Responses

Project Responses
Gloria Henke | Liz Sanford | Back to assignment page

Response to Gloria's Proposal: A Place for Learning and Sharing:
I think you have a wonderful idea. An Intranet is something that I have been considering since I learned how to create web pages, although I have not had the time of course. I had not thought of putting my tutorials on the Intranet though! The teachers in your high school should quickly appreciate the work that you are doing for them.

Your Concerns:
    When our school (K-6) was set up with a new network two years ago, we were furnished with an Intranet folder on the server's shared drive. I have looked at it, but it has never been used. The sample files are web pages. I assume that for me to create an active Intranet, I would just add web pages to the file. I think I would also have to make sure the home page or index page was easy to find by the user. One way to do this would be to load a browser first and have the index set to auto load.
    I hope that you will not have trouble getting your teachers to access this resource, but I know that is not being realistic. You mentioned that you would like announcements posted on the Intranet. If your administration is supporting you on the project and is willing to use it to post memos, the teachers would be forced to use it to see the messages. Then they could see all of the other benefits.
    As for Adobe Acrobat, I really don't think it should be the only option for viewing the tutorials. As you mentioned, it does take time to load. Also I believe that some teachers may not want to print out the documents every time they are lost. You could use hot links in your tutorials enabling them the view certain pages of the document.

My Questions and Other Comments:
    You mentioned that you will have a tutorial for substitute teachers. Will they know how to log on the system to access the tutorial?
    Including a tutorial on how to use email might be helpful to reluctant users. Other suggestions for training modules, depending on the general computer knowledge and needs of your staff, might be database, spreadsheet, word processor, other commonly used programs in your building.
   Will students have access to the Intranet to reference the department pages? If not, then maybe in the future one can be created for students, including menus and assignments from different departments.

I am very excited about your project. I am hoping to pick up some tips from you, when I finally find the time to set up something in my school.

Response to Liz's Proposal: Using the Internet for Discovery and Cooperative Learning
Your project is another in which I am very interested, since I teach fourth grade science to two classes. The ocean chapter is already fun. Getting to add your web activity will be a great supplement.

My Questions and Other Comments:
    Will you be using Power Point for the student's to view? I am worried that pages maybe fuzzy for them as you pointed out to us.
    Do fourth graders at your school have prior knowledge of Hyperstudio, Claris Works, and Kid Pix? I have to teach my students Hyperstudio each year, a big job on only five computers. I am hoping to pick up ideas from you.
    My students tend to have trouble with the movement of water: waves, tides, currents. If your students have had trouble in the past, you may want to split the ocean currents and tides focus area into two.
    Are you going to set up sites for students to look at as in a WebQuest, or will they be free to search the web?
    FYI: I have created a Hyperstudio stack on oceans. I could email a zipped version for you to use in your class. We use PCs. As I am not familiar with Macs, I do not know if it will work on your computers.

I am interested your Jigsaw method. I had not thought of using it with computers. Be sure to let me know how well it works. I am looking forward to using your project with my classes.