About CForum

October 3, 2008

Location:
Alpine School District - directions
575 North 100 East
American Fork
Room 310 - Computer Lab

Welcome and Introductions - Lynn Sorensen and Bonnie Anderson

Around the Room - District Sharing

    • All the attendees introduced themselves and shared what is new in their district / organization. We have a few new faces this year - which is great.

Housecleaning Items - Lynn Sorensen

    • Meeting dates:
      • November 7th - (More details from Rick Gaisford coming shortly)
        Technology Fair, 21st Century Tools for 21st Century Students, Infusing Technology in Daily Instruction
      • December 5th - Granite School District
      • January 9th - UEN - Univ. of Utah
      • February 6th - Jordan School District
      • April 3rd - Nebo School District
    • UTIPS Representative: Jared Orton is now going to represent C-Forum at the UTIPS User Group meetings.

Wimba - Pat Lambrose

Wimba provides a fully featured live virtual classroom supporting IP audio, video, application sharing, web tours and content display (such as PowerPoint slides or graphics) all delivered synchronously over the internet or archived for asynchronous access.

    • Collaborative Uses: Professional Development, Webcasts, Virtual Classes, Tutoring, Office Hours, Meetings
    • Collaborative Features: Multi-way Audio, Follow-the-speaker Video, Public and Private Chat, Emoticons, Break-out Rooms, Archives, Telephone Access, Content Upload and Storage, Electronic Whiteboard, Polls

Pat spent some time going over some the Wimba features and configurations. C-Forum attendees were able to experience Wimba as a participant and also watch Pat as she played the role as a presenter.

my.uen Wimba portlet - Karen

UEN has negotiated a Wimba license for all public ed educators. This service is now available to educators with "Premium" status via their my.uen page. (Premium access is granted to those registered users with a valid Utah education email domain.) Vist the Help Center for more info on the Wimba integration: www.uen.org/my.uen/help/wimba

To set up their Wimba portlet, educators just need to log into their my.uen page, add the Wimba portlet to one of their public pages.
Educators can edit the Wimba portlet and customize how their name appears in their Wimba Classroom, whether participants are allowed access, the description of the portlet, whether the setup wizard link is displayed, and the name of their Wimba Portlet.

This is the view of the Wimba portlet in "edit" mode:

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    Participants can join your Wimba Classroom from the public view of your Wimba Portlet. You can e-mail participants the URL to your my.uen page (e.g. http://my.uen.org/12345) or they can use UEN's Educator Search found on the UEN home page to find your my.uen page.

    They will be able to join your Wimba Classroom through the public view of the portlet, which looks like this:

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    As a presenter, you can access your Wimba classroom by either of the following methods:
    1. From your my.uen Personal Page, click Wimba Classroom under the UEN Premium Services column.

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    1. If you have already added the Wimba Classroom Portlet to my.uen, you can use the "Enter Wimba Room Management" link to open the Wimba Classroom Administration window.

Using either of these methods opens a new Wimba Classroom Administration window that you can use to enter your classroom, add content to the room, administer recorded archives, view tracking reports, and more. To find out more about these options see http://www.uen.org/wimba/.

Cool Stuff and Books - Bonnie Anderson <empty>

USOE Updates - Rick Gaisford

    • iTunesU This summer the Utah Electronic High School launched content on iTunesU and very recently Kathy, Rick posted this web site: http://itunes.ehs.uen.org/ for easy access to information about the project and copyright concerns. Be sure to check out the "PDF Guide iTunesU K12" in the left column and then use the "Open EHS on iTunes" button in the center.
    • Because of budget cuts at UEN the ITC workshops will no longer be able to provide meals.
    • The Qwest Foundation mini grants applications will be out soon. Rick will send out the announcement as soon as he knows specifics. If you want to read grants, contact Rick - Rick.Gaisford@schools.utah.gov.
    • The USOE Curriculum Dept. is hosting a Technology Fair, 21st Century Tools for 21st Century Students, Infusing Technology in Daily Instruction - Nov. 7 in Granite School District. (More details coming shortly.)
      Since this event conflicts with the Nov. C-Forum meeting, the decision was made to attend the event in lieu of our November meeting.

UEN Updates

    • UEN Professional Development
      • Fall Schedule is available.
      • 18 online courses, (9 UEN-TV started already). NEW Dreamweaver level 1 online.
      • Sign up now for UEN's text messaging alerts. Be the first to know about upcoming courses, preview this week's Faculty Lounge and learn from our TechTips. Simply text "sub uenpd" to 41411 to receive our twice weekly text alerts.
      • Faculty Lounge: Join us for our weekly, half-hour online workshop every Thursday at 3:30 p.m.
      • The popular "Teacher Feature" is back ... highlighting Utah teachers who are effectively using technology.
      • Check out UEN's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/UENVideo
    • Pioneer Online Library
      • October Pioneer Trial -three databases from Gale:
        • Biography Resource Center
        • Literature Resource Center
        • LitFinder LitFinder for Schools
      • New Mouse Pads
        UEN recently collaborated with ProQuest (SIRS & CultureGrams) to design and produce 10,000 new Pioneer Library mouse pads. UEN will outfit a school's computer labs with these mouse pads if the school will have a Pioneer Library training session for their faculty. They can contact Victoria Rasmussen or one of the UEN Trainers at the Regional Centers to schedule a training session.

UCET Updates
2009 Conference - March 6 and 7 at Taylorsville High School in Granite School District

UTIPS Updates Julie Quinn was not able to attend - but she sent the following:

    1. Between October 20 and October 30, Utah’s mock elections will be taking place via the http://mockelection.myutips.org website. Because of the number of students this could possibly involve, these districts (Ogden, Weber, Granite, Jordan, Charter Schools) need to be aware of this activity.
    2. Almost all of the UTIPS servers have now received the recent item pool update, including the realignment for elementary and secondary math and a few tweaks to improve a handful of items in science and English / Language Arts.
    3. Clint Stephens has been going through a review on the SEDC server, making sure that all of the item pools on their server are in good shape. I strongly recommend that trainers on the other servers do the same. I have not had an opportunity to do an extensive QA check for each of the servers as they have rolled out, and as Clint has found, there have been a few kinks.
    4. In general, the update went much smoother than it did last fall. Tests don’t break, and graphics should be intact.
    5. Specifically, we need to make sure that the 2007 math courses all loaded, and I’ve recently found an issue with the 2002 released UBSCT test – I need to know how widespread that is. (Clint can talk a minute about what he’s been doing.) There may be other problems that I am not aware of, but this is all that has been reported. Any help that C-Forum can give in reviewing the item pool update would be greatly appreciated.
    6. For the short-term, efforts are currently on finishing up this item pool update. As soon as that is brought to a conclusion, efforts will move toward stabilizing, fixing, improving, re-working the software. UEN has been most generous with their support, and Nate Ober, in the USOE’s Assessment Section and tasked with UTIPS programming, will be using new servers hosted by UEN, for these coming tasks. Eventually, yes, we plan to move to a centralized model for UTIPS – how soon that can happen will depend on the software development schedule as we move forward.
    7. Certainly, we will be sensitive to training issues as we look to improving the system. We will work to well document what changes will be made and communicating those changes well in advance of their effect. Any individuals interested in participating in the discussions about future iterations should make sure they are subscribed to the UTIPS User’s Group email list (https://lists.uen.org/mailman/listinfo/utipsusers), as conversations will be conducted there. Recommendations from the User’s Group will go to the UTIPS Steering Committee, for their consideration, prior to implementation.
    8. We have enough items to have another substantial item pool update mid-year, however how fast we can get those loaded will be determined by how long it takes to finalize the current update. We have items written directly to the UBSCT framework, more Algebra 2 items, constructed response items for both elementary and secondary math, plus the CTE computer programming items and a handful of others.
    9. As always, your comments, concerns, and recommendations are an essential part of making sure we are providing a valuable service. Please don’t hesitate to contact Julie Quinn.

Future meeting dates:

    • November 7th - no meeting
      In Lieu to the meeting, you are invited to attend the Technology Fair, 21st Century Tools for 21st Century Students, Infusing Technology in Daily Instruction in Granite School District. (more details coming)
    • December 5th - Granite School District
    • January 9th - UEN - Univ. of Utah
    • February 6th - Jordan School District
    • April 3rd - Nebo School District

Utah State Office of Education - USOE     Utah Education Network - UEN     Utah Coalition for Educational Technology - UCET

For questions or comments contact us.