February+4,+2008+Meeting+Agenda+and+Minutes

12:30-2:00pm Pendergast Learning Center** NOTE: Minutes are available here for you to download and view. Peggy
 * Westside AzTEA Leadership Team Meeting Agenda**
 * Monday, February 4, 2008


 * Agenda:**
 * I. Welcome and Introductions**

(NOTE: several of these items are carry-forward items from our January meeting due to a shortage of time.) Continue discussion on action steps for Goal #1. We had a great brainstorming session in the December meeting related to strategies and ideas for improving/increasing Westside communication to reach more teachers. We decided it would be a good topic to continue discussing in our February meeting so bring your ideas. :-) o Goal 1 -Host events and use the wikispaces and website to share, showcase and explore the integration of technology, curriculum and innovative instructional strategies. + Explore ways to obtain data from AZTEA on membership within districts to better figure out how to spread the word about AZTEA events + Explore steps to take starting in January to beef up registration for WOW Many suggestions were offered for ways we can increase/improve our communication with a broader audience beyond the leadership team and to increase participation and involvement: o Reach more potential members, perhaps through direct contacts provided by districts o Find new ways to spread the word about AzTEA through wikispaces and the AzTEA website; need to update our mailing lists to reach targeted audiences. Shawn recommended that we explore using RSS feeds to keep people informed, provide discussion forums, etc. which will require some training and education. o Increase the use of technology through AzTEA resources by modeling Web 2.0 tools. o Identify contact people in districts who are directly involved with technology instruction, not necessarily IT coordinators or school/district administrators, who would be willing to forward information to appropriate people in the district. Jan recommended targeted, brief emails rather than blanket emails that provide information that will address their immediate needs/concerns related to using technology to help them meet academic content standards. Emails can contain information about how people can find specific resources to help them on the AzTEA site. Steve suggested a list of “go-to” people for instructional technology in the Phoenix area. He recommended that we begin to identify “experts” with various technology tools and compile them on our site so people could easily find support people to help them with their problems—a resource bank of people with expertise in specific areas. One possibility would be to create a list of people who would be willing to present professional development workshops to support in districts including fees for services. We would also like to identify teachers in the Westside area who are using technology with great results and invite them to share their success stories. o Steve suggested considering taking AzTEA out to faculty/administrator meetings to do brief presentations about AzTEA and the support resources available to teachers. There was discussion, pro- and con- about links to useful ed tech web sites o Amanda provided an excellent model for a way we can help teachers become more aware of AzTEA resources available to them by including the AzTEA site on her list of Teacher Ed Tech Resources and Related Links.
 * II. Business (old/new)**
 * To refresh your memory, these are some of the suggestions made during our December brainstorming. We would like to expand upon this discussion in our February meeting.**

NOTE: If you missed the fantastic DEN webinar featuring Daniel Pink, author of __A Whole New Mind__, that is also available in the webinar archives. :-)
 * III. Share & Solve** (continuing this popular agenda item to allow members to ask questions, brainstorm/share solutions, and share new technology discoveries)
 * Discovery Education Virtual Conference:** Update from Rosy Escandon about the first ever DEN Virtual Conference on Saturday, Feb. 2. It was an awesome technology day with lots of suggestions for new uses of Web 2.0 tools. Presentations will be archived in the next few days on the site. http://community.discoveryeducation.com/about/webinar_archives

Peggy has a few new resources for you to explore!! Take a look. http://kwout.com/ "Kwout" is a way you can quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map. To use this service, all you need is to add a bookmarklet to your favorite browser. It grabs a screenshot of a webpage, cuts it out and allows you to post it anywhere with the embed code provided. :-)
 * Kwout**

http://www.tumblr.com It is a kind of social network similar to Twitter, but I'm thinking it may provide a way to upload images, videos, etc. and get a URL to post on our wikispace. :-) They call them tumblelogs.
 * Tumblr**

Another very interesting blog was shared in the live podcast for "Teachers Teaching Teachers--EdTechTalk this week. This awesome site demos some great uses of Web 2.0 tools. The person that wrote the blog was on the podcast at the beginning of the show. They also had the 2 co-developers of Voicethread on the show and it was interesting to hear their reaction and conversation about the use of Voicethread on this site.

http://scottsfloyd.edublogs.org/2008/01/24/kenya-escape-through-digital-storytelling/
 * Kenya Escape through Digital Storytelling**

There was a fantastic conference held on January 25-27, 2008 in Philadelphia, PA for educational bloggers. If you are interested in hearing/seeing some of the great conversation you can view much of the conference via ustream.tv. The agenda and links for the videos are posted here: http://educon20.wikispaces.com/Agenda
 * EduBloggerCon2.0**

Amanda will share both sides of her website (internet and intranet) On the intranet she has begun a repository for integrated lesson plans that all Career Ladder level 3 teachers submit. http://www.lesd.k12.az.us/intranet/departments.cfm?subpage=174628
 * Ed Tech Website of the Month:**
 * February Website of the Month:** Amanda Hughens, Director of Educational Technology, Litchfield Elementary School District http://www.lesd.k12.az.us/departments.cfm?subpage=95409


 * March Website of the Month**: Shawn Wheeler, Peoria Unified School District

Do we have a volunteer for April? Rosy Escandon (Cartwright), Steve Andrews/Rod Turner (Glendale), others???


 * IV. Special Interest Topics**

Continue the discussion from a question raised by Rod Turner (Glendale) in the December meeting about K-8 district examples of technology curriculum, scope and sequence, curriculum maps and student technology assessment tools. Bring examples or website URLs to share any resources you may have.

Please continue to add links, resources and ideas to our wikispace for District/School Ed. Tech websites, AUPs, presentations, quotations, etc. There are many people, even beyond AZ that are beginning to look to our wikispaces for resources, and we want to make it relevant and valuable to all. If you aren't checking the site regularly yourself, please do that. There are new Web 2.0 resources added regularly and we have added a lot of fantastic resources on the Social Networking Workshop link.

Update on social networking workshop held on Thursday, January 17, 2007--a great success! :-) http://westsideleadershipteam.wikispaces.com/Workshop-Social+Networking
 * V. Westside Workshops for 2007-08**

We made a chapter commitment to conduct 4 workshops in 2007-08. We have held two workshops so far. We need to make decisions about what we want to offer for the remaining two workshops and who will lead them. Irma will share any feedback we received from our last workshop for suggestions for possible future workshops. Voicethread was enthusiastically received as well as an interest in blogs and wikis for classroom use, so all of these topics might be good to consider in a hands-on forum where they have plenty of time to actually explore and create something. There was also a lot of interest in the Tucson conference for Google Maps and Google Earth and ways to use those tools in the classroom.

Workshop suggestion from Irma--should we add this to our workshops for this year? Julia Lott does a very nice workshop on using GPS’s in the classroom and geocaching. She or one of her team members would be happy to come out and do a presentation if they are available. I think teachers would love it.

For up-to-date planning information and volunteering to help with WOW you can access the site here: http://www.wienerdogs.com/page.asp?o=aztea&s=WOW&p=1760
 * VI. Conference Updates** (WOW) Time to register and submit presentation proposals if you haven't done this already. Registration forms and payment procedures are all online this year: http://members.aztea.org/

Monday, March 3, 2008: 12:30-2:00pm, Pendergast Learning Center
 * VII. Next meeting: Date/Place/Location Confirmation**