Dear Dawn,
Well, we all have our websites up, most have at least two cyber journal entries and have done their October Sky essays, which are not all that good because I wasn't here to prepare them, and it was the first thing they wrote. We are now started on a lot of other things. Today we go to wtch the school's contest one act play and tomorrow we are back at work. They will be discussing their partner books on our discussion board. They will also be working on their fairy tale autobiographies. One neat thing is the way the students are logged on and working before the bell even rings.
it is still early days for my kids and they have a lot of questions,most technical. I am still helping them a lot this week, but by next week I am going to tell them to check out the help page or their partners before they ask me. One thing they do is email their rough drafts with their peers comments to me for my review and then they email their final drafts to me. i can use the Word reviewing function. Some are starting to put them directly into their web pages, though, which means I have to go into their website to read their things and then email them my comments. How do you handle teacher review/edit, or don't you do that step?
I haven't talked to my kids too much about audience yet. I just want them to get on first. That is going to come with their next major paper. (can we still call them papers?)
One great thing about FrontPage is that when they open it, it opens right online, so whenever they save a page or their work it automatically goes onto their website and we don't have to worry about ftp . i know a lot of people don't like FP but it works well for my kids.
I hope you will excuse all the lower case letters. There is something wrong with this old keyboard at school (which is where I am, while my fiction kids are all on computers working on their quotes project over Montana 1948) and I have trouble capitalizing.
Threatened, intimidated, or jealous are great words. I see that too, so I just shut up, close my door, and do what i want. One of the things that adds to their feeling threatened is that i have the full support of the District special services director who writes technology grants and is applying for a grant to get a wireless laptop lab for this class, the Superintendant, and our Principal who was a computers and math teacher. They are afraid that pressure will be brought to bear on them to do the same thing, or at least use the computers more because of NCLB and the fact that our state tests are taken online.
Well, I see some hands waving, so I had better click out for today.Pat