Tapped In Newsletter: July 2005
...On the Tapis
July 2005
Issue 92
In This Issue
[1] Member Perspective: Barbara (Bee) Dieu
[2] Don't Miss Tapped In Festival 2005!
[3] Tapped In Technology Tip
[4] News Nuggets
[5] Informal Survey of Exceptional Online PD
[6] Siemens Westinghouse Competition for Math and Science
[7] Graduate Student Seeks Teachers for Online Survey
[8] About ...On the Tapis
Quote of the Month - "What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
[1] Member Perspective: Barbara (Bee) Dieu
Barbara Dieu or just Bee as we call her online, teaches EFL at the Franco-Brazilian high school in So Paulo. Together with Aaron Campbell, she leads the Blogstreams Salon Group at Tapped In to discuss web logging and web publishing projects and pedagogy and co-runs Dekita.org, a community of educators promoting peer-to-peer communication in language learning by bringing learners, experts, tutors and mentors together through Web-publishing.
Since 1997, she has been involved in international collaborative projects online. She is also a member of the Webheads in Action, Cyberlangues, Tesol CALL and Braztesol.
Bee's Perspective
When BJB invited me to write this perspective, I tried to bring to mind how I had discovered Tapped In and when I first joined. I must have dug it during one of my exploratory trips across cyberspace. Fortunately, although my brain storage capacity is limited and memory retrieval does not improve as years go by, I found a back-up disk containing early TI folders with all the mails properly saved. This is thanks to just one of the many great features TI offers to its members: transcript of text chats are automatically e-mailed and main sessions archived for further reference. It was fun to take a trip back in time, re-read the conversations, recognize familiar names and connect the dots.
Strangely, although the first e-mail confirming my membership is dated 3/13/01, my first visit only occurred seven months later. There are a few monthly newsletters in between announcing the After School Online events so I suspect that for some time, I just lurked and what finally made me come out of my hiding on October 23rd was the announcement of a session on web quests in EFL led by Phil Benz. I had been trying hard to develop one on my own following the advice given on Tom March's and Bernie Dodge's site but became bogged down in the middle.
I landed at the Reception 50 minutes early to get acquainted with the environment and was warmly received by BJB (another Barbara), who gave me tips on how to interact, use the interface and introduced me to Phil. In no time, we discovered, to our delight, that although we were on different continents and had never heard of each other before, we were talking the same language, working and heading in the same direction. It was on this memorable occasion that I also met TonK who had just started his Talenquest in the Netherlands and from then onwards, life was never quite the same. There was always an interesting session to attend, resources to share, incredible people to exchange ideas with, "elective affinities" and cutting edge tools/practice being discussed in a relaxed non-threatening atmosphere.
When you are starting, it is important to be heard and trusted, receive support and encouragement to keep confident and move forward. Under the helpful and caring guidance of BJB, KeikoS, MaggiD, DavidWe at the Help Desk and tutored by experienced members like PhilB, I gradually started meeting more and more people, sharing resources and accepting more responsibilities.
Read all of Bee's Perspective online. If you have a perspective or story you want to share about an experience using Tapped In, contact BJ Berquist at bjb@tappedin.org
[2] Don't Miss Tapped In Festival 2005!
The lights are strung, the tents are up, and the cotton candy machine is warming up, so make sure you've marked your calendars for the July 20 Tapped In Festival 2005 - Creating Connections through Collaboration! Twelve hours (7am PDT - 7pm PDT) of discussions from ALTEC Allstars (TrackStar, RubiStar, QuizStar) to Webheads, a Scavenger Hunt, Coffee House, a collaboration roundtable discussion, a Groups Poster Session, door prizes and Certificates of Participation!
Visit the Festival page and go to the time-zone-friendly schedule to see descriptions of all events. For more information about Certificates of Participation, log in to Tapped In and ask a helpdesk volunteer.
[3] Tapped In Technology Tip
Discussion Boards
Each room in Tapped In has a threaded discussion board to which only members can post. [Please note that in order for you to receive credit toward your Certificate of Participation in the Festival Groups Poster Session you must be logged in with your free TI membership.] A subscription to a discussion board means that you will receive all posts to that board in your email. When you join a group you are automatically subscribed to the group's board. However, you may choose to unsubscribe to the board (this does not unsubscribe you from the group membership) and access the posts by logging in to Tapped In and going to the group room, or you may choose to receive posts in digest form. These choices are available at the top of the group Discussion page by going to the group room and clicking on Discussion on the blue menu on the left.
[4] News Nuggets
Thanks to Jeff Cooper for pointing out Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach's article on online mentoring in the latest Edutopia magazine.
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Susan Roseman's K to 3+ End of the Year Games sessions has been featured at 4teachers as a site of the week.
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Dafne Gonzalez contributed an article to Essential Teacher about her blended architecture courses.
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Curt Tofteland reports that Amy Scott-Douglass' review of All The World's A Stage published in the recent issue of Early Modern Literary Studies includes an article about the addition of a new repertoire for Shakespeare Behind Bars.
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Teresa Almeida d'Ea reports that her publisher, Porto Editora, has included "Have Fun with English" as "Site of the Day" in their Educare.pt page (scroll down, bottom right).
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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] Informal Survey of Exceptional Online PD
In April, Tapped In Director Mark Schlager sent out an email to approximately 2,000 Tapped In members asking them to identify an online professional development (PD) course or program that they had participated in (as an instructor or learner) and felt was exceptional. More than 100 people responded, and many asked if we would publish the results. The recommendations included university masters degree programs, district PD programs, PD offered by vendors and nonprofits, and mentoring programs, highlighting the breadth of online experiences that people associate with professional development.. The programs receiving more than one vote were:
Atomic Learning by Atomic Learning, Inc.
Connected University by Classroom Connect/Harcourt Education Company
ETLO Program by EDC
my e-Coach
Pepperdine University OMAET program
Scholastic Red by Scholastic
Star-Online
Teacher Line by PBS
Teaching Math by Annenberg/CPB
Walden University
University of Illinois CTER Program
Our thanks to everyone who responded!
[6] Siemens Westinghouse Competition for Math and Science
The Siemens Foundation sponsors the prestigious Siemens Westinghouse Competition - the nation's premier research-based science and math competition for high school students, and is administered by the College Board.
Online registration and instructions for entering the 2005-06 Competition in Math, Science & Technology are posted at www.siemens-foundation.org and www.collegeboard.com/siemens. Students who are not able to complete the application process online may call 1-800-626-9795 ext. 5930 from 9am to 5pm EST. The deadline for entries is Monday, October 3, 2005.
The competition awards college scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $100,000. Students may enter as individuals or as part of a team. Entries are judged at the regional level by esteemed scientists and faculty at six leading research universities: Carnegie Mellon University; University of Notre Dame; University of California, Berkeley; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Georgia Institute of Technology; and The University of Texas at Austin. The national finals are judged by a panel of prominent scientists and mathematicians.
[7] Graduate Student Seeks Teachers for Online Survey
My name is Yoke Meng Chan, a doctoral student at Texas Tech University. I am asking teachers to respond to three short electronic questionnaires. This survey is about teacher motivation when teacher attrition is an issue in high-poverty schools. Teacher's responses to this survey are closely related to understand teacher's self-knowledge about teaching diverse students in high-poverty schools. Teachers need approximately 15 minutes to complete this survey. Even if you do not teach in high-poverty schools, your opinions are much needed to provide broader comprehension about teacher motivation to teach in schools today. Please feel free to contact me (yoke-meng.chan@ttu.edu) if you have any questions. Thank you very much.
[8] About ...On the Tapis
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