Introductions

Please introduce yourself, let us know a little bit about you, and where you are from.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Guillermo Lutzky on April 7, 2007 at 9:56am

Hi, I am Guillermo Lutzky. I am an IT teacher from Argentina, form the ORT scools.

I have some esperiences with the use of blogs, RSS agregators and other stuff in class. I also train teachers regarding the new ICTs and the Knowledge Society
I am also running a project to develop a virtual campus which hopefully will be Web 2.0 oriented.

I am happy to be here, and look forward to learn a lot!

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Permalink Reply by Larry Ferlazzo on April 7, 2007 at 7:26pm

Hi, I'm Larry Ferlazzo. I teach high school English Language Learners in Sacramento, CA. I'm looking forward to sharing and learning with this network.

People might be interested in this article that just appeared in TechLearning this week about our use of web 2.0 with immigrant students. It's called "Samuel L. Jackson, My ESL Students, and Me."

http://techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604338

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on April 7, 2007 at 10:01pm

Larry:

Fascinating article. Hey--check out this forum thread. Talk of a web 2.0 day in Sacramento: http://classroom20.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=649749%3ATopic%3A2758.

Great to have you here.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Branzburg on April 8, 2007 at 7:48am

Hi. I'm Jeff Branzburg (New York City, USA). Spent many years in public education, now do professional development (mainly for nonprofits, some private sector) in instructional technology. Also write a column in Technology & Learning Magazine ("How To ...").

Being away from public education on a full-time basis for 4 years now makes it more difficult to know what really goes on in the classroom. My gut feeling from school visits in NYC is that very few teachers use technology regularly, and when they do it is usually research of the form of "go to Google and find information about ..." followed by "now make a PowerPoint presentation."

My main purpose here is to find out more of what goes on technologically on a day-to-day basis in classrooms today. That being said, Classroom 2.0 is not a representative sample of classrooms, being that we are all here out of an interest in the topic, a curiosity about 2.0 and what it can do. The more novice teachers (technological novices, that is) probably would not know about sites such as this. Kind of like attending an ed tech conference - people there are those self-selected folks who have enough of an interest to attend!

So, I am here to learn, and to contribute if it will help.

One question - exactly what does it mean to be a 'friend' here?

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on April 8, 2007 at 1:45pm

Hi Jeff,
I had the same question about "friends" and posted about it here... http://classroom20.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=649749%3ABlogPost...

Today I learned something new.

I clicked on one of my friends (Stuart Brown) and saw that he was on other Ning networks, followed him over there, and joined one of them. A lightbulb came on.

I'm thinking that outside a community, you can see what your friends are doing on other Ning communities and potentially find similar interests in them. That will be more powerful only if Ning continues to grow and thrive. Inside a community, friends mean more as the community grows. What if there were 10,000 folks here and you felt like you "knew" only a few people. You might want to post about meeting up at a conference, or some personal things, or rant about stuff that you know shouldn't be public.

So "friends" become useful and interesting in direct proportion to the community size and the number of aggregated communities.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin H. on April 10, 2007 at 3:58am

hi Diane
I am overseeing a larger Blog project (closed to the public) in which four schools of middle school students are conducting a shared science experiment, and then using the blog to share the results, post scientific abstracts, and create fictional Science Journey stories (such as through the body system). We have about 200 students involved, so it is tricky to administer it, but the blog seems like a good system for sharing this kind of data across a geographic distance.
(our experiment involved the dissolution rate of sweet and sour Skittles, which, as you may imagine, has the kids very engaged)
I am interested to learn from what you are doing, too.
Kevin

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Permalink Reply by Marcia Bengry Alessi on April 10, 2007 at 10:00am

Kevin - Sounds like an ambitious project, where did you get the idea? What grade level is involved and are you sponsored or just doing it solo? My kids would love something like this. Marcia - los angeles

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Permalink Reply by Stacy Schrank on April 9, 2007 at 9:03am

Hello Everyone... My name is Stacy Schrank and I am the Employee Development Coordinator for the Metropolitan Library System in Oklahoma City, OK. Glad to be joining the group!

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Permalink Reply by Marcie T. Hull on April 9, 2007 at 7:49pm

Hello,
My name is Marcie T. Hull and I am from the United States. I work in Philadelphia at a school called Science Leadership Academy (SLA). This school is the brain child of Chris Lehmann and was put into action by him, the Franklin Institute and the School District of Philadelphia. I had been working in the School District of Philadelphia for 5 years and was lucky enough to be hired by Chris in May of 2006. I work as the Technology Coordinator, the technology teacher and the art teacher. I work with incredible people and feel fortunate to be a part of the SLA team. I also enjoy being a part of this conversation about the ways schools are changing.

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Kaplan on April 9, 2007 at 8:19pm

Greetings Steve,
I've been working with Kevin Hodgson and the NWP Tech Liaisons for the past year and our collaborative blog focuses on tech stories. He nudged me onto this site and wow, it's great. I love the way you've created a comfortable and user friendly way to incorperate lots of what other blogs offer with a great sense of community.
I work with the Hudson Valley Writing Project at State Unversity of New York at New Paltz and I think this site will be a great way to demonstrate what the Web 2.0 can offer teachers.
BRAVO!!!!
Bonnie

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on April 9, 2007 at 8:33pm

OK, so here's the big secret: I hope that the site is comfortable and user-friendly, but it's mostly the framework of the Ning service, and not me! My creative portion: 1) thinking of using it this way, 2) adding some text boxes and the small customization for information, and 3) getting on and trying to comment in a way that encourages participation. :)