Minutes for May 28, 2009

• Katina will be able to support us again on the three half days that have been requested: October 6, January 13, April 15
• Requested meetings for next school year: November 19, December 8, February 9, March 24, May 5 from 2:30-4:30
• We are still waiting for approval of these dates from Kathy
• Suggested PD for our next school year's half days with Katina: review of web 2.0 tools, copyright, new tools
• Other PD ideas: literary genres, author study, research process, Be the Change, Smart Board Library
• movie editing found at boinx.com
• wordle.net: great new web tool
• reminder that there will be no smart barcodes provided to any school in 2009/2010. TLs are responsible in creating their own- see Horizon
• update Smartboard lesson activity toolkit to 2.0
• Showcase of TL work at our first Success Team in September...Thank you to all who have volunteered to show what they are doing.
• Please send URL of wikis/blogs/podcasts to Astrid or Anastasia so that we can put them on our wiki.
• Thank you to Katina for her guidance, support and assistance this year.
• Have a wonderful summer!

SE6 TL PD Survey

Please visit this site to complete our survey. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GBH_2boGWJVwqt66yfoeMlMA_3d_3d

Minutes for February 18

Ministry Fair:
March 5th and 6th

Where do we go from here?
-how will we celebrate our learning?
-sharing our learning with others
-perhaps create a wiki and each teacher can have her own page to share
-redesign TEL conference with blog and wiki address

Podcasts:
IPOD + Broadcast
-deconstruct podcasts first
-listen to one (music, how they speak)
http://portableradio.edublogs.org

All about school libraries

Just wondering what your thoughts are on the following site:

http://www.peopleforeducation.com/librarycoalition

Minutes for January 7, 2009

Cindy:
-more e-books have been purchased
-really great elementary books on Natural Disasters and Canadian Provinces
-Vendor Fair possibly March/April
-Afterschool meeting on Smartboards has been scheduled the same day as our next PLC: Wed. Feb. 18th from 3:30-4:30.

Ann:
-Grade 4-8 Book Launch
-Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed
-invited to attend a 50 minute book launch time on January 28th at G.A. Brown
-Time slots available: 10:40-11:30, 1:25-2:15, 2:15-3:05

Katina and WIKIS:
-most important buttons: Edit and Save
-these are collaborative, fast webpages
-Blogs are best used for short bursts of writing, conversation, and reflection (all grade levels), whereas wikis should be used for project work and the gathering of resources (junior - intermediate)
Some examples of wikis shared:
http://learningmaineresources.wikispaces.com/
http://sfxschool.pbwiki.com/
http://librarylearning.pbwiki.com/
http://kidpedia.info/
http://fourstage.pbwiki.com/
http://libsuccess.org/
http://silver09nf.pbwiki.com/

How can you use wiki's in your program? What are some of the challenges that you encountered when learning about this? What are some of the benefits that you can see in this?

Chapter 4 WIKIS

• Wiki is short form of the Hawaiian wiki-wiki which means "quick" (p. 55)
• First wiki was created by Ward Cunningham in 1995 (p. 55)
• A wiki is a website where anyone can edit anything anytime they want (p. 55)

The reliability of a wiki has been questioned since everyone can contribute and edit. The understanding is that you have to have faith in the collaborative efforts of the group to keep it safe and reliable. What are your thoughts on this?

The idea of working together, collaboration and negotiation skills are enforced when using a wiki. It is the idea that "everyone together is smarter than anyone alone" (p. 57). How can wikis be used in our library program?

Wikis to read:

Global warming: http://www.tinyurl.com/33885n

Simple English Wikipedia: simple.wikipedia.org

Pedagogical Potentials for Wikis: http://tinyurl.com/2zu6fb

South Africa High School Curriculum: http://tinyurl.com/nvu9v

Wikijunior: http://tinyurl.com/ma7hw

Welker's Wikinomics site: http://tinyurl.com/6ruy3y

Shelley Paul's book study on a wiki: http://tinyurl.com/36sy57

PlanetMath: http://tinyurl.com/9orxf

Please add more wikis to our list as you discover

"Wikis teach students much about how to work with others, how to create community, and how to operate in a world where the creation of knowledge and information is more and more becoming a group effort." (p. 69) This fits in nicely with our Character Education Trait in January: TEAMWORK

Chapter 3: Get Started! (pp.43-54) by: Will Richardson

• The true potential of blogs in school are when students and teachers use them as publishing tools. (p. 43)
• Take some time to read some good blogs
• Start at: SupportBlogging.com
• Edublog award site:http://tinyurl.com/62crba
• start with links
• annotate the links
• write more in depth about what you are reading

BLOGGING WITH STUDENTS (pp.45-46)

• Get students reading blogs
• Prepare a list of Weblogs with appropriate content and look at some of these sites with the students
• Let students respond to these blogs
• Post a question each day
• Have small groups of students start creating posts to the same Weblog
• Give each student a blog

BLOG SAFETY

• Make sure that students, parents, administrators are clear about the expectations and the reasoning behind it (p. 46)
• Make sure everyone has the proper permission (p. 46)
• Use only first name of students or pseudonyms for students with unique names (p. 46)
• Teach kids never to publish personal identifiers about themselves or others (p. 46)
• Teach kids to know the process of reporting problems in their blogs, whether technical or content related (p. 46)
• Teach staff on the use and purpose of blogs (p. 47)
• Bud Hunt has a great resource for documents of these types at his "Blogging Policies and Resources Wiki" http://tinyurl.com/5y919n (p. 47)
• Respond to what students write
• Students can self-select their best blogging posts, reflect on those selections and include those reflections in an overall evaluation of their Weblog use (p. 47)

BLOGGING STEP BY STEP

• http://www.blogger.com/
• signing up for a blog at Blogger is easy
• the address of your site will be http://whatevernameryouchoose.blogspot.com/ (p.48)
• When you click on a blog name from the Dashboard, you'll be taken to a the page where you can create and edit posts (p. 49)
• Hit the New Post button to create a new post to the homepage (p. 49)
• "Settings" tab links you to configure how you want your comments to work (p. 50)
• Have students save all of their posts as drafts until the teacher gives them permission to post (p. 50)

What are some great blogs that you have read?