HI Dawn, Friday sounds fine and I can make a note to mayself to remember to blog then, or you can blog on Friday and I can blog on Saturday and maybe we will actually have a conversation.
I was in the MOO and Nancy really wants an article from us so I guess we had better try.
BTW, My English Journal came today, and even though I haven't had a chance to carefully read it yet, what I've read is terrific. I really think we should try to present again next year on our cyber classes. Maybe separate from Nancy, I don't know. She always puts us under the Middle Mosaic and neithe of our classes really fit there. Maybe we should ask her and Gretchen what they think. And as it is at Indianapolis next year, we should be able to do it.
I went to mapquest to figure out how far apart we are. It would be a good day's drive. We should meet half way sometime - Albert Lee maybe. But probably not in the winter.
Our interdisciplinary collaboration is going well. If you check the kids web sites, look for the Lewis and Clark Project online newspaper (which doesn't look much like a newspaper I'm afraid.
We will be doing our African Safari in December I guess. We are working on setting up the webquest now. I think after they do one, our next joint project should be to have the kids construct their own webquest. We will just have to see what subject we can all work on together. I am getting the directions slowly up on http://www.ysd.k12.sd.us/~cybersoph which is also where you go to get to the kids web sites. I have to spend some time visiting yours this year and looking at your kids things. One new thing I have up this year is our A River Runs Through It Project. The project worked well, but the kids on the whole did not like the book. The kids who fish did, the others not so much. I suppose it was 50/50. I think next time I might cheat and show them the movie, have them note quotes, and then have them do the project.
They have watched October sky and written essays, but those aren't up yet, and they are just finishing writing short stories which suprised me. I think the kids have learned something! Next we are doing lit circles with short stories and my multigenre web project on a short story of each groups choice. They are also picking their independent books so they can work on that also.
The neat thing about this cyberclass collaboration is that it means that I have these kids for the whole year. We have semester classes and I may have the same kids for the whole year, but not necessarily in the same classes. This way the kids stay together, and I can combine the two classes and have them do reading and writing both semesters. They are also making powerpoints in biology and geography, writing essays in both, doing brochures and other cool projects in geography, some of which are also on their comp sites but many on their geography and biology pages. We need to work a little more on the websites, but they also have to work on them some in the other classes and the teachers are being good about it.
Our young geography teacher (well young compared to me, but he does have a soph son in the class) is incredible. He hadn't done too much with technology before he started this, but he has abandoned a textbook and makes them find all of their information on the internet. He has really stepped to the side and put the kids in charge of their education. It is cool.
The kids are already logged on and checking out their assignments when the bell rings and still working when the bell rings to end class.
I got a discussion board up. this year I used an ez board, but I put front page discussion boards for biology and geography.
Because of our server and some problems, they didn't work too well, and the kids reacted rather as we have to the NCTE BBs. So, I contacted Eric and he set up a cybersoph list serve for them to use. We used it a lot when they were reading A River Runs Through it, but haven't used it much again. They will use it when they do the short stories, but I am going to start posting questions and see if I can get them talking. It is really great. I am paying Eric $50 for setting it up and the school is reimbursing me. I told him the kids would change each year, but I may keep these kids on and just add next years sophs and then they can talk to each other.
A funny thing has happened. The sophs have, on their own, found seniors who will serve and sort of peer editors for them, and are getting the seniors to give them feeback on their papers. Isn't that cool? We don't have cyber mentors yet, but will work toward it.
I use the reviewing/add comment with my kids on their papers, and they use it for their peer conferencing. It works really well. Though I did have a good laugh when one little girl, five weeks into the semester said, "I can't figure what you mean by what you highlighted in this paper. I usually can figure it out but I don't know why you highlighted this." It was a part that I had highlighted to tell her how effective that part was. I showed her how to hold her cursor over the highlighted part and she was amazed. I was amazed that she had been able to do the revisions all that time just by seeing that I had highlighted something.
I agree with you. The keyboard does not obscure who we are. Interesting thing, my cybercomp class is one of the noisiest ones I have. They are all calling each other to show what they have found, or what they have written, or emailing bits of writing to each other or, lord help me, listening to music. Though we have gottensome head phones so that i don't have to listen to 10 different kinds of music while they are writing.
Well, I am off to watch CSI and then hit bed early. I'll see what you put up on Friday, and respond sooner. I also need to read your article. I saw that you mentioned our all time mentor Ted, and then some spurious person who you have mentored. :-)
Catch you later.
Pat