Over the years, there has been significant effort on the part of students and teachers throughout School District 21 to create authentic instructional opportunities for students, and in many cases recently, these have come in the form of student podcasts. Previous posts on The Modern Pen have commented on podcasting or provided information for podcasting workshops. These posts include:

- Tools for 21st Century Learning-February 2009
- Podcasting Workshop-August 2007
- What’s a Podcast?-August 2007

As we continue to evolve in our use of podcasting, we have more tools available to teachers and students than ever before with which they can produce such podcasts. These include staff laptops and both the iMac and Mac Mini computer labs as well as directly on to devices such as iPods and iPod Touches.

The following article from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) makes connections between the National Educational Technology Standards and podcasting in the classroom.



Links to actual podcasts recorded in District 21 include:
* Teacher Reflections on Podcasting (Staff)
- Administrators’ Ideas about Relevant Schools (Staff)
- New Staff Members Commit to Relevance (Staff)
- Cooper MS 8th Grade Alcohol Podcasts (Students)
- London MS 7th Grade Immigration Podcasts (Students)
- An Understanding of Marketing (Students) (Names are pseudonyms.)
- Binge Drinking and the Brain (Students)

For teachers wanting to learn more about podcasting, here is another useful podcast to listen to as a resource for learning more about what can be done during a podcast--including the use of sound effects!
- Chicago Public Radio/NPR Re-Sound

Directions for Podcasting with GarageBand

AtomicLearning.com GarageBand Tutorials

Tags: Podcast, Classroom Instruction, Students

How do I have students use the Staff MacBook as the classroom computer?

One of the key components of the Staff MacBook deployment was that the Staff MacBook would also serve as the primary classroom computer. This decision was made initially and later affirmed by District 21 teachers through the Tech Plan process in 2008 and again in 2009. Based on this, the use of the Staff MacBook as the primary classroom computer was part of what was presented to the Board.

Of course, we do not want students (or other staff members) to be able to access an individual’s email nor files that are not being shared collaboratively via a team wiki or email. So, how do multiple users share the same computer without being able to access an individual’s private files?

Both Windows and Mac computers allow for the creation of multiple user accounts on a single computer. The MacBooks deployed to staff take advantage of this. As a staff member, you log-in and log-out of your account on the computer. Assuming you do not share that password with anyone, only you can access that email and those files.

When you want students to use your computer, to share their documents from the server, to create a new document, or to use the Internet, you first need to log-out of the computer. A student should never be on a staff laptop while the staff member is logged in!

Option 1--Use Generic Student Account
Each staff laptop contains a generic Student account. The username for this account is Student. The password for this account is student. Students can log-in to this account. From there, they can use the Internet. They can access their home directories on the server, and use files already saved or save new files. From this account, if the student needs to access the server, the student should use the Go > Connect to Server option from the menu bar.


Then, you will need to enter the address of your school’s file server. Just replace “field” with the name of your school. Then, hit enter.


Now, the student will enter his/her username and password and can access existing files or save new files.

This option is ideal when a number of different students will be accessing the staff laptop in a relatively short amount of time.


Option 2--Students Log-In with AD Username
The other option is that students can simply log-in with their own username and password, just like they do in the Labs/LMC. This will require the computer to be connected to the network, which will be no problem once the wireless network is up and running in May 2010. When the student logs-in like this on the staff laptop computer, the student’s home directory will pull down from the server. This will take just a few minutes for most students. Then, the student will work on the computer, and the work will sync back to the server every 10 minutes. It is important that the student logs out at the end of the work time.

This option is ideal when a single student will be working extensively on the staff laptop.


There are pluses and minuses to each of these options. Choose whichever seems to make the most sense at the time for you, and don’t be afraid to choose different options in different situations.

Tags: Staff MacBook, Classroom Instruction, Students

After the staff members new to District 21 completed their podcast with their thoughts regarding how to make school relevant for our students in the 21st Century, school administrators throughout District 21 were able to participate in the same workshop during the second week of school. They have also recorded their thoughts about how they can and will make schools relevant in their own podcast.

Listen to District 21 administrators discuss making school relevant!

At this year’s School District 21 New Teacher Orientation, staff members new to School District 21 learned about all facets of School District 21 from assessment and curriculum to special education and the instruction of English language learners.

New certified staff members also spent time considering the impact of the dramatic changes that the world has witnessed over the past two decades in the areas of technology and economics; changes which have effectively decreased the size of our world and increased the interdependence of all people on one another.

As a conclusion to these conversations and lessons, the new staff members made commitments in this podcast about how they will make school relevant for the students in their classroom during this school year.

Listen now!

Learning in Hand is a website devoted to the tools of 21st Century Learning--Podcasts, Blogs, Wikis, Netbooks, and more.

To see how these are being used in our District, check out:

Blogs

• Mrs. Merrill’s Classroom
• Mr. ZIma’s Classroom
• Mrs. Kosacz’s Classroom
• Cooper LMC People

Wikis

• London 7th Grade Solutions to the Economic Situation
• District 21 Technology Curriculum

Podcasts

• London 7th Grade Immigration Podcasts
• Whitman Podcasts
• Cooper 8th Grade Alcohol Podcasts

For more information on 21st Century Skills, visit the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Tonight, we are proudly launching the debut of our first comprehensive online course. As I have mentioned publicly and personally to 3rd through 8th grade teachers, future online courses will likely look slightly different as this one as approximately 450 students enrolled, including all 3rd through 8th grade teachers, administrators, Learning Coaches, and iTech teachers. The number of students makes personal feedback from and contact with the teacher difficult to guarantee. Nevertheless, we hope that this is a great resource for supporting our effors with instruction, assessment, and the Web Gradebook as well as for learning about online courses for professional development.

This course is completely voluntary. Some important tips:

1. The online course is available all of the time.

2. Lessons and Tasks can be read and watched over and over again by teachers.

3. For this class, Lessons and Tasks can be completed in any order. Task 1 within a Lesson is not a prerequisite for Task 2. This allows teachers to cherry pick in order to meet his/her needs.

For our online courseware, we have evaluated a variety of products. We have set-up our very own Moodle server, but for now, we are moving forward with a local education technology start-up called SchoolTown.net. We have been working closely with SchoolTown’s leadership team since last spring, and they have made significant changes to their product as a result of our conversations and suggestions—right up through today. We look forward to continuing to shape this product through our experiences. (More information about SchoolTown, written by us, follows below.)

Again, we encourage you to take advantage of this course! Thank you for your great work in ensuring that our instruction is most effective to meet the needs of our students!!!

---

SchoolTown.net is a new web-based service for schools and other groups to use. They are a local company, and despite its "start-up" status, they are developing significant connections within the educational community nation-wide.

Since they are a local company, we've been lucky enough to be working with SchoolTown.net since the spring of 2008. During that time, they have been very open to the feedback that we have provided, and they have continually made significant modifications to the structure of their products as well as to its features. We look forward to continuing to grow together in this area.

Originally conceived as a tool focused on student needs, we have also articulated how modifications to SchoolTown.net can serve us very well as a tool for online professional development. It is here that we begin our work with SchoolTown.net. From there, in the future, we look forward to also tackling the challenges of implementing SchoolTown.net as a tool that is used with students and parents.

With Election Day looming, there are a couple of great websites that can be used with students as you consider what may occur on Election Day. The Electoral College and polling data both feature in these polls from CNN and The New York Times.

- CNN.com Electoral College Calculator

- The New York Times Electoral Map--Key States


*Special thanks to retired District 21 staff member Hugh Brady for pointing us in the direction of these websites.

Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs appeared in Lisle, Illinois, today in a workshop sponsored by Midwest Principals' Center. A number of District 21 Central Office administrators attended, and throughout the day, I (Jason) am "live blogging" my notes on her presentation through The Modern Pen. Approximately, every sixty minutes, I will publish an update to what we're learning here.

9.25 AM--The School Calendar
Already this morning, Dr. Hayes Jacobs has made the connection between how a doctor does and should do his or her job and how a teacher does or should do his or her job. She has repeatedly commented on how the current traditional school calendar has nothing to do with learning. She did correctly point out that the current school calendar is rooted in the industrial revolution of the late 19th Century in the U.S. She did not go on to state that it is not an agrarian calendar. (If it were based on an agricultural society, the kids would be off in September and October to help with the harvest and in school during the summer when there's not much to do except hope you have the right mix of rain and sun for your crops!)

While Heidi did not talk about this, here it is... Why is there no school in the summer as a result of the Industrial Revolution? It was too hot for the machines in the factories to operate during the summer, so factories were closed. Employees (parents) were home, and the children of working class parents could be home with them. Heidi's suggestion--There should be a "summer semester", not summer school. According to her, students in Canada have 195 days of school. Students in Western Europe typically have 205 days of school. Students in Japan have 220 days of school. Students in the U.S. typically have about 175 days of school. Who is going to learn more?

Our curriculum is really written for a 300-day school year. We have to pick what is really important. We need to use Power Standards.


9.35 AM--The Role of Technology
"When I picked up the NY Times this morning, it was already out-of-date. If I want up-to-date information, I go to the Internet--on my computer or on my phone. Teachers say, 'I don't really use technology.' What if I went to a doctor and he said, 'Yea. I've heard of the X-ray.'" (Everyone laughed nervously at this point!)

"Kids go out in to the 21st Century, and then, they go to school." Our schools are not designed for our kids' futures, looking out five or ten years. "If we want kids engaged, let's at least be in the 21st Century. We're almost 10% of the way through it."


9.35 AM--The Definition of Curriculum Mapping
Curriculum Maps have three basic elements:
- Content
- Skills
- Assessment

Curriculum mapping is:
- Calendar-based
- Focused on the operational curriculum
- Housed and revised electronically to provide direction (like an online map)

Curriculum maps are framed by essential questions that are based on key concepts, enduring understandings, and big ideas--like District 21's concept-based curriculum. Why? People retain more when they have these deep understandings.

9.50 AM--The Role of Technology in Curriculum Mapping
The move from Professional Learning Communities to a Global Learning Community--Curriculum mapping software and online collaborative tools allow people to work together and share expertise and units across time and space.


9.55 AM--Why map?
To solve specific problems in a school or district to:
- Gain information
- Avoid repetition
- Identify gaps
- Locate potential areas for integration
- Match with learner standards
- Examine for timeliness
- Edit for coherence


10.05 AM--How do we map curriculum?
The information below will be published in the new book that Dr. Hayes Jacobs is working on...

Short-term upgrades--"Revision and replacement" of dated curriculum and assessment types with more vital contemporary forms. Every teacher should upgrade at least one thing each year. For example, we replace a paper with the development of a documentary or a podcast. Begin using e-mail or Skype to collect information. These replacements should be technology-based for our current and future students!

Long-term upgrades--"Versioning" is the creation of new versions of the programs and structures within our schools as institutions. This is like coming out with an entirely new operating system for a computer. We should do this every few years.


10.40 AM--Electronic Portfolios
In Rhode Island, students are responsible for completing an electronic portfolio to prove their knowledge and skills in the standards areas prior to graduating from high school. This was implemented six years ago, so students graduating from high school now will have work from middle school and high school in their electronic portfolios. Today, kids begin collecting this work in the primary grades. There are between 15 and 18 school districts currently participating in the Rhode Island Electronic Portfolio System based on the quick glance that I just completed with a Google search. With a web-based electronic portfolio, it is very easy to "see" and "hear" student growth within a particular standard over time. We saw a demonstration of a particular student from a Rhode Island elementary school. You do not need to be a reading specialist to see her growth from year-to-year. You do need to be a reading specialist and use other assessment tools, too, in order to determine if she is "where we want her to be" with her reading and if she has shown "as much growth as she should have shown".


10.50 AM--Curriculum Mapping
Curriculum maps should allow us to "zoom in" and see actual lessons and "zoom out" and see the big picture of what we're teaching more generally with fewer specifics. This should work just like an online map, such as Mapquest, which allows you to very quickly and easily see more-or-less detailed.

What are the questions that we have at our table about curriculum mapping? (Rosemarie and I are sitting with five other people...)
- Do we need to purchase some version of software to do curriculum mapping? (Two individuals at our table use Atlas Curriculum Mapping Software.)
- What type of school culture do you have? Does it promote these type of deep conversations that focus on curriculum and learning?
- We need to think about the difference between what teachers teach and what students need to learn and have learned?


11.00 AM--Questions from the Crowd
- What is the role of homework? "Students need to be doing the work, and families need to learn how to provide the right environment for this (time and space and student responsibility). In sports and music, you do drill and practice when it is necessary and where it is diagnosed. You only do drill and practice when someone does know how to do this differently. If you do have the skill and do drill and practice, it's called busy work. Prior to drill and practice, there should always be a diagnosis of our need for drill and practice. When a teacher marks up student work, who is getting better at the work? When we do the work for the student, we are not teaching."

"How do schools combat an anti-intellectual element that exists in American society? Parents say that they do not want their children to be too smart, to be nerds. This is different than how culture surrounds students and schools in other countries."

"We should set-up student/parent homework centers rather than use study hall. Parents and students come together and get support in helping students with their homework at school, after school."

How do we target the needs of individual students?
- The students' ages
- The students' stages of development
- The students' learning characteristics
- The students' communities
- The students' aspirations
- The students' needs (background knowledge, skills, social/emotional)


- Our District is embarking on a PLC initiative, and we're going to devote lots of time to analyzing data. How do we also have time for curriculum work? "I believe that they are not at all exclusive, but mutually dependent. You need to be doing both of these together. Your data may show you that your map needs to be re-drawn. The map always need to be revised. Analyzing student assessment data should be a major time saver when done in conjunction with instruction. Likewise, if we just look at curriculum mapping without ever paying attention to student data how do we know if the map is taking us where it should be. The Latin root of the word curriculum is curricula, which means course. What is the course that each child will travel to learn the articulated skills and content (knowledge/concepts)?"

- How do you get started with introducing curriculum mapping with your staff? "Mapping occurs at the building-level because that's where you improve performance. It cannot occur at the District-level. The District may coordinate communication and provide resources and support, but it is a building-based problem. So, what should happen within a building? First, we need leadership teams in each building. Structure conditions that will make a difference in planning for and initiating the curriculum mapping process. These conditions will need to be based on the specific needs of the students and teachers in a particular school. This will vary from school-to-school. Then, the school needs to create meaningful opportunities for participants to be involved. Finally, long-term professional development plans must be put in place to support the process of curriculum mapping and the technology needs of the teachers with mapping and instructionally moving forward."


***
Gail Forshall just posted a really interesting comment. One of the powerful facets of online curriculum mapping would be how people in building-wide roles can integrate instruction in a meaningful and effective way. Additionally, in that setting, core academic teachers and other educators can shift the focus of meeting from what we are doing to how we are doing it and how we are differentiating instruction for individual students. This is where the real action is in creating new opportunities for kids to learn more.
***


11.35 AM--What is a concept? Why are they so important for curriculum mapping?
Given that we have a concept-based curriculum in place in District 21. This part ought to be good for District 21...

Currently, Heidi is describing how we would teach SYSTEMS across traditional subject-based academic disciplines. For the concepts, we write guiding questions, which she calls essential questions. Regardless of terminology, at the end of the unit, students will develop their essential understandings in response to their ongoing study of these questions throughout the unit. In planning the unit, we identify the content and skills that will be taught. Some choices do need to be made at this point. Of course, we should identify our assessments prior to beginning the unit.

***All assessments should have a noun. The students should be asked to create a product or do a performance. Good assessment is:
- A demonstration of knowledge/skill
- Observable
- Evidence of student knowledge/skills
- Clearly defined for students with rubrics, checklists, and/or right and wrong answers

A short side rant from Heidi just ended. Bottom line:
"Kids need to be talking to learn--vocabulary and content. Our classrooms are too quiet!" (She's right about this! - JK)


12.50 PM--Back from lunch & learning again
We're back underway. About 50% of the people in the room work in schools and school districts that are using electronic mapping software. Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs is going to log in to one teacher's map from one of these actual schools, and we're going to improve her map this afternoon while we work on our own maps. Now, we're reading pages from Coaching Protocols for Developing Quality Curriculum Maps. We are reading more about:

- Content-Content begins with a concept, such as systems, patterns, or interdependence. "If we do not use a concept to initiate our content entries, then what we have are random facts..."

- Essential Questions-Essential questions are engaging for the students, include the concept, aligned with standards, and tied to the assessment(s).

- Precise Skills-Desired or targeted proficiencies that are defined with the use of an action verb.

- Targeted Assessments-Targeted assessments always take the "form of a tangible product or a temporal performance. As assessment is something we can observe, so our entries must take the form of a noun."

Now, we are back to Dr. Hayes Jacobs at the front of the room. She is showing us the curriculum maps of a school in Westchester, New York that she has accessed via Internet Explorer. She has made the blanket statement that these pieces of software all have quality behind them. Clearly, she is not selling a particular piece of software. She believes in the idea that underlies the use of such software. These pieces of software include State Standards from around the country, so a teacher can pull a standard directly in to the curriculum map.

Instructional Aside from Dr. Hayes Jacobs
"We need to teach math as a language. Look at this curriculum map. Do you see these action verbs? Translate, translate, translate. The kids have to define their math vocabulary if they are going to understand the math."

1.22 PM--Master Class
We are now going to participate in a Master Class. We are going to look at Emily's class. (Emily is a teacher who is here today from some Chicago-area school who uses curriculum mapping software.) What is going to happen in the Master Class? Heidi is going to interact with Emily on improving her Curriculum Map. Our job, as audience members to the Master Class, is to take notes on Heidi and Emily's interactions--as they apply to us and our situations! Then, we are going to be able to transition back to our own map and revise it based on our notes of what we've learned from them.


My notes for me based on their interactions--

Emily wants to focus on her assessments. I think that most of our teachers would pick out assessment as the area that they would also pick first from among the choices of content, guiding questions, skills, and assessments.

They are focusing on the level of specificity that she has used in writing completing her curriculum map. This reminds me of when we look at an assignment as teachers and someone (usually not the person who wrote it) says, "What does this mean?" Often times, as teachers, we don't know what we are looking for in kids' work. If that's the case, how do the students know what we are looking for? As Heidi just said, "Teaching cannot just be in the heads of teachers." For teachers to implement really profound classroom instruction, they need to be able to articulate exactly what they are doing and why with different students. Once again, Heidi just said, "I don't know what you mean. I don't understand what you are thinking and doing from seeing this." This is an underlying premise of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards process, too. Teachers have to write detailed entries because if they cannot articulate what they have done and why, then, so the thinking goes, they are not going to be able to communicate it to students either.

Heidi felt that the soft-spot in this Curriculum Map actually proved to be her content. Heidi believes that the development of guiding questions, what she calls essential questions, will significantly help this. How many classrooms in District 21 are effectively using guiding questions today? What's more--we even have the advantage of having concepts built right in to our curriculum.

1.45 PM--Mapping Software
***Want to know more about what software is available? Curriculum Designers: Mapping Software


2.00 PM--How do we begin working with mapping?
Consider a range of different types of professional development venues, including different strategies for different people. Keep in mind that curriculum mapping is easy for teachers to be resistant to... Mapping requires teachers to share their actual units and assessments. You need to consider individuals' readiness for curriculum mapping and with technology in how you create your professional development. These various groups may include:
- Hands-on labs
- Small workshops
- Work sessions
- Online courses
- Focus on data; Use of "Mapping Mentors"


2.25 PM--How do you make decisions about curriculum and teaching?
Who decides what gets taught? When do they make these decisions? How? Heidi recommends that these decisions are made by a single, site-based council. Agendas focus on short-term upgrades and long-term upgrades. To help with long-term upgrades, you may very well implement task forces that oversee the long-term upgrade. Once it is created and implemented, that task force disbands.


2.35 PM--Two Types of Curriculum Mapping
Diary Mapping--Like a doctor's chart or an athlete's training log, you record exactly what you have done. This will give you a record that you can use when you analyze student assessment data to determine which strategies did and which did not.

Projected Mapping--This is like a coach's training plan in that you articulate out what you intend to do in your units and lessons.


2.40 PM--Mapping Benchmark Assessments
Benchmarks can be designed on multiple levels: State tests, District assessments, and classroom assessments. Schools identify the skills that need to be developed and assessed. The most powerful benchmark assessments are developed locally by teachers. Benchmarks should occur when it makes sense within the scope of instruction. Benchmark data should be used to guide further differentiated instruction. As a result, benchmarks are necessarily different for different students.


Conclusion
The day just finished with a very funny YouTube video that Alan November shows, too. It is about the movement of technology from the scroll to the book. It is in Norwegian, but there are English sub-titles. (Remember, you can only watch this from outside District 21.)

From Rosemarie Meyer, our Assistant Superintendent of Bilingual and English-as-a-Second Language Programs, here are some PDFs that can provide useful support for providing all-important English-language vocabulary instruction for our students who are learning English.

http://www.scoe.org/aiming_high/docs/AH_kinsella1.pdf

http://www.scoe.org/aiming_high/docs/AH_kinsella2.pdf

While explicit and consistent high-level academic content vocabulary instruction is important for all students in School District 21, such instruction is particularly important for students who are learning English.

Take virtual trips around the world following the characters of the novel you are reading in class! Even better, engage your students in creating virtual trips that not only follow the characters of a novel but that also provide critical commentary on the novel to demonstrate higher-level thinking. Plus, these projects can be shared with (and then used by) others around the world with Google Lit Trips!

Have you ever heard of Google Earth? If not, Google Earth is a free piece of software for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. This software can be downloaded at school by our Field Engineers (Call the Help Desk at 847.934.8100--press 2!) on all compatible computers that meet minimum system requirements. (Please consult with your iTech teacher before calling the Help Desk and asking for an installation of Google Earth.) Google Earth is an atlas come alive--and one that can be modified further by students and others who mark it up with additional information and links.

With Google Lit Tours, students have created tours based on where the characters in the novels that they have read have lived and traveled. In some of these projects additional information has been added by the students that they have created as links while in other projects the links simply take one to off-site content, such as Wikipedia entries. These sites can also prove very engaging to explore as a pre-reading activity in small groups, too.

(Yep. That's how the computer people actually spell it.)

The listserv is an e-mail tool that can be used for communication to a large group of recipients. Listservs are designed as e-mail sharing tools. They essentially do the same thing that one could do manually, by hand-entering lots of e-mail addresses, but putting everyone on to the listserv makes this process much easier for the user.

In their most pure form, anyone who is on the listserv CAN post to the listserv, and everyone who is on the listserv receives e-mails posted to the listserv. Often times, listservs are configured to automatically "reply to all", and while this can lead to an embarrassing accidental response to everyone, the idea is that it makes it very, very easy to share communication with everyone on the list.

Listservs can also be structured to function more like "subscription services," allowing the listserv's owner to send e-mails out to an entire group. Again, this could be done with the owner hand-entering each e-mail address. Now, though, the e-mail recipients can sign themselves up--simply by e-mailing the listserv!

Who would have a listserv in a school district? Well, over the last few years, lots of listservs have been developed in District 21 (see picture below). There are staff listservs, parent listservs, and even one student listserv!

In the case of the staff listservs, these typically function as "electronic meeting places" in which anyone on the list can post to the list. For example, on the e-mail below from Erin Schlenger to the Whitman listserv, she provides other staff members at Whitman with some web-based instructional resources that they may find useful. Rather than getting a paper memo in their mailboxes, paper and ink were saved, and more importantly, the end user (recipient of the e-mail) can just click on the links and go directly to the websites listed.

Our parent listservs have been constructed as subscription services, providing school staff members another way to communicate with parents. We have listservs in action as E-mail Subscription Services for Parents from a Kindergarten classroom to middle school teams to entire schools.

Teams can use these to remind and update parents on general information, such as the e-mail below from Team Unity. At Riley, Cooper, and London, teams (and a Kindergarten teacher) are using these tools on a regular basis.

Likewise, Riley's Learning Coach has established an electronic Parent Subscription Service for GaTE parents at Riley. Again, the use of a link in the communication allows parents to go directly to the website of the National Association for Gifted Children with just a click.

At the school level, electronic subscription services for parents are great for sending out reminders about upcoming school events as well as for getting the word out quickly about last minute changes, such as a meeting or event cancellation due to weather. In those cases, while not everyone will receive the e-mail, those that do may communicate its contents to others via word-of-mouth, thereby helping to spread the word.

Things to consider...

First, there are significant ethical issues in that not all of our families have Internet access available to them at home. In fact, many do not have such access. Thus, other than those last minute cancellations, anything that goes home in electronic format should also go out in print to ensure that all parents have access to critical information.

Second, it is important to understand that only one person can "own" the listserv, and depending on the type of listserv created, that individual may be the only one who can post to the listserv. If teammates provide useful information to share electronically, this is not a significant burden for that person, but if this person has to type every message from scratch, this may prove unwieldy.

Third, once you start to communicate to parents using such a tool, you should do so with some regularity. It does not need to be weekly or on a perfect schedule, but a pattern should present itself to end-users in order to help them know what to expect and when.

Fourth, if you begin a parent listserv, you will need to plan a "launch" and market it to parents. Encourage them to e-mail one another to sign up. It is as simple as them sending an e-mail to: whateverthelistservisnamed-on@ccsd21.org. You will not need to hand-enter all of their e-mail addresses. You will need to encourage them to sign-up, though.

Fifth, if you initiate or are part of a staff listserv, there should be clear rules communicated to everyone on the listserv about how it is to be used, and these rules do need to comply with our Acceptable Use Policy.

Finally, it is cheap and easy! Using our existing e-mail system, it only takes a few minutes to set-up and use a listserv. If you have a need that a listserv may help resolve, contact Jason Klein.

While the process of supporting everyone through the successful implementation and distribution of report cards can be extraordinarily time consuming, upon doing a little bit of "web-surfing," it did seem necessary to share one important link that can take you out to all kinds of other really interesting and useful education links, The 2007 Edublog Awards website, a site which gives awards to education-related websites in number of different categories. With second trimester underway, take a few moments from some professional learning of your own, and see how it can inspire you to create units and lessons that challenge even more students in even more effective ways!

During professional development activities over the course of this week, principals and teachers have been encouraged to begin getting in to the habit of taking a few minutes two-to-three times per week to look at the most recent postings on The Modern Pen. After skimming what is there, if something is relevant to the reader, that individual can read further and/or follow any related links. Like with most websites over the past twelve years of the world wide web's emergence in people's lives, this strategy requires the reader to remember to go visit the website. He or she must also know the website's address, or URL, or have it bookmarked.

The Modern Pen, like many popular websites as well as many blogs and podcasts, is enabled with an RSS feed, which actually turns this interaction with the web on its head. Through an RSS feed, the web comes to the reader, just like an e-mail or a phone call! Websites that have an RSS feed enabled will have one of the symbols below in the URL, or website address bar, at the top of your web browser window.

___ ___

So, what is an RSS feed? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. A great description of it was produced through this short video by Common Craft. Check out the video definition of an RSS feed now.



Most up-to-date web browsers can also capture RSS feeds. For example, FIrefox comes with the BBC's Breaking News RSS feed built right in to the browser. Of course, it can be taken out, but it's a great way to keep up on what is taking place around the world. It is as simple as clicking on the "Latest Headlines" link in the Bookmarks Bar, scanning the headlines, and then, clicking on one if you would like to go read the entire story. The headlines simply come down like a traditional computer pull-down menu.



So, if you would like The Modern Pen's RSS Feed to be placed right in to your Bookmarks Bar, just click the RSS feed icon in the website address (URL) bar at the top of your browser window. It will ask you what you would like the title of the link to be and where you want it. (The title is set to default to "The Modern Pen RSS Feed," and its default placement is the Bookmarks Bar. (See below for an image of what this will look like when you click on it.) This will make it very easy to remember to check out The Modern Pen a few times a week and to do so!

Under the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, students can use quite a bit of copyright material within typical projects. Of course, should be taught to cite this material, and likewise, this also provides a teachable moment to help students understand that they cannot take the same liberties for most purposes throughout the rest of their lives--an important lesson in a world in which intellectual property is sacred due to its value in our Information Age. The four major factors that are considered in determining fair use are:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Often times, people are given rules of thumb, such as “x number of lines can be used from an author’s work” or that one can “use x number of seconds from a song.” The fact is that Copyright law and Fair Use are not that simple and concrete. As a result, educated decisions must be made about what is and is not appropriate.

For more information on Fair Use and Copyright, visit the Fair Use website from OurMedia, as well as the links on that page.

AtomicLearning.com is a great resource for students and staff members in District 21. It is a subscription service that is available at low cost to the District, and 24 hours-a-day and 7-days-per-week, their topical videos on demand showing how to do a wide variety of tips and tricks! The videos actually show the computer screen, and as one watches, the mouse moves around while the narrator describes exactly what is happening and why!