February DLIC Meeting Minutes
In attendance; Bruce, Lou, Sue
Palmberg, Brad, Nancy, Denise, Frank
This month's meeting was based on
taking a deeper dive into the Google and Twitter applications. The
links in these meeting notes are new references to the subjects
discussed.
We tried accessing twitter to examine
our #eoSmith, #eosDLIC, and #digitalLearning hashtags. Twitter still
doesn't work on the student network – something that needs tending
to.
We talked about the uses of twitter to:
Write fiction;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/12/twitter-fiction-140-character-novels
and http://twitter-fiction-reader.bugsplat.info/
Classroom use:
http://edudemic.com/2012/04/100-ways-to-use-twitter-in-education-by-degree-of-difficulty/
For academic activities:
http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/
We walked through the basics of Twitter
which everyone more or less knew. Go to twitter.com and sign up for
an account and the account process is similar to every other sign up
anyone will do.
We talked about the character limits
and how to create hashtags (use a '#' sign and any keyword after it,
for example #eosDLIC). We talked about the fact that an image can be
tweeted by clicking on the camera icon that sits just below the text
input box when creating a tweet.Clicking the icon allows you to
upload an image.
Finally we talked about identity and
the internet. Twitter and Facebook have become everyone's sanitized
version of personal identity. It is rare to catch a glimpse of
personality on these sights as everyone has figured out that these
sights are searched by authority figures for personal anomaly.
As a consequence, many young people
adopt alterego personnas elsewhere. One of those places is Tumblr
(see:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/).
We briefly discussed the need to
dedicate a meeting to privacy and security and the existence of a
fictonal phone number that's available to everyone was discussed
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number)
).
The discussion switched to Google. We
opened the DLIC email account to examine some of the lesser known
features.
We found the Language preference
drop-down list that allows the owner of the account to view the
contents in whatever language is desired.
Next we attempted to create folders in
Gmail and Drive. In Gmail folders are actually labels that mail can
be categorized by (I (Frank) had forgotten that Gmail calls folders
labels leading to some confusion).
In Gmail, by clicking on a specific
email, then the 'Labels' Icon, a user can either assign that email to
an existing label or create a new label that acts as a folder to
separate similar emails into.
By clicking on the Account icon and the
account link, we opened the gmail account settings page. Her Frank
demonstrated creating an email filter that assigned an email from
Ryan to a label [folder]. We discussed how creating filters for
certain classes or assignments might be done. For example, the topic
of an email could be prefixed with a unique assignment tag and then
filtered to the appropriate label space.
Conversely, on Google Drive, clicking
on the 'Create' icon lists a menu that includes creating a 'Folder'
in which any Google doc can be saved.
A number of questions were raised and
answered about Google Drive. We looked at the plug-in documents that
are now available in Google Drive.
Sue thought the Graphing Calculator app
(Desmos) was inadequate for replacing the school's graphing
calculators.
Frank demoed diagram.ly and Bruce asked
about Pert charts (in later correspondence, a Pert chart plug-in for
spreadsheets was found).
Throughout the discussion, Lou
initiated a new discussion that questioned whether or not EO Smith
should convert the existing email infrastructure over to Google.
After considerable debate a consensus developed that we should
seriously consider migrating.
We discussed the desire to have all
students get assigned a school-specific gmail account and how that
might work. The goal is to enable every student regardless of
income the ability to have their own application suite to use from
anywhere.
Denise expressed a concern about the
response time of the Google text-processing application to keep up
with the load.
Frank recommended that students
download and use LibreOffice off-line if Google is too slow and then
upload the doc (see: http://www.libreoffice.org/
).
We also discussed student exposure to
advertisements. This led to a demonstration of how to add extensions
and add-ins to browsers. The AdBlock plug-in eliminates ads in
Firefox. Chrome has something similar built-in.
We also looked at add-ins that
automatically added citations to student research links and source
material.
The last Google app we looked at is
found on the google menu bar by clicking 'More' → 'Even More' →
Fusion Tables → Forms. The Forms application allows the user to
create forms that ask all kinds of questions. The Form is saved then
shared with those who will answer the questions. When the Forms are
submitted , the answers can be automatically tabulated in a
spreadsheet the Form's creator has assigned.
Denise and Bruce will explore getting Gmail accounts for all teachers and students for Fall, 2013.
OPEN-SOURCE books – summer funding for teachers; and or explore doing one course using open-source books.
OTHER
Bill Green will begin using Chrome books in his class.
Downloading anti-theft apps on Apples and Chrome books.
NEXT MEETING
More Google apps exploring.
The meeting closed promptly at 8:00 pm.
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