T21+Guide+&+FAQ

= Welcome to the St. Marks T21 Program = Welcome! We’re very excited to have the opportunity to work with you face to face and online over the course of this year.

There are several resources that we’ll be using over the course of this year to keep in touch and work together to develop your technology integration skills. This handout serves as a guide to these resources.

**Coaching and Consulting**
Your T21 cohort has **45 hours of coaching and consulting** from Tom and Justin, that’s about 3 hours for each of you. What can you do with these hours? 1. Ask us to troubleshoot a technology problem 2. Talk with us about how technology could be integrated into a particular unit 3. Discuss something that you want to do, but don’t know how 4. Work with us to design a rubric for an online student project 5. Ask us to collect online resources and lesson ideas for a particular topic 6. Have us review and give you some feedback on an activity or tool that you have set up 7. Anything else you can think of. Put us to work!

//How do I use my hours?// Easy. Just send an email to edtechteacher@gmail.com with “ST MARKS” in the subject line along with a brief description of your question. If we can resolve your query by email, we will. If we need to set up a time to talk further, we can do that, too. If you are on a short deadline, be sure to let us know.

//How will we communicate?// If email is efficient for both of us, we can use that. If talking is important, then we can use the phone or use Skype. If we need to have a shared working space, we may use a collaboration space like Elluminate.

//How do I keep track of my hours?// We’ll post the hours that you have used on the “Coaching/Consulting” page on our cohort wiki: http://edtechteacherpnwboces.wikispaces.com/.

//What happens if I use more than three hours?// Talk to Seth. He may be able to arrange more time for you to work with us.

[|iSchoolPD] is a video tutorial site for Web2.0 tools produced by former students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Each of you will be provided with an account that you can use all year to learn about Wikispaces, Edublogs, and Voicethread. For each tool, there are at least ten videos demonstrating how to use various aspects of the tool. More content will also be added throughout the year. [|iSchoolPD] talks a lot about a framework called “Universal Design for Learning” or UDL. UDL is a way of thinking about using tools that serve students with special learning needs to serve all students. UDL tries to take advantage of educational “curb cuts.” Curb cuts were originally designed to allow veterans in wheelchairs to get up on sidewalks, but it turns out that they were useful for bikes, scooters, baby strollers, and just about everybody. The folks at iSchoolPD think that blogs, wikis and voicethreads are like curb cuts- particularly good for students with special needs, but ultimately good for everyone.
 * iSchoolPD**

=//How do I log on to iSchoolPD?//= Use the access code STMARKS to log on. Please don’t share the access code with anyone.

=//Hints for using iSchoolPD//= For each of the three tools, look at the table of contents of videos before you start watching. Edublogs and Wikispaces both have two full tabs of videos for you to choose from. If you want a full refresher course, you can watch them in order. If you want a review of how to do something in particular, just watch that particular video. We’ll be discussing Edublogs is a future workshop with you all, but if you want to race ahead and learn more, go ahead.

**Online mini courses and edtechteacher.ning.com**
//What will be in the mini-course?// The first six-week mini-course is entitled "Smart Searching and 21st Century Information Literacy" and is geared towards helping teachers learn how to search efficiently, search proactively, and to learn the "grammar" of the Internet. (The second workshop will focus on using new and emerging technologies to foster student-centered collaborative learning.) Formal topics for the first mini-course include: Search Engines vs. Search Directories, Advanced Google Search, The Grammar of the Internet, Evaluating Web Sites, Google News and Google Alerts, Web citation, Google Reader, and RSS. The courses will take place in an online social network where teachers can work on the course at their own time and pace.

//What will be expected and how do I contribute?// Each week we'll teach a new skill or concept using video tutorials, activities, and collaborative work via our online social network at **edtechteacher.ning.com.** You’ll watch instructional videos, participate in discussion forums, and contribute to polls or surveys. Most lessons will be accompanied by a question in the Forum area of our online social network and you’ll be asked to contribute ideas and information. In time we hope you will start your own discussions and contribute multimedia resources, including photos and video.

//How do I join the Ning online social network?// We’ll send you an email invitation during our first workshop and help you join the network. Once there, you can set up your own profile page within the network. You can edit your Ning profile by signing in to www.ning.com. Once you are signed in, click on your name at the top of the page.

//Where can I go for ning help?// If you run into a problem you can email tom at tom@edtechteacher.org or visit the Ning help center at [|http://help.ning.com]**.** At “Ning Help” you can type in your question and get answers from their extensive databases.

**edtechteacherstmarks.wikispaces.com**
You’ll learn an awful lot about wikis during our first workshop, but here are a few important tips about our wiki.

//Keep your page (and any sub-pages that you create) up to date// Remember that Seth, Tom and Justin want to be able to follow along with your experiments and progress. As you create new wikis or other tools, as you experiment with new lessons, as you overcome obstacles or devise new solutions, leave some links and a little blurb on your wiki page so that we can see what you are up to.

//Remember to check the Weekly Reports page regularly// Every week, one of your colleagues will be submitting some thoughts of the progress, examples of lesson plans, samples of student work and so forth. Be sure to visit regularly to see what your colleagues are up to!

//Remember to submit to submit to the Weekly Reports page when it’s your week// We’ll send you an email, but when it’s your week, remember to share some aspect of your teaching or experiences with us on the Weekly Report page.

//Remember to visit your colleagues pages from time to time// If everyone posts new ideas and reflections on their wiki pages, then your cohort will have a tremendous resource for fostering and supporting innovation.