Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gerry Hanley on September 27, 2008 at 6:01am

Dave,
I agree and we need to provide guidelines for defining the discussion prompts so that the participants try to include information that help Noyce Scholars and faculty succeed. I think the Noyce Team would be terrific in developing these guidelines. For example, prompts should ask people to describe :
1. The problem (e.g. What challenges to you face getting your students engaged and excited about learning science?)
2. Possible "solutions" (e.g. What are strategies you've tried that have worked (or not or somewhat)?)

Overtime, it will probaby be important to have discussion forums organized by different themes:
1. My Career decisions
2. In the Classroom
3. Grading Effectively and Efficiently
4. Dealing with Parents
5. Dealing with Administration and colleagues
6. Other stuff in life

Permalink Reply by David Andrews on October 9, 2008 at 10:51am

Gerry,
These are excellent ideas. I think as a good way to start and for us to get comfortable with this whole new process, we will start these thematic discussions going with our 85 plus Noyce Scholars/Teachers here at Fresno State. I am looking forward to using this impressive formum for discussion. Thanks for making it possible.

Dave

Permalink Reply by Gerry Hanley on October 9, 2008 at 11:35am

Dave,
Glad this looks good. The key will be to have a leader of the discussions. Also - the Noyce Voices has "chat". If you want to create a closed conversation, you'll need to start a Noyce Voices at Fresno Community Conversation. This CC has been created as an open forum and can't be changed to a closed one.
Cheers,
Gerry

Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Ambos on October 9, 2008 at 12:33pm

I agree that this is a great new resource and one that I hope would be highlighted in the workshop on the 22nd.

The "Quick Add" includes video snippets...can it also include powerpoints and other materials? Is there a limitation on storage space?

Permalink Reply by Gerry Hanley on October 9, 2008 at 12:48pm

Beth,
You can add videos on the Voices home page, you can add images by clicking on the image icon on the "reply" tool bar or you can add a file by clicking on Upload files. I've uploaded the NSDL Noyce PPT as an example. No real storage limit at this point.
Cheers,
Gerry

Attachments:

• NSDL presentationoct1.ppt, 7.3 MB

Permalink Reply by Jaime Arvizu on December 10, 2008 at 12:00pm

Hello Everyone,
I am in the process of setting up a group discussion for the Noyce NSDL Teacher Leadership Team. Once this has been set up, the team will begin to use this utility in order to communicate with each other as they are making progress on using all the online resources. We plan to invite only those who are part of the presentation that will take place at the Western Noyce Conference. This way our discussions strands will stay focused on our goals for the presentation. If you will recall, this group is beginning to use the KEEP toolkit and will eventually launch their learning objects onto MERLOT. I doubt that their materials will be ready for MERLOT, but they have been instructed to polish up their profiles, add contributions, and to create a personal collection in order to demonstrate how they are currently using it and how they will eventually be able to publish their own lessons to this site. I feel that MERLOT Voices will be a great tool for us to use.

Permalink Reply by Gerry Hanley on December 10, 2008 at 4:21pm

Jaime,
This sounds like an excellent and exciting use of Voices. If there are ways we can support you, feel free to contact the MERLOT webmaster (or me).
Cheers,
Gerry