Tapped In Newsletter: October 2002
...ON THE TAPIS
October 2002
Issue 59
In This Issue
[1] Smooth Sailing for TAPPED IN and Global Learn Day VI
[2] Member Perspective: Jewel Reuter
[3] Technology Tips
[4] TAPPED IN News Nuggets
[5] About ...On the TAPIS
Quote of the Month - "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." - John Wooden
[1] Smooth Sailing for TAPPED IN and Global Learn Day VI
The 24-hour marathon global voyage, which showcased highly innovative activities in education and Internet technology, has docked for another year, but the ripples and waves that this ship generated will linger. Several TAPPED IN members participated in the event, which was "imagineered" by TAPPED IN member John Hibbs. Vance Stevens did a terrific job showcasing the WebHeads, a group of language teachers and learners that meet each Sunday in TAPPED IN. Antonio Diaz, a member of the GLD crew, served as an important bilingual resource as the ship sailed through the South American time zones. Antonio has a bilingual newsletter online at http://www.bilingualnewsletter.com/. Several TAPPED IN members came aboard during the voyage to offer much appreciated support to the TI community presenters and were inspired by the rich diversity of the GLD presentations.
[2] Member Perspective: Jewel Reuter
Jewel Reuter (JewelR) has been a member of TAPPED IN since 1998. Jewel is currently a teacher of Biology and Environmental Science at the Louisiana Virtual School and is a professional development consultant for the Archdioceses of New Orleans. Jewel is also pursuing a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at LSU. Her studies focus on the use of animations with past, present and future visual fields in the study of photosynthesis and respiration.
Jewel's Perspective
I began in TAPPED IN when I was learning to mentor biology teachers on how to integrate the Internet into their biology lessons. I met with other educators for a semester on TAPPED IN to devise effective methods of mentoring the newcomers to the Internet. We shared our successes and failures and made plans for better ways of mentoring. I fell in love with TAPPED IN. I learned about the philosophy of the TAPPED IN community. I learned how to evoke emotion and to give my sessions the feeling that we were all in the presence of each other. I learned to CHEER and to CLAP for the success of others. I learned how to hold up COW and PIG signs to direct the session.
As I learned more about TAPPED IN, I got an office and a recorder to have my students meet me for study sessions. A few of my students would meet me and we would discuss biology concepts such as fungus reproduction, immunity, photosynthesis and respiration. I would e-mail the transcript to all the students, and I made copies of it for the next day's class. The students really liked reading and studying the transcripts. They liked the dialogue and that they knew the characters of the session. The sessions were about complex and abstract biology concepts in the format of an online conversation. We continued to meet weekly in my office and the sessions and the transcripts were a big hit with all the students. They welcomed the transcripts as notes in the dialogue form. My students began to do better on quizzes and tests. I began to notice the nature of the discussions that we were having in the sessions. The students that attended the session had questions for me and I had questions for them. We did not always get directly to the answer. We had to ask multiple questions and we progressed to the answer. As I read the transcripts I could see that I was showing them how to do inquiry thinking.
See all our member perspectives.
[3] Technology Tips
Netiquette
Sometimes when a new member or a guest logs into TAPPED IN they are unaware of the netiquette and the dynamics of real time discussions. These newbies rely on everyone in the community to guide them through an often overwhelming maze of new experiences. Whether you are meeting in an After School Online event, volunteering at the Helpdesk, or leading a class, please take some time to welcome these valued participants and help them learn how to interact appropriately within the TAPPED IN environment.
Advanced Tech Tip of the Month: Member and Student Safety & Security
TAPPED IN does a great deal to provide a safe and secure environment for all participants. With a rapidly growing membership comes an increase in the amount of activity in TAPPED IN. Helpdesk volunteers (hint, hint... wanna volunteer?! - see BJ) and TAPPED IN staff can't always be available to make sure that the behavior of guests is appropriate. This puts the responsibility of monitoring the community on you, the community member. Members can use text commands to document the inappropriate behavior of a guest and, if the behavior continues after the guest has been warned, to kick the offensive person out of TAPPED IN. The documenting command is @witness and the boot command is @banish nameofguest. For more information when you are logged in type /help banish. These commands must only be used with extreme caution and your good judgement.
[4] TAPPED IN News Nugget
The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant to After School Online (ASO) discussion leader Bill Hilton Jr.'s Operation RubyThroat. These funds will be used primarily to strengthen ties between ORT and The GLOBE Program, another on-line science learning project. Operation RubyThroat is the cover story for the October 2002 issue of teachers.net Gazette at http://teachers.net/gazette/OCT02/.
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Now available online is part two of Pam Berger's article in Technology & Learning, in which TAPPED IN is promoted. The article uses the example of a public and school librarian from Pennsylvania who collaborated in TAPPED IN to build their website. See http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2002/09/library.html. Pam leads the monthly WebTools ASO discussions.
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Lewis Armstrong's Web Based Resources at http://ejw.i8.com and the "Events of 9-11 and Terrorism" on the Political Science page was featured in the September issue of American Libraries.
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ASCD has published Increasing Student Learning Through Multimedia Projects, our teacher guidebook based on the work of the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project and the WEB Project. Take a look! The authors include TAPPED IN members Michael Simkins, Karen Cole, and Fern Tavalin.
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TAPPED IN member Daniel Kakinda, the WorldLinks Uganda/Schoolnet Uganda National Coordinator (http://www.schoolnetuganda.sc.ug) will be attending the World Links (http://www.world-links.org) Country coordinators meeting from October 18-27th in Washington, D.C
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Hal Portner included, "TAPPED IN, an interactive online community of educators engaged in professional development programs and informal collaborative educational activities" in the resource section of "Internet Sites and Publications form New Teachers" in his latest book BEING MENTORED: A GUIDER FOR PROTEGES. (Corwin Press, 2002).
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Do you have a News Nugget about yourself or another member of the TAPPED IN Community? Send your News Nugget to BJ Berquist at bjb @ tappedin.org.
[5] About ...On the TAPIS
Postings of all ...ON THE TAPIS issues are available on the TAPPED IN website. Contact us if you have any questions about your subscription, password or user name, or if you have any news items that you want to share with the community for ...ON THE TAPIS.