Hi, welcome to Classroom 2.0!
I would love if you decide to join my group DigiSkills (about digital teaching methods) as well! The biggest group on C2.0.
Greetings from Germany
Hans

Yes, I am familiar with Greenbush (Southeast Kansas). Your bunch has been doing some amazing things with ESL support for teachers, coordinators, school, districts, and more. The podcasts have been extremely helpful! I am the new ESL coordinator for our district and teach ESL certiification classes with Newman U. Basically, the ESL coordinator is a "new" position, as our district has reached the next point in growth with ELL students.

I am not familiar with things that are going on at the tech end at Greenbush. Truthfully, I feel like I have stepped onto another planet this summer. Our school got a Tech Rich Classrooms grant last spring (along with our partner school, Riley Elementary in Great Bend). As the TRC "facilitator," I have been going to conferences and taking classes all summer. I had no idea just how tech savvy so many districts and teachers were in education! Boy, do I need to get things fired up on the homefront. Luckily, I have some "tech hungry" teachers at SHE (my home school). I could use advice on how to pace all this (on top of everything else they have to do). My sense is to simply put it out there, such as project samples, student work, little plugs now and then about something really cool, and INVITE. My real focus though will be the four TRC teachers. The rest will have to fall into place in due time.

Croquet, Secondlife -- you are speaking some new lingo for me. I will need some time to scope it all out. Right now, I have to get busy with my INTEL Essentials Course module assignments. Nice to meet you.

A.

Hi Rich, croquet looks so interesting! What about setting up? easy enough for an amateur? or would I need a lot of tech knowledge?

Hello Rich. I love what you're doing with SL. You guys are really in the game!

Croquet looks very cool.

Hi Kevin .... BTW we emailed you about the green screen app. you were using with students several months ago the kids are doing some neat stuff with it !..... one of these days I hope we get to formally meet ! Croquet is a very cool tool .. however its documentation is pretty awful *LOL* ... we are _slowly_ learning its capabilities.... BTW .. love your old time radio mod.!

Rich,
Nice to meet you. I hope to explore your achievements to try and get something like this going for my districts.
I've started work on a MySpace replacement for the students, but development is slower than I'd like.
Hope you're having a productive summer.

Should I learn squeak before starting with croquet?

Hi Susan ... actually squeak wouldn't really be necessary --- Croquet comes with several functional worlds .. here are good videos to get started with: http://croquetconsortium.org/index.php/Tutorials

Thanks Rich, I'll take a look.

Hey Rich...was surprised you weren't the first to comment!

Hey, great work you're doing here!

Sorry I have been a little slow to respond. Summer has me hopping. Started a new job as Director of the Technology Learning Commons and WoW is there a ton to do to get this new program off the ground. Exciting, but feel like I am going in 12 directions. Looking forward to more discussions.

Rich, thanks a lot. You and I have a lot to discuss. Currently, I work at an online, project based school in Minnesota (EdVisions Off Campus). I am interested in getting our students to collaborate with other students, and think the 3D environment will do wonders. SL is cool, but isn't going to be the best fit for this collaboration. Thanks for the invite.

hi Rich, a very nice fellow at my school just sent around a SL manifesto yesterday; I will alert him to your group. I think he will be very interested. thanks for your note!
:-)

Thanks for the friend invite! I am a fellow Kansan, Rock Chalk. N.

Hi Rich, how are you? Have you heard of YouFig.com? It's a useful site for collaboration between students and between teacher & class. It's invitation only and I still have a few invites left. Let me know if you'd like one. Looking forward to seeing you around here.

Hey, looks like fun! I'll check it out. Thanks for the invite!

Great stuff Rich!

I'm very impressed with your Smartboard integration. I can't wait until we have widespread implementation of this technology within Government schools in Australia. One of these boards used collaboratively would be far more beneficial to the students than the 2-3 desktop PCs that we currently have available. Even though the cost of this technology has decreased quite dramatically, I won't hold my breath!

Your work with Edusim is wonderful and I wish you all the best for the future.

Awesome Stuff Rich!
I am a Technology Integration Specialist in Maize, Kansas and we currently utilize the IDL sessions through Greenbush. We have decided to go with Promethean as our IWB, and currently have 12 in our building. We would love to find out more information about your projects. Thanks for sharing.

Rich,

At this point, we have not yet recieved any Smart Boards yet. I, personally have had experience with this great tool and agree with you on the variety of things that can be done using one in the classroom. We currently have funding to put these in 2/3 of the science classrooms in the school. (No time frame has been given yet.)

Rich, do you know about the Robert Wood Johnson's "Games for Health" grant? I was thinking it might be fun to develop an interactive game for health using EduSim. Here is the link to the grant application information:
http://www.rwjf.org/files/applications/cfp/cfp_hgr2007.pdf

I didn't know Greenbush had an island in SecondLife! SWEET, I'll have to come visit as I'm an SEK girl.

I actually heard them talking about you all on the EdTechWeekly podcast a few weeks ago. I wondered if it was "our" Greenbush! Well done, and I look forward to visiting you all in SL.

Awesome page Rich,
Lots to explore here...G

Hello! Thanks for the greetings. Its cool to see you work at Greenbush. My hometown school district went there a lot especially my mom. She is the school nurse. I like the second life previews on your page. Don't know much about it but want to explore when I get the time.

Hi Rich,

Great page Rich. With your interest in education technology I recommend you take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's we based power point presenation platform. The virtual world could prove to be an amazing new step in online education.

Thanks for your reply,
I am trying to set up an OpenSim Grid for my high school students. Tall order for an art teacher. Right now I have a University computer science student configuring Opensim as a stand alone and have a local company willing to house the server inside their network so I dont have to worry about firewalls etc.
I followed some of your links and wondered if Cobalt (squeek) is a better application for students to create and build. You can tell I'm over my head with programming but I think there is real value for my students so will continue to stumble on.

Hi Rich. I was wondering if your students would be interested in participating in a nationwide SAT Vocab Video Contest @ MIT university. If not, perhaps you have some other educator contacts you could direct me to. You can view contest details at BrainyFlix.com Please let me know. Thanks!

Just saw a link for the Immersive Ed. Day. Do you plan to stream any of the conference for those who can't make it?

Have been looking at your work on Open Sim as I want to set up such a VLE for my Primary school, with the view to connecting with other classrooms and learning without walls. I would be grateful for some advice. Thanks.