Tapped In Newsletter: May 2005

...On the Tapis
April 2005
Issue 90

In This Issue

[1] Second Grade Students Build a Community of Learners
[2] CREATING Connections at Festival 2005
[3] Tapped In Technology Tip
[4] News Nuggets
[5] About ...On the Tapis

Quote of the Month - "The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives." - Robert Maynard Hutchins

[1] Second Grade Students Build a Community of Learners

Brooke Molnar used Tapped In with her students in order to build a community of learners. Her school system did not support the chat function of Tapped In but her students engaged using the discussion board, the white board, and the featured links. The following is an article Brooke wrote documenting her experience.

Brooke's Perspective
A second grade teacher asks her students to draw a picture of a classroom that they would like to create. The pictures are filled with letters, students, teachers, books, and "nolog", knowledge. Students begin to tell the teacher that the most important thing in a classroom is the knowledge. The teacher tells the students that she has given them their very own place in cyber space. She explains to them that their new classroom is a place where they can create knowledge together. With the use of Tapped In this second grade class will begin to build and extend their knowledge on a variety of topics throughout the school year.

Tapped In is a web based virtual educational community. With its different campuses educators can create their own virtual communities for students. Tapped In has the features of a threaded discussion board where it models the building of knowledge by showing all the previous posts in the thread. Teachers are also able to upload photos and add captions and text to the pictures. Tapped InÕs rooms can be locked or open for other educators to visit. All participants must be members and is not open to the general public.

The students began to create the look of their learning space. They became invested in their own classroom because they were building it together. Discussion began among the second graders on how to build their new classroom. They designed it like a tree house "because trees grow and so will they". They built rules and a mission for their "tree house" and even named it! They were impressed that the teacher even displayed some of their drawings up in their new "tree house".

Read all of Brooke's Perspective online. If you have a story you want to share about an experience using Tapped In, contact BJ Berquist at bjb@tappedin.org

CREATING Connections at Festival 2005

Tapped In is an active community so it is fitting that the theme for Festival 2005 should involve the action of Creating - creating active collaboration among colleagues across disciplines and across cultures. The Student Campus will have a couple group rooms open during festival for any TI members interested in learning more about how educators can use the Student Activity Center with their K-12 students.

If you lead a TI Group or K-12 Group that uses creative ideas in Tapped In, and you would like to be part of Tapped In Festival 2005 to either present a workshop or participate in the Groups Poster Session, contact BJ Berquist, Festival Chair, at bjb@tappedin.org There are still a few openings in the Festival schedule. Visit the Festival page often to see the latest changes.

[3] Tapped In Technology Tip

Favorite Places Menu
To make it easy to move from any location in Tapped In to rooms you visit frequently, there is a Favorite Places Menu in the top right of your Tapped In screen. All users have TI Reception listed on the favorites menu. When TI members enter a room that is not listed on their favorites, there is a link to the left of the Favorite Places menu to ADD TO MY FAVORITES. This link will add the room you're in to the menu. You can also go to the ME/Places tab to add/delete rooms in the Favorite Places menu. When you join a Tapped In group, the group room is automatically added to the menu.

New members 'land' in Reception when they log in. When a member gets an office, the office is added to Favorite Places and becomes 'home' or the place you land when you log in. If you would like to land in a room other than Reception or your office when you log in, such as a classroom or instructor's office, go to the ME/Settings tab and reset the 'home' location from among your favorite places links.

[4] News Nuggets

Tapped In member Frank Baker sent this information about an upcoming conference in San Francisco:

Make your voice heard and hear the many voices at the National Media Education Conference in San Francisco, June 25-28. AMLA has lined up an impressive array of speakers and presenters including health educators, K-12 teachers, youth advocates, researchers, academics, and producers -- all to bring you the latest pedagogy, youth productions, research findings, classroom resources, and as much information as you can absorb in three days.

Of course, you can also arrive early and attend the Pacific Film Archive's "How to Read a Film" workshop, which offers a discount if you also register for NMEC!

So come network with colleagues, visit the exhibits, see the screenings, and cruise the Bay aboard the Hornblower. Find out how you can do all this and more at AMLA Conference Web Site.
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Alert member Janice Schlottman pointed out this article about Learning Communities and Educational Technology from tech LEARNING ezine.
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Tapped In member Andrew Pinchon posted this email message to the WebHeads for their contributions to the 2005 Tutor/Mentor eConference:

First, on behalf of Dan Bassill and all of us in Chicago, I would like to sincerely thank all the Webheads for their stellar performances during the May 8 eConference. We covered the range of subjects that seem to come naturally to this eclectic group of distance educations professionals from around the world. Dan counted over 39 attendees from over 13 countries who actively participated during this four hour session.

The recorded archive is now up and is broken down into the sessions for each of the individual one hour sessions.
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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

Past issues of ...On the Tapis newsletters are available online.

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.