August 28 Meeting - Retreat Plans

'''Sept. Tech Retreat Planning Aug. 28, 2005 ''' Paul Allison, Julie Conason, Felicia George, Kate Moss, Ken Stein September 23-24 retreat:

Participants:
Folks who will be invited to participate will be asked to:

create a unit present a unit commit to meeting weekly for 1 1/2 hours (join a course) commit to do something for the WP come to Sept. retreat with a piece of classroom work using technology that they have taught 

Who will be invited to attend?

Others who will be there as coordinators or leadership: Paul, Ken, Kate, Julie and Felicia. Nancy Mintz will be invited to attend. Question : Should teachers with blogs be asked to reapply annually? Would the reapplication be linked to their attending this session?

From 9/1/05 Tapped In discussion re: participants: PaulA: Kiran Chaudhuri is excited to come. And I think her teaching partner from last year, Sarvenaz will too. I've also invited the present 9th grade teaching partner as well... Her name is Marie. Don't know if she will come, but she wants to learn.

KenS: i have told margaret lum and may about it. margaret says she's definitely coming

FeliciaG: Great! We have 2 so far.

Kate: Question: Should we ask Mary Carroll? She's done at least one tech retreat with Paul, and Kate notes that she teaches online and tech-inflected courses. She may be interested in this weekend, or possibly the Oct. one.

PaulA: Joe Luft e-mailed me about a teacher in his school who wants to begin blogging, and I said that that teacher should contact me... I also let him know about the retreat...

Stipend
Participants should receive a stipend for participation in this retreat. Stipend should be comparable to per-session pay? Question : Should amount of stipend be $250 for the weekend? 11 hrs. less 2 hrs for dinner and lunch = 9 hrs. X 32.64 dollars per hr. 293.76. Is training rate fair or should we be paying folks $290/$295/$300? We will ask participants to become NYCWP members. Felicia will prepare membership applications for the retreat. Question : Do we want folks to complete an application for the retreat? If so, what should it include? Can we use application for Weblogs and Beyond ?

Notes from TappedIn 9/1/05: Stipend PaulA: I think we should keep it at $250.

Invite Application PaulA: No... let's invite people to the retreat NOW, and keep the follow-up vague. We might even plan it at the retreat with folks... to some degree. KenS: but i think we ought to send out some sort of official sounding email and ask for responses back

KenS: we ought to ask folks to rsvp and respond to a menu of food preference so they take us completely seriously

FeliciaG: We can ask people now and follow-up with the email. Anyone who isn't interested won't get the email.

KenS: send felicia the names and email addresses of the folks we want to invite by Monday, Sept. 12.

PaulA: That's good... as long as we do the personal contacts now - Tuesday.

Agenda
Coordinators will include Paul, Ken, Julie, Kate and Felicia Friday, September 23, 2005 4:30 - 5:00	Introductions; Framing of retreat; framing purposes 5:00 - 6:00 Using a Wiki - Paul and Seth demonstrate how they've used Wikis 6:00 - 7:00 Dinner 7:00 - 8:00 Online Gallery Walk -Ken and Kate prepare this segment on gallery walks and technology 8:00 - 8:30 Play Saturday, September 24, 2005 9:00 - 9:15 Recap/Framing Saturday 9:15 - 10:15 Literature Response/Groups/Circles - Introduction to strategies/getting started by Julie 10:15 - 10:30 Break 10:30 - 12:00 Literature Circles and Response Groups On Line - Rachel, Heather, Donna and Susan present their class weblogs; each have 10 minutes to show and describe what they've done and answer questions Followed by Play or responding on line (via Weblog/Nicenet/Wiki) to On Line Lit. Circle presentations 12:00 - 1:00 Lunch 1:00 - 3:15 Play 3:15 - 4:30 What's Next? Groups form for further work together each week this fall.

QUESTION: Ken and I are chatting now (9/18) and we are wondering if the playtime on friday night, and some of the playtime at the end of Saturday, should not be reflections? We'd like reflections on Friday after they've done the blog and wiki gallery walks... So this brings up the question: will there be reflections? And where will they reflect? Is there a space for this during this weekend (comparable to Weblogs and Beyond blog)? Kate and Ken, Sunday 9/18

Notes from TappedIn 9/1/05:

KenS: so what's play

PaulA: I think that's about setting up your blog... bring class lists and get messy... doesn't sound as much fun as play.

FeliciaG: Play is trying out wikis or aspects of the online gallery walk. Do we need to be more specific?

KenS: yeah, we need to set up space for folks to provide reflections

FeliciaG: Paul, you see I put the lit circle discussion before the case studies. I thought it might provide context to have it come before the case studies.

Materials needed:
NYCWP Membership applications Agendas Questions : What additional materials do we need?

sign-in/attendance form

Invitation
You have been nominated by a member of the New York City Writing Project’s Technology Advisory Committee to participate in an exclusive/one of a kind opportunity to expand your technology resources. We invite you to join us for a two day retreat where we will work together to fuse established writing project practices with emerging internet technologies. During the retreat we will share examples of computer supported projects that other NYCWP teachers have developed for their students, play with the technology introduced and explore the possibilities of a project for your class. This event will be an introduction to an on-going series of meetings during which you will create and develop, with the support of experienced WP technology teachers, a classroom project using wikis and/or blogs.

When: Friday, September 23, 2005 from 4:30 – 8:30 pm and Saturday, September 24, 2005 from 9:00 am –  4:30 pm

Where: East Side Community High School (Pending confirmation) 420 East 12th Street (between 1st Avenue and Avenue A)

During the retreat we will use a Wiki to develop curriculum and weblogs for online literature discussions. On Friday, using the technology of Wikis, Seth Guiñals-Kupperman and Paul Allison will share curriculum they’ve developed and Kate Moss and Ken Stein will take participants through an online gallery walk. On Saturday Julie Conason will review what we know about literature circles and NYCWP teachers will share what they have done with online literature discussions. We will also provide time to explore the use of wikis and blogs to co-construct curriculum and deepen our work with weblogs and literature.

Dinner will be provided on Friday evening and participants will receive a $250 stipend for participating for both days.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope you will join us for this exciting endeavor.

Please rsvp by September 16 to felicia.george@lehman.cuny.edu with the following information:

Name:				School:

Email address					phone number

Proposed internet project:	Wikis/weblogs/other

Indicate if you would like a vegetarian dinner on Friday

-- FELICIA: I think this is fine with the caveat that I think Ken and I are only providing mock-up style Gallery Walks--we're making some simple ones for the workshop, but we don't have any "real" ones. Not sure if or how that should be reflected in the above. Kate

Next meeting
Thursday, Sept. 1 from 8 - 9 pm via Tapped In. Suggested protocol. Paul is facilitator. Go round from each person after each agenda item is introduced. Indicate pass if you have nothing to add on that item or pass/with additional comment, if you want to add something else. Don't include comment until everyone has had chance to speak to item. Go back to passes with additional comment before moving onto the next item.

Other ideas and issues discussed:
October retreat will be distinguished from September retreat in that folks attending will be those who just want to play with the technology for themselves. Suggested agenda will include using literature circles format for October participants. What will they read ? Other agenda items will include presentations by participants from the October retreat (those who have something they are ready to share) as a way of introducing Oct. participants to possibilities for on line work. Are we going to stick to blogging or offer other on line possibilities, such as pod casting, Flickr, etc. ? Kate and Julie will do something with on-site TCs during their Friday meetings (how often and which Fridays to be determined in consultation with Nancy and TCs). [Kate is not sure about this: does not know how much time she will have for all this during the semester, beyond the two weekend retreats.]

Ken and Paul have committed to doing the course or on-going meeting time for Sept. retreat participants who agree to meet weekly. Together they will present other on line techniques (podcasting, Flickr, etc.) and provide support to groups as they work on their projects. Format of these 1 1/2 hr weekly meetings will involve 1/2 hr. presenting new technology and 1 hr. of play.

From TappedIn notes 9/1/05:

PaulA: I think we need to re-invite everyone who was at the meetings this summer to join us for a Tech Advisory meeting... Didn't we think this would me a monthly thing?

Next steps: Meeting of Tech Advisory Group Kate and Ken schedule plan for online gallery walk Paul and Ken plan for retreat Paul and Julie plan for lit circles Felicia drafts invite/application for official invite Draft proposal for continuation of Fuding - due Sept. 16.

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