Welcome to our Twenty-First Century Schools blog!
This is an area for us to collaborate, brainstorm, share links and articles we have read, and keep our communication active between committee meetings.
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October 6, 2006 @ 6:23 am
Hello Friends,
This is just to see if this system works. I don’t want to type in much until I am sure I understand, at least minimally, what is going on.
Bye for now.
October 6, 2006 @ 6:26 am
Okay, seems to be working. Here are the questions I would like to present to as many persons as possible. It would be helpful if you would nominate some folks whom I could contact. Thank you for any help you are able to provide.
1) Please describe briefly your present line of work. If possible, specify a few of the activities in which you engage on a daily or weekly basis.
2) What skills does a person need to be successful in your line of work?
3) Where did you acquire the skills that help you to succeed in your work?
4) What things did you learn in high school that helped you to begin developing the skills that you have today?
5) What should Westlake High School be doing today, in order to prepare our young people to succeed tomorrow?
October 7, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
I created a PDF survey for your committee to use if to gather data using the questions above. You can email me at jadkins@eanes.k12.tx.us for me to send you a copy of it. I can post it on the whschaps.com site and we could direct people to the site to fill it out. Once they fill it out, they can email the results directly to a survey email address we use. Then I can combine the results into an easy to view spreadsheet for your committee.
If they can’t email it, they can print it and mail it to WHS. I put the address on there if they wanted to send it that way. Up you you all though. I have it and can email to whomever. Good luck!
October 7, 2006 @ 11:38 pm
The email has been sent under sepatate cover.
This blogging business is something I have been hearing about, but not been led to take part in until given the chance to do so by present circumstances. My feeling at present (Sat 10:30 PM) suggests that blogging skills need to be acquired by as many Vision Committee members as possible. I believe it would be helpful to have a demonstration of back and forth blogging during our next meeting, i.e., two or more persons seated at the table, but on separate computers, communicating with each other while the rest of the committee observes. Then, when we break into sub-committees, each sub-committee should make at least one post to another sub-committee’s blog, so that we can learn how to use these blogs for co-ordinating our efforts.
October 8, 2006 @ 8:24 am
Thanks, Joel, for helping us with the PDF survey. I think the questions, Landon, will get some interesting responses. Before we post these, I’d like to hear what other members of the committee thinks. Do we need to phrase them any differently or add anything else?
Great article, Carolyn – I had read this back in the spring when it first came out as Clear Lake High School reorganized into smaller learning communities several years ago. The teachers are now organized on hallways by “teams” of people (math, science, English, history, languages,etc.). This was a real pardigm shift for the faculty but has resulted, I believe, in a sharing of ideas among departments (hence, hopefully, more inter-disciplinary teaching). As this article indicates, however, simply restructuring a school won’t make for real change unless we also get the rigor and relevance pieces in place.
Linda
October 10, 2006 @ 8:08 am
These blogs have significant potential for supporting cyberspace dialogue. However, this potential can be realized only if enough persons have an easy pathway to making blog entries. Making a blog entry is a skill; like other skills, it will require know-how and practice if it is to be developed.
That is, we have to know how to access the blog quickly and easily, and we have to know how to make an entry. We have to becomed practiced at doing this. The first couple of times we access the blog, it will not be easy to do. We may have to read and follow instructions, and in following the instructions, we may make mistakes. In my own case, the first time I tried to access this blog, I typed in edublog.org, instead of edublogs.org. By missing the ’s,’ I opened the edublog website, but could not access this particular blog.
In my posting on 10/7, I mentioned the possibility of demonstrating and practicing how to blog during our next meeting. My guess is that many of our committee members do not possess blogging skills, and I believe it would be worth the effort to invest some time in developing these skills.
I hear thunder outside, so I guess I better post this off before I lose power.
October 10, 2006 @ 9:20 am
Landon,
I agree, and I’m sure we could do a short demo for everyone.
Right now, the issue is that we don’t have the emails for everyone, so I couldn’t send out the instructions to the whole committee. We’ll get that taken care of at the next meeting. But you are helping this off to a great start, by taking the lead and posting here and learning about the blog.
If you have emails from anyone on your committee, email me with them and we can send the instructions out!
–Carolyn
October 20, 2006 @ 2:23 pm
Okay, I am struggling to understand this blogging thing, and it seems that sharing my struggle live, as it is happening, might help myself and others who are struggling as well.
I tried to post this comment on the Technology blog under the Overwhelm thread, but the system would not accept my password, even when I emailed for a new one and tried to copy and paste. I am not clear on why I can get in here, but cannot post on other blogs. I spent several minutes trying to do this, and ended up feeling frustrated and confused.
My process for plugging in to this blogging things has been as follows: I clicked on a link which Carolyn sent me in an email, then I added that link to my Favorites menu on my webpage. I was trying build a bridge from the known (email, webpage) to the unknown (blogging.)
Once I do arrive in the unfamiliar realm, I am unsure about how to navigate. Is there one main blog for our whole committee, or just 4 sub-blogs. Does each subblog have strands within it that I can follow? Is it correct that I can leave a comment, but by clicking on “no comment.” What’s up with that?
What those of us new to blogging need is not just a demonstration, as we had during our last meeting, but also some time for directed practice.
When you learn to drive a car, seeing a demonstration is interesting, but it doesn’t help your muscles learn where the brake pedal is and how hard you have to push on it. At our next meeting, please consider having a computer in each sub-committee, and give each non-blog-literate person a few minutes to navigate the blogspace for themselves and to post their own brief comment. Clearly we would need a blog savvy person available in each subcommitte to direct this practice. If blogging is to be a significant component of our committee’s communication, and I believe it can be, then it is work spending the time in directed practice to bring everyone onboard and up to speed.
Those of you who are experienced bloggers may have a hard time understanding why something which seems so simple to you all is so overwhelming to us “newbies” (I shudder to use the term), but as simple as it may be once it is learned, it seems overwhelmingly complex to those of us who are just getting up to speed.
October 20, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
Landon,
All good feedback. We don’t have a “main” page, so maybe that is something to consider.
I’m going to create a post called “tips” at the top of this page to give some help since several members are starting to try this for the first time.
Unfortunately I think you may have just experienced the site malfunctioning slightly.
I had a little trouble with it yesterday afternoon, but up until then, it had been working fine.
I’ll ask Linda about the possibility of spending some time in our computer lab at one of the meetings(or maybe just before the meeting?) so that people who would like some guided practice could have that. We could do a session at 3:30 and give people some time to practice.
Your feedback is helpful. There are different “looks” to the blog, and while I like the organization of this design we’re using, the “comment” placement is not very clear, so I may try a different template out to get some feedback.
This tool really should be easy to use, so we just need to tinker with it, I think.
Thanks,
Carolyn