Minutes for Let’s Talk – September 29, 2007

 

People Attending: Carol I., Eileen, Angie, Carol K., Bob, Sue Mc., Laura, Jane, Camille, Sue C. and Chris

 

Member prizes were available for people who did not get theirs last year.

Suggestions for prizes this year include getting something with Let’s Talk as the logo. It was suggested that a mini-folio or a silkscreen shirt would both be ood way to “advertise” Let’s Talk and start conversations about our group. It was also suggested that we consider giving gift certificates.

 

Carol K. asked about gaming sites for Detroit’s gaming grant.

Jane suggested:www.marcprensky.com

She also talked about MIT labs and their Scratch software which is available as a free download. http://scratch.mit.edu/

 

Around the Room - What We Explored/Did During Summer

 

Eileen – promote water programs with her husband trains people to bring filters for freshwater to 3rd World countries.

Rotary has more money than Bill Gates. Eileen is finding people like her in every Rotary to get more water champions. Speaker coming to Boys & Girls Club. Champions will all meet for the first time. Each club will develop a water project. Trip to Thailand had ups and downs. One girl in particular was very difficult. The rest were great and had a good time. Eileen is working this year to get a group to go to Turkey. Next year it will be Australia. Eileen has a wiki for her water people to share their projects. Eileen has a blog to spread the message about clean water for the World. http://avisionforcleanwater.blogspot.com/

 

 

Chris  - Worked most of the summer but also went to the Netherlands for fun and to see & meet family.

She went to the MITS conference in Traverse City (http://www.cenmi.org/mits/) at a cost of $60 for three days. It was an excellent conference about assistive technologies. She went to preconference with Don Johnston’s company (http://www.donjohnston.com/). Denise Decost(sp?) works with high incidence learners and helping them access the curriculum. She went to a vendor workshop on “Clicker 5” (http://www.cricksoft.com/uk/products/clicker/)– a word processing program for elementary students. Lots of UDL features. Detroit has this program. Chris also recommended the program, “Cloze Pro”, (http://www.cricksoft.com/uk/products/clozepro/default.aspx) which creates cloze text passages easily.

Chris also went to a weeklong workshop at Oakland Schools. She learned to make PowerPoint books. There was a website to share these.

Coming up Chris will be working a little more with Wayne County and doing a workshop on the MI Merit Exam and how to support Special Ed students.

Chris recommended the book “Differentiating Text” by Forsten, Grant & Hollas. The book contans ideas for things to do for students who need help understanding the printed documents and texts in the classroom.

Chris does lots of workshops for her district. She is working on these. This year they all have to be held after school hours.

She reminded us about the one-day conference, “Tools for Online Collaboration” at the MACOMB ISD on Monday, November 12. Jane is presenting. Let’s all try to attend! (http://www.macul.org/page.php?pid=167)

 

 

Sue Mc. – She said she played golf and has a beautiful, new granddaughter named Lily Renee. The pictures she showed us were great!!!!!!

Sue is participating in the STELA grant this year. She is excited about doing this.

 

 

Bob – His job is radically changing next Monday as he will be getting paid as a Business Analysist!!! To get up to speed he is in a professional society, studying two binders of knowledge, as well as attending seminars. He does a website for Carol K’s group with Wordpress. He wants to learn more about using that interface.

Bob goes to free training via webinars and podcasting. Leo LaPorte is one of his favorites. He believes everyone struggles to keep up with the pace of technology.

PC magazine has an article, “My Guide to Social Networking.” The article compares the networks to the real world. Some of what it said is: “Stop by Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) now. Be ready to jump on the next thing. Use LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/ )for your career. Try to get in Pounced (http://www.pounced.org/).”

Bob wants to learn about Facebook and understand social networks better. He wants some of us to join too. (Jane is in LinkedIn too. Her son got an excellent career upgrade because of his presence in LinkedIn.)

Jobclub (http://www.jobclub.com/)had Lectora (http://www.trivantis.com/products/lectora.html) software. Jane has it. It’s an online course tool. It’s the authoring tool. It creates modules & courses.

Bob said personal page software is growing. Pageflakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/)and Protopage (http://www.pageflakes.com/) are examples. Jane prefers Protopage because it works better for the educational Professional Development she does.

 

 

Jane – She just found out she’s presenting at the Collaborative Tools for Learning Conference Chris told us about.  Jane’s session is “Twitter and Protopage. Juicing up the online requirement.”

Jane attended the Alan November conference, “Building Learning Communities.” She went to afternoon pre-conference with Tim Tyson, lobbying, podcasting principal. (www.mayburyonline.org)

(The Detroit Archdiocese has contracted with November to do Professional Development.) At the November Conference, the big names were all there but without the flashy, NECC piece. It was just knowledgeable techies all sharing and learning. It was so good she went to every session. She suggests going to the website (www.novemberlearning.com) and clicking on Conferences 2007 to find many of the handouts & PowerPoints.

 

We all agree that “Let’s Talk” is a Learning Community!!!

 

“Five Minds for the Future” is a new book by Howard Gardner. It’s theme is globalization, no ownership of knowledge, all needs to be shared

Jane saw her son graduate at Harvard!!! She said she felt like she was at Hogwarts with all of the 350 year-old traditions. Bill Gates was there. He got an honorary degree.

Jane is a part of Michigan Leadership Improvement (http://mi-life.org/). Any practicing administrator can participate. The program consists of seven courses built around the Michigan School Improvement guidelines. Two courses are online. The cost is $500. Cohort training centers are set up.

MI-Life has 15 applicants from the Archdiocese. They want their own cohort. Three people have been hired to instruct.

 

Sue C. – She researched new servers and new ideas for teachers to use in their classrooms. A coupled of new teachers are taking off with the ideas.

Sue reformatted 30 computers that were donated by Rock Financial.

She still has problems with teachers who call for help when the computer’s not plugged in…

Sue negotiated well and her school gets netTrekker for $1 per student.  Jane offered to do a workshop for parents so they can help their students use netTrekker

Sue’s school is doing Curriculum Mapping. They recently had training and some teachers weren’t capable of following the speed of the trainer. Some teachers’ skills are still very behind.

 

 

Camille – Her district pulled all Media Specialists out of the Media Centers because they were not load bearing. They are all back in classrooms and Media Centers will be staffed by uncertified staff. Her school does not yet have a person working in their Media Center. Teachers are on their own. This is a huge loss to the educational program.

They are using Study Island (http://www.studyisland.com/), which is an online program for MEAP prep and mastering the MI standards. It has a game component. Students use the game for fun but don’t make note of their errors. They can’t use this prior to the MEAP but will pick up again after the MEAP.  They are hoping it will improve test scores over time.

Sharon is doing great in Arizona. She does the Sun City website and newsletter. (http://www.suncityaz.org/)

 

 

Laura – I love my new job!!!!!

I shared Web 2.0 resources I’ve been exploring.

•    Blabberize.com! - Blabberize Your Pictures -  http://www.blabberize.com/main

Make a talking picture! Use this site to add audio and a moving mouth to your digital pictures

•    Letterpop - http://letterpop.com/

An online resource to create newsletters and announcements which can be printed or shared via email

•    Free Certificate Maker - http://www.certificatemaker.com/

Online certificate maker

•    A N I M O T O: the end of slideshows - http://animoto.com

Build videos with music and transitions in minutes

•    bubbl.us - http://bubbl.us/

Free web application for brainstorming online

•    WebHuddle - https://www.webhuddle.com/

Online web conferencing site

 

 

Jane shared that Zamzar (http://www.zamzar.com/) might be able to save ANIMOTO movies. Navigate to Zamzar, click “where’s your document”, put in ANIMOTO url and go to what you want it turned into. It’s a file conversion website. She suggests we try this to see if it works.

 

 

Angie told us that Teacher Tube (http://www.teachertube.com/) has some great stuff.

 

Next meeting will be a Web 2.0 resource sharing!!! Bring your favorites for a show and tell!

 

 

Carol K– Teachers can still preview movies at the iMax at The Henry Ford. Sign up for their teacher mailing list to keep informed about the dates. October 6th is an upcoming date for previewing a movie. (http://www.thehenryford.org/historyfieldtrips/teacher_resources.asp )

Carol all her honors students in the same Math & English class. She wants to spend some time working with her honor students on collaborative writing. She wants them to look at college sites, begin work on biography.

Now working in a cubicle and the noise is BAD!

Dress code is being strictly enforced.

 

 

 

Angie – Angie is now the Director of Academic Scheduling – from preschool though 12th grade. She has to schedule the classes, the space and the teachers. Lots of complications because 6 divisions share the gym and while most of the school rotates on a five day week, the Middle School has a 6 day week.

PCR Educator is the student information system she uses.

The principal wants to move from Technology User to Technology Leader.

It’s great to be working under that kind of Leadership!

The school has switched to Office 2007. It’s different but a lot more powerful. They force it to save backwards compatible so kids can open their work at home.

 

www.tafiti.com - new Microsoft search engine

www.technorati.com - blog search engine

 

Teachers can get a personally assigned tablet and multimedia cart. They have to apply. Nineteen applied for 8 new carts. The tablets have been used very successfully.

A teacher won an LCD projector from MACUL to interact with the Kelsey Museum in Ann Arbor.

On a personal note, Angie went on cruise to Alaska with her husband’s family. They had a great time.

 

 

 

Carol I. – Carol’s Plymouth/Canton position has changed this year. She now supports the website in the morning and works in the library in the afternoon. She loves it!

Carol is the Moodle guru for her district.  They are using Moodle 1.6. Carol is doing maintenance and Professional Development. Carol formed her own company, Tech4Teachers, and gets paid to do the Moodle work.

Workshops are one hour. Shows them short pieces in each workshop. They come back thrilled with what they have been able to do.

 

Carol is going to Lilly North Conference (http://facit.cmich.edu/lilly/) on college and university teaching in Traverse City. It’s a five-day conference with approximately 200 people. It’s held at the Park Place. It’s very nice. Different set of gurus at this conference. A lot of info addresses teaching adults and older students.

Carol with check with the presenters to try to find some for our group.

 

 

 

Speaker Ideas for Future Meetings

Second Life  - Eastern MI Professor, Jon Magerun-Leys, Carol met in Second Life. Carol  is Sunshine Hapouche.

Detroit Science Center – Engineering Education Coordinator – Field trip for group with tour and talk about programs

 

Schedule of Topics for Upcoming Meetings

November 3 –  Photo Story and Picasa presented by Angie

        Snacks will be brought by Sue & Sue

 

December 1 – Web 2.0 and maculspace – everyone shares sites they’ve used

 

Late December – Second Life -

 

January 12 – Linked in and www.ning.com

February 2 - UDL -Jeff Crockett from Plymouth-Canton or Science Center

 

April 5 – Sharing about MACUL

 

May 3 - ??????

 

 

Important Information: We have a Let’s Talk blog (http://visitmyclass.com/blogs/lets_talk_technology/default.aspx), protopage (http://www.protopage.com/letstalk), and a wiki (http://letstalktech.pbwiki.com/)!

Notes will go on the blog.