Building
Learners
Project

I received this email and am sharing the exchange for the benefit of all:

Candace, I don’t know how it happened but I lost all my bookmarks and history…i am sure i will fix it, but I also can’t seem to get into either of my sites I made here. Can you help? http://tf.trintuition.com/slafaso/wes  is my computer lab page http://tf.trintuition.com/slafaso/gifted  is my Gifted and Talented website… and I want to share them with my students asap.  also, i couldn’t log into the whole site…said it didn’t recognize my name????

 My response: 

Do not panic. I think this is a combination of errors. I believe the address for your gifted page as you shared it on the blog ishttp://tf.trintuition.com/slafaso/GATEIt is working. I would double check that you are accessing trintuition from the special TF address  they set up for this project (linked from the sidebar of  the BLP blog for your convenience—click on “Launch the workbench” at the right or bookmark this link: http://tf.trintuition.com/

I suspect that you were trying to log into TRintuition with the www address (which would not “know” you). If you log into the workbench from the link above/at the right of the BLP blog, you can check on the URL for your computer lab again. I suspect that your recollection of the URl may be slightly off. 

FYI to ALL: We tried to make this blog your entry point for everything you do so you will see any new messages as you “pass through.” The link to the workBench from here is a special area of the workBench specifically for this project! NO www.

Candy

I am new to this project and need to get started.  I would really like to print out the step by step instructions in your tutorial.  Is there a way to do this?

Thank you

KH�

I just tried to have a class sign up so they could begin working on pages for our project, but when I click on “Have your students join you”, or when we go to trintuition.com/apply all we get is a message that says “oops . . . Sorry. There is no such group.” I guess I missed something in how to get students involved. I would appreciate any help you can give, as the students were all excited to get started and very disappointed when things didn’t work. Thank you.

I have started building my project called Project Pumpkin Power.  I want to add a data page that each of the 5 classes can add their data.  Can I add a table?�

I went as far as I could until school starts with my first website for my Gifted and Talented Classes website so I began a second one. This is for the kindergarten to third grade computer classes I teach. I hope to communicate with the parents and let the kids show off their work.

On each grade level page I put a link to website games that they may use in class if they finish early and at home.

I put the links in a word document but I don’t seem to be able to make a link to it.

Any advice?

Thanks, Susan

I have just posted a comment to a frustrated member of our project who cannot receive our emails. If you have not received your confirmation email with log-in information and/or a recent (Aug 4) mass email to project members, please check to be sure YOU have taken these steps to allow email through:

1. Check your OWN email “Junk Mail” or “SPAM” folders for mail from any of the following and tell your email program to “trust” these addresses:

cshively(at)sflinc.org
accounts(at)trintuition.com
wordpress(at)blog.teachersfirst.com
servers(at)teachersfirst.com

Note that the (at) is printed here instead of @ so bad web spiders do not find our addresses and spam them! The addresses SHOULD really have the @ symbol!

2. Turn this same list of addresses into your tech administrator/network person at your school and request that our emails be allowed through the SPAM filter. Explain that you are receiving email about an instructional project via these addresses. If they have a question, show them this post!

Only if these two steps do not solve it, you may email me directly at the address above (cshively). Once you have emailed my address, your system should allow my responses back through the SPAM filter. Please do not use my email as a primary contact. This blog gets more immediate attention from more people than my swollen mailbox does, so posting on the blog is “the way to go” with any question, no matter how minor. Benefit from the “wisdom” of this “crowd”!

I have signed up for the Building Learner’s Project twice but I have never received the welcome e-mail and password for the Workbench.  Can anyone advise me on this problem?

Thank you!

S. Ryall

It says we have free access until the end of 2008. Can you tell me if I can continue using this site, and how much will it cost?

Thanks, Susan

OK, I made a site for my K-6 Gifted & Talented students to use in September. But I can’t find any instructions about making the site available for people to see. Can you tell me what to do or where to look for this information?  thanks, Sue

A very simple student project for a start might contain only a few screen elements on a single screen: a title, a student’s name, a prompt, and a text box, in which the student can respond to the prompt.

In this example, Ogden Nash’s poem about fleas and Adam is the prompt, and an imaginary student has written several lines about the poem, as well as adding a one-line entry into the shortest poem category.

The prompt in such a project could be a photograph, art, a poem, several paragraphs of text - perhaps a short newspaper article - whatever would be engaging and appropriate to get students to reflect, respond, and share.

With younger students it’s possible to create the project and share it with them, so that each of them only has is to write a response in the text box. Then they could share the projects back to the teacher, and all the projects could be combined into a single project, or they all could be linked online from a single menu.

Add an additional prompt, and you create a situation for comparing and contrasting. Through the contrasting photographs, this screen suggests the two sides of nature, how it can be beautiful, yet very destructive.

Screens such as these can be made in a matter of minutes by teachers or students. Start simple. The focus should be on the engagement and responses that can be evoked from students, not on the complexity of building screens and projects.

A second basic type of project has a home page with a menu of perhaps 3 - 5 items. Click on one of the topics in the menu, and you go to another screen that contains that topic’s information, plus a back button to return to the home page. The navigation is very simple and basic - out to a topic, back to home, out to another topic, back to home. Place the back buttons on the topic screens all in the same location, so no one has to hunt for them, and no one will ever get lost.

This example is about gorillas and was created by an older student. It has lots of nice bells and whistles, but the structure is very simple: home page, out and back. The menu on the home page is made up of text on top of a background image. Some of the menu items link to other websites as resources.

To create a project such as our gorilla example on their own, students need to do research and think about their subject and how it breaks into logical topics. It’s a pedagogical challenge first and foremost. What important information exists for the subject, and how can it best be organized?

It’s not unlike trying to organize a composition, in which paragraphs are major building blocks. Here, those blocks are screens, and just as in the world of writing, students progress up a staircase toward more sophisticated results one step at a time.
You can take a look at the gorilla project and see how easy it is to get around at: http:www.trintuition.com/workbenchinfo/gorilla