Team,

Schedule

My collaboration schedule has been posted for the week. As always, if the scheduled time will not work for you, or you would like additional time, please email. Click here to view my schedule.

CFF Post Survey

We are now moving into the end of the school year. This means that CFF teachers will now need to take the CFF post survey. The also means that a section of your students will be required to participate in the survey next week. The format is the same as the CFF pre survey we took earlier this school year. It is a 10-20 minutes survey that provides the state data.

At any time, staff may complete their survey by visiting the PSU dashboard, clicking teacher survey, entering your CFF id (pleaser email if you are unsure about your CFF id) , and finally by completing the questions. A good time to take this would be during our scheduled time for training/collaboration. It must be completed before next friday the 19th.

On the student end of the spectrum, I plan on using the same survey format as we used for the CFF pre survey. That is that teachers can sign up for a time and I will just wheel the laptop cart into your individual room for student use. I will provide the students all needed instruction in taking the actual survey. The student survey will also take 10-20 minutes.

Our window, provided by the state, to complete the survey is between 5/19 and 5/22. Please email to reserve a period for next week. I will then post the scheduled times on this schedule page. You can also access the schedule by viewing the sidepanel on my wiki. I will follow your email with a confirmation email.

Please email with any questions.

Thanks,


Justin VanFleet
Warrior Run CFF Coach
jvanfleet@wrsd.org

Team,

Schedule
My schedule for the week has been posted. As you can see I will be in Harrisburg on Monday and Tuesday. I will keep a close watch on my email during those times. Click here to view my schedule.

Monday Video
I have embedded the "sneeze video" within my wiki. For showing the video, please refer to the original instructions given during the email Mrs. Cross sent last week. This video can be shown if any classroom is having technical difficulties. Just click this link and press play.

Summer Read
The summer read wiki is growing. Take a look!

Copyright
On this past Thursday I had the wonderful opportunity to go to a Library conference with Kay Rhinehart and Katie MaKatche. The main emphasis was on copyright and fair use. Take a look at some of the great resources and information collected on this page.

Embedded Learning
I will be sending the conglomerate results from our final sync point discussion in next week's update email. Thank you all for the great work. It has been a joy to work with all of you in this process.


Thanks for taking the time to read,


Justin VanFleet
jvanfleet@wrsd.org

Team,

Schedule
Next Week's schedule has been posted on the wiki. As always, if you would like extra sessions or would like to sign up for a collaboration session, please email.

Tech Camp
Make sure to look into tech camp this year. It would e a valuable resource to any individual that would participate. For more information view the technology camp page on our wiki.

Summer Read
I have created a page for our "Summer Read" program. The page can be accessed form my homepage as well as from Kay's school web page. I am hoping to have all of the books that will be read in the program on our page's list. Each page contains a brief summary as well as a "book trailer." Make sure to email me any book that is not yet on the list. I am hoping this page can be a resource that you can use to advertise your individual book to students in order to increase student participation. If you are not sure what book you would like to read, make sure to take a look at the 14 books that already have pages.

Wiki Week
It seems that over the past few weeks, the interest in wikis has grown exponentially. Wikis are a great way to create projects for students that are both rigorous and exciting. Whether you would like students to respond to prompts for an independent read (Melissa Turner), allow students to use the discussion board to do current event assignments (Amy Swartz), spread the word about a great number of books (Courtney Kerr and Gail Deans), or history decades websites (Alissa Wolfe), you have found various uses.

Thanks,


Justin VanFleet
Warrior Run CFF Coach
jvanfleet@wrsd.org

Team,

I hope everybody had a happy break. This week's schedule has not been posted. I will be available through email only as I will be attending a large number of out of district meetings.

One of these meetings is the social studies collaboration day. This event will take place on Tuesday. Mark Marino and Brian Shaffer will also attend this event. It is a collaborative meeting with many of the social studies teachers in our IU. I will be presenting our use of wikis at this event. You can see a number of the wiki's in use in WR by clicking this link. The main example used in this presetantion is the wiki operated by Amy Swartz and her classes. We hope to bring back a great deal of insight from the many other school districts.

On Wednesday and Thursday I will be at Penn College for IU17's computer fair. Due to all of your successes this year, I have been selected to judge the large amount of student works submitted for this event. I plan to make it back for both afternoons.

On Friday there is a collaborative meeting in our IU between CFF coaches, technology directors, and lawyers. This will take place in the morning, and therefore I will be back for that afternoon.

Please e-mail with any concerns, or if any of you would like to plan a collaborative training session over this week.

Thanks,


Justin VanFleet
jvanfleet@wrsd.org

Team

Schedule
Next Week's training schedule has been posted. Again, any individual that would like to jump onto the cff training schedule must email. If any individuals would like, I can put you in the bi-weekly automatic schedule. http://warriorruncffcoach.wikispaces.com/Training+Schedule

Wiki News
Our use of Wikispaces has become an ever-expanding theme. By creating a wiki one can create a class discussion board that has a large number of applications. The cool thing is that you can create student user names very simply without using student email. This eliminates the hassle of remembering which student is soccer4life32 by creating recognizable usernames such as joesmith2010. It also generates passwords for the students and allows you to know every edit any individual makes. Pretty cool stuff. Here is a video tutorial accomplishing the above task. http://warriorruncffcoach.wikispaces.com/Wikispaces

Wiki Video
You can also create a video library of Youtube videos. I would not reccomend playing Youtube videos from youtube's site. The side panel can be filled with inapporopriate materials. To create a video library with content from various tube sites such as youtube, view this video tutorial. http://warriorruncffcoach.wikispaces.com/Wikispaces+-Video+Library

Promethean ActivInspire
Promethean's new software is spreading throughout the school. I am still looking for some more feedboack, but the appeal is definatly present.

Laptop Cart Use
Both Laptop carts have not been reserved for a large part of this coming month. Secure the laptop carts ASAP if you would like to use them. Check the website for availability. http://warriorruncffcoach.wikispaces.com/Laptop+Cart+Signout-+and+Procedures

Projects and Copyright
Check out this website for some guidance in terms of copyright. As teachers, we must teach our students the importance of this. If you are going to conduct a project using web-resources consider this a valuable resource. http://warriorruncffcoach.wikispaces.com/copyright



Justin VanFleet
Warrior Run CFF Coach
jvanfleet@wrsd.org

Team,

Next week's schedule has been posted to my wiki.
http://warriorruncffcoach.wikispaces.com/training+schedules
Please email if the time scheduled will not work, or if you would like to be added to the schedule for next week.

Promethean Training

Earlier this week i attended a two day Promethean training. I learned a great deal of new tricks. For a new cool trick... right click on the next page button to allow for transitions. Very cool. Thera Dreese reports that her students enjoy the transitions.

Embedded Learning
Congratulations to the math group. We had our final sync point discussion this morning. It went well. Thank you all for your continued hard work in this area.

Promethean Update
They have made an updated IWB software called ActivInspire. It is currently being tested out by Kip Hoffman, Corey Dufrene, James Ulrich, and Larry Beaver. The update provides a new program that is much simpler to use as well as being much more visually appealing. I will be installing this major update on all your computers once it is installed on the network drive. DO NOT WORRY. It is not mandated to use the updated software. It installs seperate from ActivStudio.

Skype
Still working on the waning issues involving skype. Please be patient.


thanks,


Justin VanFleet
Warrior Run CFF Coach
jvanfleet@wrsd.org
skype me!

Team,

Training

The official training schedule has been posted for CFF teachers. If you are not an official CFF teacher, you may still aquire training times. Just email me an open period that will work and we can meet.

Wiki Video

One of the major things we have been working on in sessions has been building video libraries in wikispaces. Check out Ms. Sumners! This practice can make your streaming video experience much more user friendly and school safe. In addition to this I ahve found a firefox add-on that allows you to download streaming video. You would need to install outside of school since the program is a shareware add-on. You cna find that under the web links section of the website.

Web 2.0

Check out Ms. Makatche's web 2.0 page for some cool free resources that can make your learning environment much more fun for yourself and your students.

Additional Coach

Finally, Mr. Billy Simpson has arrived from North Carolina. He will soon send a district-wide email introducing himself. His role will be similar to mine in the middle school and elementary schools. His website is currently under construction. I will add a link to our as soon as it is up and running. He will be with me on a few trainings to get his feet wet, although he is hardly new in education as he taught for 7 years and has been in administration for 14. His addition to our district will be very positive as we progress.

Thanks,

Justin VanFleet

Classrooms for the Future Coach

Warrior Run School District

jvanfleet@wrsd.org