Minutes for Today's Meeting

Could someone please post minutes from today's meeting?

Who was there?

What was discussed?

Action items?

I think that would be helpful for us to complete Inverness at the end of the year. Plus, I want to try to stay in the loop.

Thanks,
Janelle

Plaxo

Joyce, Can you send me the Plaxo information again please, and the rest of Bluebonnets? What you might do is get a "class secretary" for each SI and maybe they could help you get out some of the requests for people to add in their information?

Maybe you could send out an invitation to each class asking for a secretary for the year, to help you disseminate information via e-mail? What do you think? Workable? Another idea?????

Blog it up!

Hi Cobe and Scott:

A couple of issues/needs came up out of our BWP class today that I think the village could help with quickly (tout suite, Janelle)

1. Is there is a mighty need for a blog space for mentoring. Could we put a blog up for that--I would like to password protect it so teachers can present their issues in privacy and typepad.com offers a password protected blog space. I use it with my courses now, and I get in through CDE. If we needed to use something like this, and needed to pay for a membership, we have enough money now (if it's a reasonable cost) to pay for this. I just feel strongly that teachers need to be able to speak about their needs, issues, and concerns freely without worrying about that information getting "out there."

Administratively, we're going to put out a call for people who might want to "mentor" for free or for a tiny stipend. I have to run all this by Janelle and get her input, but that's what we were discussing today. There were some really troublesome issues teachers are dealing with--overcrowded classes, an administrator dumping all the problem students on the "good" teacher, thus offering her nothing in the way of peer support within the class; a teacher, six weeks into school starting finding out that she may not be teaching departmentalized but may shift to all subjects self contained--six weeks into school, etc. Lots of ELL issues-

Graphic/Tech wise--I was thinking of all kinds of titles and spaces for this place?

Gym Building: Slogan--Build your mentor/mentee muscles at the Mighty Mentee Gymnasium (ok, that's a bit of a stretch, but a thought.

Dance Studio--Minds in Motion: Mentors and Mentees problem solve classroom issues.

Also, just to be able to use our other spaces, would it be hard to take the page design that are in the various other spaces and put them on a blog so that those spaces could be interactive? That would make them "inhabitable" to the citizens very quickly, while Cobe designs the interior spaces and Cobe and Scott work through tech solutions?

Anyway, what do you guys think? Could we get something simple up quick? Is there an exhiting space we can put Mighty Mentors in (maybe in a School House room (grid) temporarily until designs could be done?

Scott, did you watch Cobe's movie? I had to play it 3 times today--it just was the perfect venue to have us feel the development of the village and the movie is perfect. Cobe, we've never talked about it, but Mayberry was exactly the prototype village I had in mind as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is really a surprising connection--and it's bc of the friendliness of the people and the way they interacted as well as the design features.

I sort of had a auditory image of some of the places in Lake Wobegone--like the Chatterbox Cafe'. But, my strongest image was of Mayberry!!!!!!

Cobe, I'm going to send you an invite to the Leadership Blog. I'm going to copy this on the blog so the leaders can see our discussion and we have a record of it. You can respond via e-mail rather than the blog if you want. Whatever works best for you, but I just want to share what we're thinking with the other leaders as well.



Jeannine Hirtle
Arlington, Texas 76001

hotel

Ok Who wants to share a room? I'm all for keeping the cost down as much as possible. Let's figure it out! kat

Hotel Registration for National/Upcoming Renewal Grant for 07-08

Leaders:

You will have to go onto the NCTE home page and go to the conference. From there you can book a room. Just checking you have read my e-mails that you will have to pay for your own hotel and that includes booking it. I can pay for flights and registration, which will come out close to 600 per person. We are taking six people and that utilizes the budget we allocated for this trip.

We pulled money for your trip to Washington, and we have to pay flights for two leadership trips. We will utilize monies from other accounting lines to get all this required travel in. That's why it is SO important that we all come back and share what we've learned with other Bluebonnets and in our workplaces.

We also will have to seriously develop a stronger recruiting plan and staff development plan.

In October we will all be tasked with writing a report of what we've done this year. This will be for our renewal grant. For whoever decides to stay in their leadership position for the 07-08 year, each person will have to write a plan for what they will do in their area of leaderhsip in October as well. We have to have those drafts done by 10/31. I'll e-mail copies of the grant on Saturday, if each of you can remind me, please. Also, I'm asking each leader to estimate their budget expenses for their area of leadership with a short justification. This will go into that grant.

I can try to call NCTE on Sat. I've obtained permission to register (from Department Chair) and/but the site doesn't seem to want to take everyone's information so I'm going to call in the information. My guess is they are not working on Saturday.

Also, I have NO administrative help whatsoever. We are not allowed to work through the department secretary any longer due to her intense workload and we don't have a research assistant so everything that gets done I have to do. And that gets fit into a heavy duty teaching, research,writing, and committee work schedule. Unless we get help, I may have to ask people to so "service" hours if they choose just to help out the project. Keeping up with this kind of clerical work, inventorying books, contacting people, recruiting, making staff development connections--I think if this project is going to run, it has to be a shared effort. That's why when we make the budget this year, you will need to decide what stipend you can work for, what you can contribute, how you can bring in money etc.

Janelle and Heather made break even money on their camps--due to the screw up with Continuing Ed and just a general downturn in camp attendance across the board.

I contributed all of my earnings in two different staff developments to our activity fund.

Jill contributed a required 10% from two-three staff developments and that's ALL we made.

Our accountant (Mike Mathis from NWP) says mature sites can make six times the federal government contribution.

They do this by running open enrollment writing institutes which are not for university credit and the participants pay.

They run advanced institutes.

They do extensive staff development. We haven't really gotten off the ground here. We were making headway with Fort Worth and then that just sort of disappeared. I think that perhaps North Star is getting a lot of their writing business--they stared using us more for literature staff development--or at least me.

We just need to put on our creative thinking caps--think outside the box and see what we can come up with for staff development, mentoring, recruiting, and continuity. I think we have unmined gold in our e-village. We could run a lot through their if we're willing to do it. Help me conceptualize y'all!!!!!!

Thoughts on Continuity Agenda for 9/6/09

Joyce,

I'm thinking this has to be the wrong attachment???? Because, I really want us to stay away from the whole "trips" concept. I'd really like the emphasis to be on the paper we presented and the conference we attended. Maybe you could include a separate sheet which included:

Title of paper
Author(s)
Abstract
Organization/Conference where presented.

For example, here is that information for IADIS. For me, I'd almost like to skip WHERE the conference was, unless someone asked--bc the where is not the point--it's the paper and the organization or audience we presented it to:

Title of Paper: Pedagogy of Podcasting: Mobilizing the Tools of Contemporary Culture for a New Generation of Learners

Authors:

Jeannine Hirtle Ed.D.
The University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington, TX
USA

Christopher White. Ph.D.
Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, TX
USA

Abstract:


This exploration of the integration of mobile technologies into the curriculum focuses on the use of podcasting as a means of expanding the learning environment to more effectively serve and prepare a new generation of students (millenials) who have matured in the digital age. The unique characteristics and the unique needs of this new generation is described; the emergence of podcasting is summarized; and an assessment strategy is proposed that uses ethnographic software to analyze the integration of web logs and podcasts into hybrid, online courses, and professional development courses.

Conference: IADIS

____________________________________________________________________________________________________


Title: It Takes a Village to Build a Writing Project: A Case Study of a
Virtual Learning Community

Authors:
Jeannine Hirtle
Curriculum and Instruction
The University of Texas at Arlington
USA
jhirtle@uta.edu

Cobe Bence
Cobe Bence Graphics
USA
me@cobebence.com


S. Janelle Quintans
Foreign Language and ESL
North Dallas High School
USA
janelle.quintans@gmail.com





Abstract: This paper examines the theoretical principles, aesthetic design, technological tools and components necessary to create polysynchronous professional collaboration and community building through a case study analysis of a virtual learning community developed for an affiliate site of the National Writing Project.

Conference: E-Learn, AACE

I also have a Power Point that goes with the IADIS paper.
We have a copy of the E-Learn paper, but no Power Point yet.



Who is leading us through the writing?
Do you want to have approximate times on each part of the agenda--so we can get everything done?

Also, I've been thinking that you might want to survey at some point the Bluebonnets to see what they would like to do in Continuity, or what they might like to have supporting them on the Village page, bc that is going to be considered part of our "continuity." I've got this great survey service I subscribe to Survey Monkey. I'll get you and/or Scott the password if you are interested. Scott or Katherine B might want to support you and designing a survey, collecting, and analyzing data on that.??? Just a thought. Katherine is going to support you and Scott in kind of a bridge leadership team position between Continuity and Technology. So, she can help both of you.

I'm going to send the two papers in separate attachments so hopefully they won't clog up your computer too much. I would put them on the blog, but unless we can password protect our blog, then I don't want to do that bc of intellectual property issues.






Jeannine Hirtle
Arlington, Texas 76001

Joyce on Continuity

Joyce, I thought I commented on some of your posts here, but I don't see them--I put out some ideas for the Mid Winter Conference. I'm going to give them a day to show up and then will rewrite if we can't find them. Jeannine