May+5,+2008+Agenda




 * Date:** Monday, May 5, 2008
 * Time:** 12:30-2:00pm
 * Location:** Pendergast Learning Center


 * May Meeting Minutes **

Agenda:

 * I. Welcome and Introductions**

a. Elect Westside officers for 2008-09 b. Decide where/when our meetings will be held next year (review survey results) c. Set date for our end-of-year social event to celebrate the year d. Plans for CR20 on May 8-9 http://www.classroom20wiki.com/Arizona+2008
 * II. Business (old/new)**


 * III. Share & Solve (continuing this popular agenda item to allow members to ask questions, brainstorm/share solutions, and share new technology discoveries)**

Glendale has volunteered to share their site with us today. Thanks, Steve, Rod and Penny! Be sure to roll your mouse over all of the tabs on the top menu bar to see all of their great resources. http://www.gesd40.org/internetportal/Default.aspx?alias=www.gesd40.org/internetportal/training
 * IV. Ed Tech Website of the Month:**

a. Would love to hear an **update from one of our TIS representatives** about the trainings and opportunities you are providing these days. We don't want your services to be unknown. This is a great chance to spread the word. :-) Ann Lumm has agreed to share some highlights about the website, wikispace and services of the Maricopa County Technology Integration Specialists. Thanks, Ann! [|Maricopa County SIT project] http://www.maricopa.gov/Schools/EDSVCS/essit.aspx [|Maricopa County Educators' Expo- June 6, 2008http://www.maricopa.gov/schools/MCEE] Ann's newly created wikispace to share resources with teachers and to encourage ongoing collaboration following her training sessions. http://edtech4az.wikispaces.com/
 * V. Special Interest Topics**

b. **IDEAL update from Irma Sandercock**--new resources available on IDEAL.

c. **Some new discoveries from Peggy:** Did you know you could **embed your TeacherTube favorites in a blog or wiki** for easy access later or to share with colleagues? media type="custom" key="723637" Share your videos with friends! (You can put your Video Album on your website. Works on PBwiki, PMwiki, Wikispaces, Friendster, Blogger, MySpace!) If you click on play on my album above, you will see a stream of the videos I have added to favorites in TeacherTube. You can click on any of the videos to see them.

**Vidcast about how we include a 4th grade student in our classroom that cannot come to school because she has leukemia - we demonstrate how we use Skype video-conferencing software and a web cam to make it work. It's called Inclusion.** (video is near the end of the above Favorites stream)
 * Another TeacherTube video** by "LearningisMessy" (Brian Crosby, 5th grade teacher in Sparks, Nevada) and a recent blog post about an interactive writing project using Skype.

Collaborative Writing Via Google Docs and Skype
http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=432 Today we experienced //the best collaborative writing experience I’ve ever been part of.// [|//Lisa Parisi//] //and Christine Southard’s 5th grade class in New York// is involved with my class and a group of other teachers around the country in a writing project using the book “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.” I[| blogged about it] the other day. Lisa’s class and mine are paired up for this project and today we had our classes collaborating in two innovative ways. Students discussing their shared story while co-editing it in real time via Google Docs. Lisa wrote a blog post describing her experience that included 3 Skype calls in one day for her students.

[|Best Day Ever!]
Today was the best technology day ever in school! We had three Skype calls, all with a purpose. http://lisaslingo.blogspot.com/2008/03/best-day-ever.html (on the blog post notice how they shared the site through Diigo with highlighted sections and comments were inserted by others viewing the blog post.)

Twiddla
"**Twiddla is a free web-based whiteboarding software, but also a complete online collaboration solution** for every team that needs to communicate in real-time over the internet by chatting, talking, co-browsing pages, and whiteboarding." You can get a quick idea of what it is all about from the 4 minute video on this page. http://tinyurl.com/5m53aj

This is the home page for the site. http://www.twiddla.com/Home.aspx

Info from their site: Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly, mom-approved. Oh yeah, it does one-click audio chats too.

You can have an unlimited number of people viewing and collaborating on the same web page/picture at the same time. Anyone can change the webpage/photo you are viewing so you'd have to lay out some ground rules about how you want people to participate if you had a large group. It's a brand new site and I'm sure they will continue to refine it as they get feedback from users. It's only been available for less than a month and they already have 30,000 people signed up to use it.


 * Excellent article in eSchool News May 2, 2008:**

Summit: Save STEM or watch America fail -- science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (**STEM**)
At current rates of investment in STEM research and education, America is losing its competitive edge, panelists warn http://tinyurl.com/56wle2 Two years after a report called "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" warned that the United States is falling behind in math and science education, endangering America's competitiveness in the global economy, education leaders, lawmakers, and cabinet members met for a national summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss what progress--if any--has been made in closing the gap. Their verdict: The U.S. needs to make a greater investment in critical math, science, and research programs for these efforts to succeed. But the bill was only an authorization, not an appropriation, and lawmakers failed to fund many of these programs in the 2008 federal budget. "Authorizations are not enough," agreed Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. "We won't get anywhere without funding."

a. Update on our Podcasting workshop held on April 28, 2008-Shawn Wheeler, workshop presenter
 * VI. Westside Workshops**

Share best sessions from WOW (something you presented or something your enjoyed or a new tool you're excited about) What did you think about the awesome tool Tim Tyson used to poll the audience: [|Poll Everywhere]. WOW debriefing will wait until Ruth can join us for the meeting. Here's her initial report, hot off the press! She has offered some great suggestions to get us started thinking about possible ways to improve WOW in the future--beginning with a new location!
 * VII. Conference Updates (Peak, Tucson, WOW)**
 * Kudos to Ruth Catalano and her committee and all of the fantastic volunteers for another fantastic WOW! Time to celebrate!**

Please pass on the thanks of the entire organization to the WOW planning team. The conference was fantastic – as usual. Chris Please extend my congratulations and thanks also to the entire WOW team. You make each conference experience special for all attendees.
 * Email from Chris Johnson, AzTEA President**
 * Email from Helen Padgett**

Thank you for the hospitality and friendship you extended to Susan Larson, ISTE Affiliate Program Director, who was visiting with us from ISTE’s home in Eugene, Oregon. Susan was impressed with the dedication and leadership of AzTEA. She was also impressed with the strong connection between ISTE and AzTEA and is looking forward to visiting with more of our members at NECC.

Thank you also for the warm welcome you provided to the two new instructional graphic designers, Filiz and Irfan Kula, from Turkey who are on our Adaptive Curriculum team at SkySong. They enjoyed having the opportunity to meet many of you and hear the keynote presentation on Friday evening. Friday evening was very well done.

Kudos for a well-planned and well-executed event! Helen ~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~. Helen L. Padgett, Ph.D. Arizona State University ISTE Board of Directors International Society for Technology in Education Providing leadership and service to improve teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in education http://www.iste.org


 * P.S. from Peggy: Susan Larson is the person I mentioned in our meeting who wants to highlight our AzTEA wikispace in the next ISTE Newsletter that will come out jut prior to NECC. We are very excited to be able to share our site with the world. :-)**

End-of-Year social event for Westside Leadership Team
 * VIII. Next meeting: Date/Place/Location Confirmation**

