From: Jenkins Christina (09X339) Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 12:00 PM To: Nielsen Lisa; Subject: RE: Goggle and wikis and blogs for storing student work Hi all, The best place to see an overview of what we've done here is at http://celebrating339.blogspot.com. Contents bar on the right highlights what we're working on. Pat designed it to record what we've done throughout the year. Most of what we've done, technology-wise, has been accomplished since September 07. A summary: Step one, in September, was to get all teachers, admins and support staff (around 100) on Gmail. We chose Gmail over DOE accounts because of its functionality. This probably took two months, September and October, to get almost 100% of the teachers comfortable with checking email on a daily basis. Once doing that, we were able to take advantage of docs/spreadsheets. This happened in grade-level and content-area team meetings at first (our teachers meet one period per day with either their grade or their subject area); meeting facilitators used Google Docs to record meeting notes, which were shared with participants and administrators. So, as with Gmail, a core group of people was trained first, and then we moved it staff-wide. On the professional side, all teachers now use Google Docs/Spreadsheets schoolwide for curriculum planning, data collection/analysis (we use Google Forms - a feature of spreadsheets - for that), section sheet (behavior-tracking) scores, teacher feedback .. the list goes on. On the instructional side, our teachers with access to the 1:1 iBook program (and now, even some with access to the ASUS Eee PC) are using Google Docs with their students. We set up student Google Accounts (using the Google Apps for Education suite), and students use those to access email, docs, and Blogger. Teachers have really taken advantage of GDocs by not only using it as a way to publish online, but also as a way to give feedback at all stages in the writing process - and to encourage students to edit each other's work. And, speaking again to collaboration, some of our teachers are using GReader to subscribe to student blogs, and we've started a blog mentor program to involve members of our extended professional network in giving students feedback on their writing. Sorry for the long note! If it's not apparent, I'm pretty proud of what the tech leadership - Pat, Mr. Levy, Mr. Ackerman (an AP who came to us from another iTiL school), Mr. Prinstein (instructional dean) - and our staff and students have been able to accomplish since September. Let me know if you'd like to discuss further. Also, we love visitors, if you're interested in stopping by! Christina