Meeting Notes

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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.