Web 2.0

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Comment by Dan Storchan on September 9, 2008 at 4:22pm

I agree with Michael. It seems like the best bet would be for each teacher to create their own account, and then add middle_school_80 to his/her network. So, with that in mind, middle_school_80 acts as the home base for a portal that all of the teachers at MS80 are networked to.

As members of the network "send" relevant links to the portal -- the administrator of middle_school_80 will have to take it upon themselves to organize and bundle the links. I would start small with a pilot team of Del.icio.us users who are willing to commit to the process. Once your teachers are comfortable with adding, tagging, and sharing links -- it will be their job to begin sharing out best practices to the rest of the learning community.

Good luck with this, Christine -- I look forward to hearing how your Del.icio.us page develops.

Comment by Michael Dodes on September 8, 2008 at 1:24pm

Christine,

The only way you can do this with Del.icio.us is if your teachers build it first, or if you build their profiles for them and then turn over the passwords to each of them.

Basically, in Del.icio.us after you log in you can go to the "People" drop down menu and then "my network" in the upper right you can click add new user to network and then type in middle_school_80 - I added that and cgibson4 to my own del.icio.us network.

For it to be useful they need to check their own profiles - but I don't believe it's possible to bundle them in a way that someone not managing their own network can view a sort of "stand alone" network of del.icio.us tags.

It's just the way the network is built so people can share with each other. The only other method is via unique tags but not everyone understands folksonomies and they're very loose so they're not reliable for keeping everyone together.

Comment by chris gibson on September 8, 2008 at 10:24am

Hello,
Let me tap into the Collective Brain, and ask you this question:
I have created a Delicious page for my school at http://delicious.com/middle_school_80. I want to bundle my teachers so they can share.
I am not to sure how to go about this.
Hope you all can give me some tips.
Thanks.

Comment by Dawn Penney on August 26, 2008 at 12:50am

I'm sure i will think of additional ways to use what I've learned as the year goes on, especially by networking on some of the Educational blogging sites I've joined, as well as the Educational websites I've learned about, which have great resources.

I now have a page on Netvibes (links were included in the prior discussion) called My Classroom. I intend to use this page as a way to stay in communication with my students and their parents by using the calender to post all of our upcoming activities, having our monthly homework calendar available, as well as having a to-do list with homework instructions for each activity.

In addition, I have provided multiple resources for parents, teachers and students, including educational games, a health nutrition game, an eco-calculator, and websites for children as well as parents. On the parents tab, I have added websites about English as a second language, and USA Smarts, since most of the parents of our students are immigrants and are not fluent in the English language. We have also seen a recent influx of Arabic-speaking students and parents in our school's community, so I've added an Arabic Word of the Day tool for teachers, students, and parents. Some of the websites I've included for parents provide resources to help them get their kids writing, and links to PBS, Discovery, World News, and National Geographic, in an effort to get them interested in educational television and reading for them and their kids.

I've added photos from our school's Thanksgiving/Holiday dinner celebration. I plan on also adding class photos as the year progresses. In addition, I will add a link to the school's website and the school year calender and possibly other links I find that may keep them up-to-date on the school and DOE schedule or resources for parents' rights, etc.

I have created a Jeopardy game for my class, but I have not been able to upload it to My Classroom Page. It is a PowerPoint file, so I'm not sure if anyone can provide me with information about how to add this interactive game to my page. In addition, since I have not been able to figure out how to add files from my computer, I would like to know if anyone can explain how to add our monthly homework calendar which is typically a word document. By adding these files to our classroom page, I'm hoping I can eliminate a lot of paper copies, which waste paper and always get lost, anyway.

Additionally, I want to share best practices, such as what I've learned on Web 2.0 and my Excel and PowerPoint classes, like the Jeopardy game we created and the Student Grade Book spreadsheet. If anyone can help me with ways to upload these files, I would appreciate it.

Furthermore, I would like to have a tab where students can showcase their projects, such as books from our publishing expo, artwork, and other activities we are involved in. One of the things I'm hoping to get them involved in the National Student/Parent Mock Election. Here's the URL: http://www.nationalmockelection.org/
I'm also looking into using the curriculum for the new Waterfalls in NYC, from the teacher page on NYC DOE's website. I thought I could add info and track our progress on our Classroom Page.

Finally, I have a joined MyGradebook, since I was unable to add my student gradebook spreadsheet from Excel, and I've added a link to MyGradebook on my teacher tab. However, whether I use the website MyGradebook or my Excel Gradebook, I plan on using My Classroom page to share student academic progress, homework tracking, etc. with parents.

I hope that keeping all of these resources on one page will help me manage my time more effectively and stay more organized, in addition to sharing info and resources with students, parents and other teachers.

Comment by Dawn Penney on August 25, 2008 at 11:03pm

I've been working on My Classroom Page, but it's a work in progress. I've sent all of my tabs: Teachers, Students, Parents, and General to 'My Universe' so that they could all be viewed publicly, but they don't appear with all of the widgets and links I've added. They appear as some default set up by Netvibes. So, I have included URLs that appear for each tab when I click on "share on my blog" from the dropdown menu on each tab. I hope you are able to view them, but if not, please provide me with some help, as I have checked all of the instructions on Netvibes and haven't been able to figure it out. I will start a separate discussion, explaining my plans on how to use what I've learned in my classroom. Here are the links to the tabs I've created on Netvibes, and please bear in mind that I am still working on these tabs:


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