Groups tab, and select "Create a new K-12 Student group." You will be asked to accept the terms for bringing students online, specify how many student accounts you want, and specify a default password. Once created, your student group will reside in the Student Activities Center (SAC) in the Student campus, and will appear under your Me/Groups tab. To manage your student group, enter the group room and click on the Settings menu item in the room (bottom left). Here you can edit the names, usernames, and passwords for your students, delete student accounts, or add new student accounts one by one. If you like, you can restrict your students to your student group room (by default, they can roam the SAC building). You can also invite other TI members to join the student group, if you like. Click here for more info.
[4] News Nuggets
PBS Teachers Previews included an announcement for the upcoming TI discussion led by Michael Hutchison on History Detectives - Students frequently learn history, but do they really know about historical investigation -- how a historian determines the authenticity and importance of an item or event? "History Detectives" will be the subject of a special Social Studies forum to be held in TI at 8pm ET on Oct. 25. Editorial content writers and curriculum consultants for the "History Detectives" and "History Detectives Kids" web sites will answer questions and discuss how you can use this great resource in your classroom.
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TI member Randy Caton has created a resource room for Etoys in the K-12 Student Campus. Etoys is a multimedia authoring and learning environment that is part of the Squeak computer environment. Squeak is free and open source. Etoys can be used to teach mathematics, science, computer science and more. Etoys will be used in the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and will be a powerful learning tool for millions of children throughout the world. Watch your calendar for the Etoys Open House! Visit the group room in the SAC for a link to an online demo.
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The Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International is pleased to announce the beta release of Group Scribbles, a new cross-platform collaborative tool that enables educators to rapidly design new group learning activities without the need for programming. Group Scribbles introduces a networked representational paradigm that enables collaborative improvement of ideas based upon individual efforts and social sharing of notes in graphical and textual form ("scribbles"). With Group Scribbles, users mark up "scribble sheets" in their personal work area, or "private board", and share their ideas by dragging their sheets to a "public board" that is synchronized to all devices. Users can arbitrarily rearrange sheets and stick them strategically to a background image or to other sheets. Such simple actions support emergent collaborative activity across multiple connected machines in a lightweight, flexible manner. The Group Scribbles application runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and mobile devices. It is optimized for stylus-based devices such as Tablet PCs or Pocket PCs. To learn more, click here or download the Group Scribbles Brochure.
Group Scribbles was created by the Tuple Spaces Project at SRI International, with support from the National Science Foundation. A demonstration of Group Scribbles is scheduled for Thursday, October 19, in Tapped In.
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SCoPE Seminar: The Educational Value of Podcasting: Oct. 4-22, 2006 Access the seminar here.
To contribute to discussions and customize your visits to SCoPE you will need to self-register. SCoPE is an online community hosted by Simon Fraser University. Discussions are free and open to the public. Please spread the word!
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Through interest in helping teachers with the easy to use wiki technology, Adam Frey and the Wikispaces team is offering their Plus Plan wikis to K-12 teachers for free. This membership includes all the features and benefits that normally cost $50/year. Wikispaces hopes you'll consider helping reach their goal of 100,000 and that you'll take advantage of this offer in your own schools. Click here for more info.
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Susan Roseman's Read Alouds discussion is featured in the current Education World Tapped In page.
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TI member Jen Wagner's article for the new "Coming of Age" book (by Terry Freedman) is now viewable here (registration required). The book comes out in late 2006/2007.
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TI member Emily Weinberg happily discovered TI member Chris Champion's blog comment about Tapped In. "If you've never seen Tapped In - you don't know what you are missing. Consider it as both a virtual teacher's lounge as well as a virtual classroom for you and your K-12 students."
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TI member Kristin Mudd, a graphic design student at the University of Memphis, has a survey she would like to conduct on textbooks for a thesis project on textbook design and how learning styles might effect the process. Participate in the survey here. For questions, contact Kristin at kmudd@memphis.edu
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Announcing the first annual "K12 Online 2006" convention for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year's conference is scheduled over two weeks, Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30-Nov. 3 with the theme "Unleashing the Potential." A closing event on November 4 will include text chat in the Tapped In K12Online group room.
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The October issue of Teachers Magazine has an article by Laura Donnelly about Tapped In. "For too many teachers, 'professional development' means irrelevant group workshops or mandatory attendance at uninspiring weekend seminars. So how do you make PD more effectiveÑand less painful? The people who operate the online community Tapped In believe the answer is to put teachers in charge." Read the complete article here (registration required).
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School Arts Magazine recently had an article by TI member Craig Roland. Member Pam Stephens has an online Teacher Survival Guide in the October issue.
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Will Richardson has an article in the Oct. 2006 issue of Edutopia: The New Face of Learning - What happens to time-worn concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime?
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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.
[5] Tips and Comments from the Experts
Maureen Beyrer, "I am constantly amazed at all the new ways to use technology that I find here!"
Andrea DeMent, "Cool - I love this site how you can connect with teachers around the world"
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 to the How You Use TI.
[6] Support for Beginning Teachers
It's been reported that roughly 50% of beginning teachers leave the profession within the first five years and that, in general, the best ones leave the earliest. While factors such as lack of respect, low salaries, teaching out of field and a lack of resources contribute greatly, new teachers also require a great deal of support. Solutions such as mentoring, professional development and induction programs have been implemented throughout the U.S. in an effort to increase the support we offer to our new teachers.
TI member David Weber, an experienced high school Math and Physics teacher in California, is trying to establish whether or not there is a theoretical basis for university involvement in supporting beginning teachers as part of his PhD at McGill University in Canada. He has put together an online survey that he hopes educators will fill out pertaining to their experiences and thoughts on mentoring by university faculty. The survey takes ten minutes and your anonymity is guaranteed. There is no need to log in to the site or provide an e-mail address of any kind (unless you want a summary of his results). You will not be contacted in any way afterwards, unless you want to receive the results summary. It would be particularly beneficial if you would respond to the written questions, even if it's with just one sentence or two or in point form.
Please take ten minutes to briefly relate your experiences with mentoring (whether you are a beginning teacher, experienced teacher or university faculty member) and let your responses help shape the support that we offer those new to our profession in the rest of the country. Thank you very much. The survey can be found here.
[6] About ...On the Tapis
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