Meeting+1+-+Agenda

**Meeting 1 - Technology Integration** **of a Wiki toc**

 * Purpose ** - The purpose of this meeting is to bring teachers together to learn how to use a wiki as a tool for productivity in school while meeting the goal of improving technology integration at MIS. As the YouTube video, "Wikis in Plain English" and Marc Prensky in his article, "Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom" state, email collaboration is the old method. Prensky puts "doing old things in old ways" as step two in his four-step process of technology adoption. Through the readings from my Masters class, it has been made clear that for collaboration, using a wiki is the new method. In essence, we are using existing technology (computers) in a new way. Hooray for us!

**Objective** - The objective of this meeting is to discuss ways to use this wiki as a collaborative space where teachers may come for ideas for technology integration and improve our method for collaboration by eliminating email messaging. ** Facilitator ** - Rina A
 * Grade level** - 5th and 6th grade
 * Community members**
 * **Name** || **Position** ||
 * Rina || 6th Grade Science/ExMo ||
 * Shannon || 6th Grade LA/ExMo teammate ||
 * Paul || 6th Grade Science ||
 * Laura || 5th Grade Science ||
 * Jennifer || 6th Grade Math/ExMo teammate ||
 * Todd || Clinical Research Associate/Trainer ||
 * Mary || 6th Grade Science ||
 * Tanya || 6th Grade Science ||
 * Concetta || 6th Grade Science ||

**1. Introduction**
Description - Comments about the YouTube video (5 minutes) Purpose - Share your reaction to the YouTube video "Wikis in Plain English" so that we can get a general feel for how we as a group think that wikis can/cannot be useful to our roles as teachers. **To Do** - Click Edit to enter your comments into the table. What do you think?
 * **Name** || **Comment** ||
 * Rina || I enjoyed the video and like how they use a camping trip to show how easy it is to "meet" without email! ||
 * Todd || The video is a great, simple way to demonstrate a point on something that many feel may be complicated. ||
 * Paul || Very informative video. Makes sense to collaborate online this way! ||
 * Concetta || What a great video! It makes terrific sense! Thanks for sharing! ||
 * Mary || Cool idea! This will be great to share with the kiddos! ||
 * Tanya || I love your sharing of the video. ||
 * Jennifer || I think this would be a great online work space for our students to meet and share ideas. ||
 * Shannon || The video is great! Makes it clear why a wiki is a great tool. And it isn't over my head ("plain English" is good!). ||

**2. Brainstorming**
Description - Brainstorm ideas for using a wiki in school to improve productivity and technology integration. (5-10 minutes) Purpose - Collect ideas from different teachers regarding ways to use wikis in school. Decide on one idea to use immediately. **To Do** - Click on Edit to insert your ideas onto this section of the page.
 * **Ideas** ||
 * 1. Wikis seem to be a great way to **share and store ideas** for all kinds of environments like in the classroom or in a corporate setting. I'm not a teacher but a great tool I have used is **prezi.com**. It's a unique and different way to deliver a message other than PowerPoint. - Todd ||
 * 2. We could use the wiki site to host a **survey**. In the Editor task bar, there is an option to embed a poll from Survey Gizmo. It would be an easy way to have students take a pre-test over the next unit or complete a progress monitor for checking on their own knowledge about the current topic in class. Survey Gizmo even has a Twitter option, which may be interesting to students, especially secondary students. -Rina ||
 * 3. A wiki could host a **calendar**. I use Google calendar with my teammates, and we love it so far. We have several different calendars; one for each subject, for keeping track of the laptop cart, for Team Business, US Holidays, School Events, and I added one for the daily Science Agenda for my classes. I'll embed it at the bottom of this page to show an example of how it would appear on the page. What an easy and useful way to share a calendar or timeline! The students could create a Google Calendar for a project timeline and post it on their wiki page to keep track of where they are in the progress of their project check points. They could message each other through the wiki site about the project, and the wiki would automatically keep track of which students make updates to the project pages. (A useful tool for teachers!) I am thinking of incorporating this with the TAG Amusement Park Ride project that I'll introduce this week. -Rina ||
 * 4. I think it would be a great place to host **supply needs**. I already have the idea for the science department budget. Although I think that I'd have to purchase a more private plan to actually use the wiki for our science budget, I think that posting supply needs would be a safe enough topic to include on a free, and publicly accessible, wiki plan. For example, 6th grade science has numerous upcoming chemistry labs. We could post a "Have" and "Need" column similar to the one used in the YouTube video and make changes as supplies are acquired. This would not require any emailing, and we would have a history of supply needs ready for next year as well. -Rina ||
 * 5. I agree! This would be a way more convenient way to **communicate** with each other. - Concetta ||
 * 6. I'm glad that we have started using this for **supplies **- Tanya ||
 * 7. This would work great for **teams or departments to collaborate** on new ideas for the team or new ideas for the subject area. For the math department, we could post columns of upcoming concepts that we have to teach. Each member of the department could post new ideas, activities, or lessons that correspond with each concept. This would be a great way to share ideas! - Jennifer ||
 * 8. I love the idea of having my **students** contribute to a wiki, to empower them to research, create, and publish something that will be useful to all of them. It's student-centered, it's relevant, and it fosters a learning community that extends beyond the walls of the classroom (something that is really key in this day and age). Students could talk about scientists, inventions, discoveries, research, experiements, and current issues. They could also work at possible solutions to handle the issues. What an opportunity to make science (or any content matter) live and breathe. And, what a great way to incorporate other content areas - prove they all work together. Students could access Google Maps for issues involving weather, environment, etc. They would be reading and writing. Math is always an important component of science. In fact, a team wiki could make **cross-curricular teaching** even easier! Loving it! - Shannon ||
 * 9. How exciting that we see some really great uses for wikis! Here is our first Science Consumable Supplies page to where we will host our supply needs, especially **consumable supplies** that will more than likely require us to shop at the nearby grocery store. Thanks to Concetta and Mary for typing the list and to Paul and Tanya for helping with the Chemistry unit. I will remember to send reminders about the wiki page, and we will all have to bookmark it on our work and home computers. - Rina ||
 * 10. Today we started a GoogleDocs spreadsheet to keep track of our chemicals and equipment. We could link the document to the wiki and have easy access to both the **inventory** sheet and our consumable supplies list. For now, it is great that we can all work on the inventory sheet without having to email it back and forth or having to wait for it to be available when someone else has it open...the read-only inconvenience factor is obsolete! - Rina ||

**3. Sharing**
Description - Share ideas from this wiki meeting with your teammates as you decide to incorporate wikis in with other teachers or with students. (ongoing) Purpose - Share the knowledge you gain from this wiki meeting so that more teachers are aware that wikis can be useful to teaching. Share useful ideas with students who may want to incorporate wikis for their own productivity with group members at school or with their family. **To Do** - Discuss ways to use wikis with other staff members. Direct them to this wiki site. Introduce wikis to your students by using the YouTube video. Please return to post results of your innovative efforts!

**Google Calendar**
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