Resource Definitions

We had a rich discussion on how teachers define the tools and materials they use in their classroom. Axian needed us to nail this down with a little more clarity to make the consuming experience for the general teacher populace clear and simple.

As I told Carl, teachers LOVE to process (this is a good thing--it's why we're good teachers!), but we also need to make a decision to not slow down the process.

Here are two lists of resource labels we came up with:

• List One: Assessment, Web Resources, Student Doc, Teacher Doc
• List Two: Warm up, Instruction, Practice, Assessment

(The second list, based on Dominic's diagram, also represented a lesson organization and thought that all resources could fit into one of these categories, though that wasn't completely decided upon either.)

Please share your thoughts, cares and concerns about this via this blog entry.

Learning Target organization

Discussion Invitations

Part of our meeting today, we discussed our preferred ways of using the Discussion Board feature in the repository. Although a powerful collaboration tool, there was concern about how prevalent it should be in this environment.

Besides having access to Discussion Groups on all Learning Targets, should there be a place to create ah-hoc or on-going discussion groups on different education-related topics (e.g., math assessment practices, online learning in chemistry)? These could be overwhelming, especially if you were being invited to participate in many. On the flip side, it's an opportunity to collaborate with a targeted group of people around a common interest in education and grow professionally.

Please share your thoughts via this blog.

Q/A after Meeting #1

If you have a question, comment, or idea on some aspect to this project, please add it here.

Design Team - Mtg #1

Aug 18, 2009
The first Design Team meeting for Phase I of the Teacher Web Project kicked off today at the BSD Central Office. Eight teachers representing all divisions of our district (ES, MS, HS) and IT, along with representation from Axian were present.

Participants left with homework to build a use case scenario pertinent to their situation in their classroom.