What I can bring to the Satellite Staff

[Aileen Malave]

I feel fortunate to have taken this workshop and have ideas on showing the staff how they can use hypertextopia, voicethread, and ning with their classes and Family Group. It would take several staff meetings to intoduce the websites to them and I will use the projects I've created, show it to them on our projector, and urge them to play with the websites to find ideas that they can use with their classes. For instance, Voicethread can be used as a tool for Science PBA's (performance based assessments) instead of using powerpoint as a presentation tool. HOY (History of You) is an introductory course for entering students that can use Hypertextopia as a writing tool to write personal experiences about themselves and have them published on the internet and they can use it to view each other's writing pieces. Voicethread is another tool HOY can use as a multimedia tool so the students can use as a biographical project about themselves and be able to comment on each other's projects. I've already began creating a ning that I will be using for my family group to teach them how to blog to each other and keep up with class and homework assignments that are assigned to them by their teachers. These are the ideas I have so far. I do have some questions like "How would teachers be able to connect their Family Group ning to our school website?" We had used ttt.ed.voicethread.com to create our projects, but will my staff have to use the same web address or would they just use voicethread.com? Can these websites be used on Safari or Firefox or would I have to install Internet Explorer for them to be functional?

[joann chen]

Your sharing gives me ideas what I can do in my school. I think I can work with my colleagues, other counselors, to create a Ning and share what we are doing for our caseload's students, because each counselor is supposed to take a theme of guidance to develop activities or program. Thru Ning we can then update each other what we are up to and provide information or ideas for tevernone's refenence.

[Julie]

I actually think the ning works best in Firefox. The only time we needed to use Explorer was not for this, but for Splash-Up, when we first created our avatars. I'd love to see how teachers at Satellite respond to this body of work, and how they begin to use what you bring them to change not only their curriculum, but how they are thinking about teaching and learning.

[Julie Miele]

It's also a good question you asked about Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer. I hadn't even thought of that! Thanks for mentioning that.

[Julie Miele]

Aileen, as always, I'm so impressed by how clearly you are able to envision your work with technology. You seem to have such an affinity with this field, as you've always done such amazing work with the tools (and you always finish so quickly, too!). I think your ideas are all really great. I especially like your ideas about incorporating the tools into Family Group. The two schools I consult in have Advisory, so, now you've got me thinking about how the teachers mights use these tools as well - for individual and group projects, for community building, sharing, creating resources. I'd be nice for each Advisory to have a ning and then perhaps there can be some kind of cross-Advisory sharing at points. Hmmm... look at all this thinking you've inspired. Thanks!

[Mat]

Family Group I see the ning as a great tool for the year. I think during the first week I will bring my family group to the lab to create our ning page. Mabye it could be a routine were people post music and blog their reflections weekly. I see the ning as a great tool for us to use. If i did more creative witting I might use the voicethread and I do not think we have the technology on the computers with it. I guess the students could call it on their cellphones. I do think the satellite whole with the Google apps that they set up is something that we can use. I am also intrigued on using a wikispace for the students. Possible having they write and psot all their work on it and get rid of Microsoft word.

[Beth]

It's great that you have so many ideas already of how to integrate the technological tools we've used into your school's curriculum. Based on my own concerns about successfully getting staff to use these tools, I wonder--Do you have any concerns about staff buy-in to using these tools? If so, how can you (or how have you in the past) overcome any resistance to using technology that may arise? I ask this question because my staff tends to be very resistant to using technology, so I would love to hear your ideas about how to cope with this problem.