Present: Bob Gawecki, Carol Klosowski, Sue McFeely, Laura Cummings, Sue Cieslak, Mary Jeanne Franzinger, Chris Skoglund, Carol Isakson, Angie Saylor, Jane Perzyk

Geek Streak - Carol passed around a set of tiny white speakers  - $5 at Westland Big Lots.  Jane brought her new Kindle, the Amazon book reader, $399. Carol showed a $15 MP3player/recorder from InkStop. File appeared as .wav on the drive, but wouldn't work in Audacity.

Rounding - Carol K-went to Teacher's Weekend at Greenfield Village.Warned against seeing "Spiderwick Chronicles." Too scary for little children. Angie also attended. Recommended the dinosaur movie, "Dino Alive" and "Sea Monsters." These films are available at the IMAX theatre.

Angie - did a Green computing workshop in conjunction with Earth Day. It was an eye opener that students didn't have a clue about some of the ecological savings, such as printing from and back, could help. Check out the ASH website at http://www.ashmi.org/page.cfm?p=203 and look for technology training for more information. Further discussion ensued about the use of laptops literally as laptops, so students could use them off the desks and in groups in the hall or elsewhere.

Jane - attended the ETCC Conference at Macomb- Liz Kolb's presentation on cell phones in the classroom. Demonstrated the Kindle.

Carol I - why not have a gadget meeting! Bob G and Carol I went to the poster session at Wayne State on April 25. She brought one poster with her about a road rage course developed by one of the students which was accompanied by module handouts and a one-page description. Carol distributed an excellent promotional flyer (see "Files" link above), "Outside the Box: Networking to Stay Connected" (protopage with links to flyer contents and picture of Let's Talk folks!) that she created for Dr. Ke Zhang's Wayne State Graduate class. Talk ensued about distributing these at MACUL. We discussed podcasting one of our sessions, similar to GeekEd podcasts out of Pinckney. This can be a project for our fall meeting.

Chris S - Attended Power Up at Oakland Schools. Used Skype at a meeting with assistive tech person who was unable to attend a session in person. Learned Thursday at another presentation about BubblePly where users can add "speech bubbles" to videos and store them online. Accessibility is not hindered by filters . . . yet. Discussed different ways to use document cameras as a get acquainted activity. Timer, attendance, warmup, creating a record of learning, demoing, modeling, showcase student work.  The presenter also recommended that the document camera be in a classroom space that is not identified as the teacher's so that students feel comfortable using it. The document cameras do require a digital projector.

Sue C has a brand new server at her school, purchased to replace a server damaged by a power surge. She now has some additional funds to purchase technology such as a new projector or perhaps a document camera!  She has been developing a webpage for her daughter's upcoming wedding.

Mary Jeanne F - in survival mode at her school, which means her hours may be cut next year. Her principal, Sr. Kathy Avery, is the one who took a stand on student language, resulting in her being on NPR and CNN. 

Laura - Handouts & some PowerPoints from the Power Up Conference at Oakland Schools are available online. Lee Rainie, from Pew Internet did a presentation on Teens & the Internet. Bruce Umpstead, Michigan's Tech Director, shared information about some upcoming Michigan initiatives for educational technology. Julie Evans from Project Tomorrow presented highlights of the "Net Day-Speak Up Survey. focusing on what the students reported. All of these presentations are available on the Power Up link. Other materials available there include materials from the UDL presentations, information about making online materials accessible to all, the handouts from the presentation about document cameras and a handout that gives an overview of Moodle. Another Moodle presentation was about a webquest on transcontinental railroad for 8th grade students. This is an excellent example of a blended learning unit but it is not currently available for our use. Attended ETCC at Macomb in April. Will post links to Liz Boyd's blog. In a meeting the day before, Laura learned about Weebly. Weebly is a free online resource that allows you to quickly create a standard webpage. You can upload files and images. You can also download all of the code for the site you create if you would like to keep a back up or host it on a different server. http://Beginwithme.weebly.com is a site from Macomb ISD on assistive technology. Andy Mann from Calhoun ISD did a presentation on copyright issues with Youtube and Teachertube. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture on Youtube is a must-see (75 mins)! He will inspire you to make positive changes in your life. Prior to becoming ill with pancreatic cancer, he was a motivational speaker and prof at Carnegie-Mellon. He did a lot of work with virtual reality software. One of his students created Alice software (www.alice.org)

Sue M. - Doing STELA (Strategies and Tools to Enhance Learning For All) project with Oakland Schools. Going to present at the final meeting in May. Neos are fantastic. Kids are beaming stories to each other, writing like crazy, which is phenomenal for second graders. Her students are having fun with writing! They are also using Study Island, a MEAP-based program. The students love the games. Wonders about the game-based platform and if there isn't more focus on that than the learning. Sue can monitor the students' activity, even if they access Study Island from home.

Planned Summer Activities:

Chris, Laura, Carol I, and Dayna will be attending MITS (Michigan Integrated Technology Support) in Traverse City in June; Chris will be presenting. Jeff Crockett (Feb's speaker) and a group form Plymouth-Canton wil also present.

Laura and Angie will be attending NECC in San Antonio in June. Laura will be attending the Discovery Educators' Network training in Silver Springs, MD .

MACUL is participating in the first ever Joint Education Conference at Holt High School on June 25. The cost is only $49 if you are a member of any of the sponsoring organizations. The purpose of the Michigan Joint Educational Conference "is to establish widespread use of highly relevant integrated curriculum and instruction in Michigan schools." Sponsoring organizations include: Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL), Michigan Association of Middle School Educators (MAMSE), Michigan Council for Social Studies (MCSS), Michigan Council for the Teachers of Mathematics (MCTM) and the Michigan Science Teachers Association (MSTA). These organizations are also particpating: Michigan Business Education Association, the Michigan Mathematics and Science Centers Network, and the the Michigan Department of Education.

2008-2009 Meeting Plans

October - Conference attendees bring information from their summer conferences. Have a gadget session.

November - Create podcasts in groups.

December - Edit the podcasts created in November. Let's Talk podcast.

January - Moodle - Carol I, Angie, and Laura  - free Moodle site at Global Classrooms (Carol I. and Laura will post links for Moodle from a variety of presenters.)

February - Liz Boyd cell phone preso?

March - MACUL - No meeting

April - MACUL redux

May -

MACUL Conference Highlights, part 2 

 Jane P. will be providing Let's Talk with its very own Zoomerang account. Zoomerang is an online survey tool, the free version of which is helpful but quite limited. You'll have access, as a Let's Talk member, to the ZPro version until year-end! We'll have to establish some ground rules for sharing, but we ought to be able to work our way through that!

I can't remember if you folks recommended http://readthewords.com but what a great tool!  I am having my community college students edit their papers by listening to the avators read them aloud.  I have students putting their notes and voc in and creating mp3 review files for their players.  I have used with BB to add audio directions to my course.  I have also just started playing with http://www.box.net/login  There are lots of free storage places on the web but this offers some collaborative features.