Tapped In Newsletter: September 1997

----------------------------------------------------
********** ...ON THE TAPIS **********
----------------------------------------------------
Issue # 2 September, 1997
----------------------------------------------------

...ON THE TAPIS is a monthly letter with updates on TAPPED IN and related events. Check out the TAPPED IN web site to learn more, and log in to TAPPED IN via the web gateway and/or a text client (moo.tappedin.sri.com port 7777) to participate! Contact us if you forgot your password or login name.)

Quote of the Month

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
      --George Bernard Shaw

---------------------------------------
[1] NSF Grant Award!
[2] NEW TAPPED IN partner ORGANIZATIONS
[3] TAPestry User Interface
[4] DU Open House for teachers
[5] FYI Convomania
[6] Win a TAPPED IN T-Shirt
[7] About ...ON THE TAPIS
---------------------------------------

[1] NSF Grant
    ---------

Good News -- no, GREAT News -- from NSF. We have just received a 3-year Research in Education Policy and Practice grant from NSF to continue our research on Teacher Professional Development in TAPPED IN. We're planning lots of excitement, growth and activity. Make sure you are a part of it, and log in to TAPPED IN often. We need you to make our community of TAPPED IN a success.

You may be asking yourself, what are things I can do to help? One thing you can do is fill out our surveys (and win a T-SHIRT)! We currently have one on the web at http://www.tappedin.sri.com/info/surveys/activity.html (it was part of the first issue of ...ON THE TAPIS). In addition, give us more informal feedback. Let us know what you like and don't like. If you have an idea for an activity, or have noticed something that needs to be improved, tell us. One thing to note, we are still under construction...if you are interested in exploring an area in the conference center that doesn't seem to be fully functional, let us know, and we will focus our efforts on that. We need to know what you need.

For more information about the NSF award, contact us.

---------------------------------------

[2] New TAPPED IN partner organizations
    -----------------------------------

AS you know, TAPPED IN supports many TPD organizations. They are here to support YOU! We encourage you to find out more about these organizations by exploring their 2nd floor suites and by contacting them directly. Here are some TAPPED IN partners that you may not know about:

* GSA ESSTEP program.

The Geological Society of America in collaboration with Cypress Community College and The Space Science Institute is proud to bring to you the Earth and Space Science Technological Education Project (ESSTEP). ESSTEP is designed to enable educators to learn about and apply leading edge technologies in the earth and space sciences to their classrooms (focused on grades 8-14). To learn more about ESSTEP, check out the GSA ESSTEP Suite (GSA--2nd floor South Wing). In adddition, you can find information about Project Athena, Filamentality, the Observatorium, Kids as Global Scientists, and Earth System Science Community (ESSC) in the GSA suite.

For more information about GSA, please contact Ed Geary at egeary@geosociety.org


* LHS SEPUP program.

The Science Education for Public Understanding Program (SEPUP) is brought to you by the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley. SEPUP's Issue Oriented Elementary Science Leadership (IOESL) project is designed to help teachers develop and implement an issue oriented science component in their district's curriculum. Issue Oriented Science projects involve getting students to understand how science directly influences their lives, and why understanding science is important to quality of life. Some of the projects of SEPUP include: Issue Oriented Life Science; Issues, Evidence and You; and Chemicals, Health, Environment and Me. Teachers from SEPUP also attended summer institutes to begin their projects and learned about TAPPED IN. To learn more about SEPUP, go to the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) Suite (2nd floor East Wing) and then enter the door marked SEP.

For more information about LHS or SEPUP, send email to
sepup@uclink.berkeley.edu

---------------------------------------

[3] TAPestry User Interface
     -----------------------

If you have been a member in TAPPED IN for a while, you may not be aware of one of latest user interface developments. For members that use Java-enabled web browsers (Netscape 3.0 or higher, or Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher) there is a new ONE-STEP way to connect to TAPPED IN's Web-based interface. TAPestry allows you to log into TAPPED IN without installing a text-based client on your computer, using just your web browser.

     Simply go to http://moo.tappedin.sri.com
     type in your member name and password
     and click on the "Connect using Tapestry" button.

When you click the button, TAPestry opens BOTH a text window for communication AND a Web window for moving around and interacting with objects. It's slick! To see what it looks like before you try it, check out the graphic on our Website: http://www.tappedin.sri.com/info/tapestry_example.html

If you have questions or feedback, feel free to contact us.

---------------------------------------

[4] DU MOO Open House for teachers
    ------------------------------
    
Diversity University (DU) MOO is planning an Open House for teachers who want to learn about how they can use Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs, or MOOs) for teaching. Various DU members will be presenting projects they or one one of their students did in a MOO, and explaining the pedagogy involved in its design. TAPPED IN staff will also be leading a session about using MUVES for teacher professional development (TBA on the TAPPED IN home page soon). The Open House will be held on-line, in DU MOO (moo.du.org port 8888), September 26-27 (Friday & Saturday).

Check http://www.du.org for a link to DU's Quick Start page which provides quick and dirty steps to getting onto DU as well as other summerized or extracted tidbits of interest about Diversity University.

For more information on the Open House or how to log in to DU MOO, email Jeanne at du@du.org

---------------------------------------

[5] FYI from the TAPPED IN staff
    ----------------------------

Convomania: An on-line community for seriously ill and disabled kids.

This Web-based on-line community is not for teachers, but we thought you might want to share information about Convomania (http://www.mania.apple.com) with a kid in your school who has a serious or chronic illness or disability. Convomania is a community of kids who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s a place where it’s ok to be not ok. The website includes bulletin boards, chat rooms, art galleries, and information about how to subscribe to the Listserv mailing list to connect to the community. Through all of these activities kids share stories, games, and information about their illnesses and treatments that makes being sick a little less scary and lonely. The community is sponsored and monitored by Apple Computer, but the kids own the community. Convomania is all about communication and expression for kids who all to often do not get a voice.

For more information, contact mania@apple.com or contact us.

---------------------------------------

[6] Win a Tapped In T-Shirt
     -----------------------

In August we sent you the inaugural issue of ...ON THE TAPIS which included a Community Activities Nomination Survey. This survey was designed to help us understand better the kinds of community wide, on-line activities that you are interested in seeing in TAPPED IN. We would like to thank those members that have already taken this survey. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

For those members that haven't filled out this survey, we would like to encourage your participation. The survey should only take about five minutes to fill out. When we receive your completed survey, you will receive our sincere gratitude, and ... you will be entered in a drawing to win a TAPPED IN T-Shirt. This T-Shirt is REAL -- Not virtual -- and it is very cool! The survey is now on the web, and you can take it simply by going to http://www.tappedin.sri.com/info/surveys/activity.html

If you prefer to do it by email but you need another copy of the survey, contact us or copy the survey from the ...ON THE TAPIS August Issue of the newsletter which is posted on our site (see below).

---------------------------------------

[7] About ...ON THE TAPIS
     ---------------------
Postings of all the newsletter are available online.

Contact us if you have any questions about your subscription, login name or password, or if you have any news items that you want to share with the community for ...ON THE TAPIS.
If you no longer want to receive ...ON THE TAPIS, then log in to TAPPED IN and type @set me.no_mass_mailings to 1 <%-- web site footer--%>