Audiences:  TCs, TC alums, Teachers, Preservice teachers, administrators, parents,  professionals,  business and community, youth, and students.  Now is the time to do web exploration for looking at web sites to showcase PLWP’s core values and audience.  Mary

Who we are as a site?    How would you describe the identiy of your writing project site?

What stands out for you most vividly about your writing project site?

What people, activities, places most define your writing project site?   Mary

What metaphor would you use to describe yourself as a teacher?  Jane as a stop light to stop and listen for instruction.  A vegas show the females showing too much skin.   Bongs and trumpets.  Terri, a roller coaster.  A roller coaster ready to be dismantled and recycled.  A hat store for Mary.  A teacher wears many hats.  A hard hat to construct knowledge for students to learn.  A Sherlock Holms hat to solve the mystery of a student’s mind.  Susan’s metaphor a garden.   

How has your involvement with PLWP effected you as a teacher?  What do we as teachers get from PLWP?  It is a network of people for get resources.  It is a cult that is nation wide network that clicks no mater the differences.  “PLWP is food for my soul.”   A network to support each other.  How do we expand that network and keep individuals coming back?

Mary in Missouri

They used DS because of the possibilities of publication, audience.  They found the students were excited about the technology, but worked harder on the project because it might be published for all the world to see.  I found the say thing happening when I had students do projects that would have an expanded audience.  They worked harder on projects like web pages, presentations to be shown at an open house or to the schoolboard.  It something about going outside the classroom walls that idea of giving students a bigger audience.  I am using my mini grant monies to do an open institute on digital storytelling and some othe Web 2.0 activities. We are going to try a podcast, use a wiki, and blog.  I will be picking this groups brains a little closer to June.                           Mary in Missouri

“March came in like a lion.”

February 28, 2007 PLWP sponsored a 2 hour professional development session called “No Mean Feat”  a nuance response.

Marcia Hansen, University of Missouri presented information about Web 2.0.

A panel consisting of a teacher, a student, a chair of a high school English department, a high school technology coordinator, a superintendent, and a professor who teaches methods of using technology to preservice teachers answered questions from the audience.

Nuance Responses

Facing Up to Facebook

Knowledge is Key

Staff involvement and Community building

Use Dummy Profiles to Create Understanding of Safe Use and Acceptable Behavior

Wiki

Westwood Wiki, Victoria A. Davis  http://westwood.wikispaces.com/

http://m2h.wikispaces.com/

March 1, 2007 Annual High School Writing Day sponsored by PLWP.  This is a 9:00 am to 2:00 pm day where high school students and their teachers come to Missouri Western to write and have fun doing it.  The university’s SNCTE has grown in its support along with PLWP of this writing day for students. About 13 area individuals present workshops that guide and encourage the students’ writing.  An open mike session is held at the end of the day.  This gives the students who want to share what they have written an audience.  About 200 high school students attend.  SNCTE collect prizes and provide direction services to the visiting students.  The University President welcomes the students to “Western”.

I made the 40-mile trek from home to St. Joseph on Wednesday afternoon from northern Missouri.  At home it was cloudy and 26 degrees, 40 miles south it was 48 degree and sunny.  I had planned to stay with our daughter who lives just outside of St. Joseph, because I needed to be back early to PLWP for High School Writing Day on March 1, 2007.  Little did I think about a freak blizzard hitting NW Missouri. At St. Joseph it was a blowing wintery mix of snow, sleet, and cold rain, but nothing was sticking to the ground.  About 3:00 pm the sun began to shine in St. Joseph.  Living all my life in Missouri I knew to be suspicious.  I called my husband to check on the roads 40 miles north.  His report/demand, whatever you want to call a husband stating,  “You stay the night with Vickey and call before you start home tomorrow.”  Interstates were closed, cars and trucks were being blown off the road and visibility was zero just 20 miles north of St. Joseph.  Yes, March had roared in like a lion.

We have had mid 50 degree weather from March 4-10.  My fall bulbs are peeking through the ground.

Our art teacher daughter invited me to professional development activity called Art and Technology at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City MO on March 10^th.  I have several area art teachers who take the writing with technology institutes I have taught as a result of the TI grant at PLWP.  The session explained the goal was Connecting Teens to Art.  It is an 18-hour program where students spend 10 to 12 hours at the Nelson Art Gallery.  The director guides them through the process of looking at art pieces, writing about those pieces and finally producing a movie using imovie.  The instructor asks the question, What do you see?  Usually this is done in comparing two different pieces of art.  Example two paintings, two different sculptures. Students fill out a table listing adjective, noun, adverb, verb, and simile.  The student must fill out 4 lines of the chart for each work.  They then begin listing these to create a poem.  After that a Venn diagram is used to answer further questions about two pieces of art.  The student then writes a script about the art and what it says to them.  The instructor gives each student a digital image of the works of art. They must create a movie as a digital story.  http://www.nelson-atkins.org/education/NewDimensions/NewDimensions_Moving.cfm

This program is a Ford grant project called 2006 New Dimensions, The Nelson-Atkins Museum.