Meeting+Notes

=**Meeting Notes 12th February**=

Agenda
Structure of schools - introductions

SAS Pudong

 * Simon Power/ Amanda E School, Simon May - HS
 * Plans for 1 to 1 Macs next year for MS/HS teachers. Give Macs to teachers. Also setup student Geek Squad.
 * Choosing single Mac platform over dual boot although Dells will still be in school(ES)
 * Web tools are platform agnostic
 * IWork09 has problem attaching files as it is a package.
 * Wide use of Google Docs on Google Apps for Education. Considering dropping MS Office for Google Docs. Google Gears gives offline access. Trouble is that is limited for formatting.
 * Looking to acquire site licenses for CS3/CS4
 * Mandarin department has problem entering characters
 * SAS has PowerSchool for attendance and admin
 * SAS has portal portal.saschina.org including home Youtube(system), blogs, Moodle, Elgg hosted on campus
 * Moving to Drupal as a frontend to integrate portal with single login using LDAP, but now they have to login to separate accounts for each service.
 * Uses Altrasoft for portal
 * 99% of teachers have blogs. Still voluntary and has caught on. Admin made Principal keep blogs.
 * Examples of Blogs at SAS http://teachers.saschina.org/jspeece/
 * Used for sharing news and photos.
 * http://teachers.saschina.org/espudong/
 * Peer pressure encouraged teachers into blogging project.
 * Learning curve in Wordpress: easy
 * Used for parent teacher communication, direct learning tool, posting resources
 * Teaches track student blogs, but this is not easy when it scales
 * All blogs are public
 * Digital safety is very important.
 * Has wikispaces account
 * Used Wikispaces discussion for digital storytelling
 * ES has sessions on information literacy
 * Google has custom search engine suitable for ES students
 * SAS uses UBD Atlas Rubicon for curriculum mapping
 * Also see GIN - http://global-community09.wikispaces.com
 * http://mcdaid-science.wikispaces.com/EQ1+-+A2#toc13

Blogging Comments

 * SAS Praise, question polish
 * Use RSS reader, eg Netvibes to monitor comments
 * WPMU takes maintenance, time, updates
 * Updates on Dummy site and real site

CISS

 * Training program. See leaflet.
 * Free classes over 4 to 6 hours.
 * Runs continuously.
 * Classes can get university credit as extension courses.
 * ISTEC will setup website for networking resources.
 * Screencast software such as Screenflow, Snapz, Ishowu good for making on screen tutorials.
 * Has Wikispace for new hires. http://concordiachina.wikispaces.com

Cheap cameras

 * Sanyo Xacti - inexpensive convenient movie/still camera
 * Limited, but small and convenient for classroom use.

SCIS HQ

 * Experimenting with WPMU
 * eg Group blog with Hawaii
 * Trying to setup blogging network for Mandarin teachers
 * Also looking to setup universal portal
 * Wants to setup portal discussion group
 * ES introduced Wordpress. Plan for all teachers and students to have Wordpress site.
 * Following grass roots adoption. Wants to move away from Newsletters.
 * ES tried out Epals
 * Embedding pdfs using scribd ipaper
 * Using wikispaces and Mediawiki as preferred Wiki tool. Like Wikispaces best.

AOB

 * Learning 2010
 * Look out for meetings
 * Google certificate for educators?
 * Look out for Shanghai Student Film Festival
 * Next meeting: April/ May at BISS?
 * Setup Wiki to throw links and resources for group (ISTEC)
 * http://shanghaitech.wikispaces.com has been setup ready to share resources.