In researching for our recent article on web filtering (also created using the workBench- check it out as an example!), TeachersFirst’s editorial staff confirmed what we knew to be true: many schools simply do not allow access to some very powerful online tools. They are not being cruel (though the results may seem that way). They are simply interpreting laws and local concerns very protectively. There are varied philosophies about how to handle web safety concerns, and many U.S. schools come down on the more conservative side. In five years, who knows…

So it is gratifying for TeachersFirst to be involved with a positive group of teachers who do not need to worry, even under the most restrictive policies. So welcome to all of you…we truly are glad to see you here! Check out the project members page to see who else is among us.

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

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”!

Thank you!

S. Ryall

Thanks, Susan

If you would like to see the skeleton of my project just go to

http://tf.trintuition.com/slafaso/GATE

our theme is “Reach for the Stars”

I would appreciate any feedback

There’s a collection of screens for experimenting, a large image of a bee, and the Gettysburg address as an example of saved text.

Finally at the bottom of that initial list, you’ll find the Quick Start Menu. It’s a link that opens tutorial materials. Double-click on it, and the menu opens in another window.

Each of the blue boxes in the menu is a link to help materials on a basic topic. They include how to Start a Project, Add an Image, Add Text, Add Screens, Make Links, etc.

Click on any blue box, and you go to those help materials. To get back to the Quick Start Menu, click on the Menu button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. That will take you to the main menu for project building. There is a big, blue button there as well for returning to the Quick Start Menu.

We are about to begin replacing these text-based help materials with video. Nothing quite matches the simplicity and clarity of watching someone actually do exactly what you want to. For now, we hope the step-by-step text descriptions help get you started quickly.

As a BLP member, you may embark on an idea that is completely original and that no one has ever done before. One of the roles for our blog will be to help you plan and implement those exciting ideas. As an initial step in thinking about projects, let’s investigate in general terms some of the possibilities that both you and other teachers who are using the workBench have suggested or tried.

Teacher, class, and school websites. Add to the list websites for extracurricular activities: the Chess Club, the Pep Squad, the Save the Earth Club. “Website” suggests a “long-term, or permanent, web presence.” The workBench makes it possible to continually update and expand a website’s content without outside expertise or a daunting commitment of time and energy. Evolving and changing content avoids the shortcoming of many such websites: they often remain static for so long that the information in them becomes stale and dated.

One interesting idea we’ve heard: a guidance counselor wants to create a website to support seniors in the college application process. She wants both English and Spanish versions. To create the second version, she will be able to open the website project in the workBench, do a “Save As,” and immediately make a second copy of the entire website. Then she can substitute Spanish text for the English - or visa versa, and an “English or Spanish” menu can steer students and parents to one version or the other.

Digital literary magazines, class or school newspapers, class or school yearbooks. Shifting traditional publications to a digital environment saves printing costs and can make content accessible online to the whole school community - and the world. An interesting design challenge is to rethink the print versions, which are in a “portrait” (larger vertically) format into a “landscape” (larger horizontally, shaped like a computer screen) format.

Digital versions offer the advantage of making it easy to combine images and text, as well as grow and modify existing content. The workBench makes it possible to download, share, and run such projects offline, so that students can have personal copies of such products on a memory stick or CD that will open offline in a browser window.

Art galleries, portfolios, scrapbooks. At any point while creating a workBench screen, you can copy and paste it - use it like a template – so that you can create a screen with all the common design and navigational elements in it for a gallery, portfolio, or scrapbook. Then copy it and paste it into the same project as many times as you like. Finally, put in the variable content and create the navigational links.

Very important for portfolios is the workBench’s ability to download and run projects offline. A student portfolio on a CD can be sent in with a college application. Any project (better in its zipped, or compressed, form) can be shared as an email attachment as well. The recipient doesn’t need a workBench account to open the project. It travels with it’s own mini-workBench reader.

Student projects. Research in brain and cognitive science has solidly demonstrated that students don’t learn optimally as passive recipients of pre-configured knowledge. They learn best when they have opportunities to evaluate, manipulate, transform, personalize, and share what they are learning.

Essential questions and project-based learning are an outgrowth of this very active and engaged perception of teaching and learning. The workBench’s digital environment makes it possible for students to create projects with rich, multimedia content. It also enables them to plan and work in teams and combine screens into larger group projects that can be shared with fellow students locally and/or online across any distance.

Why not have student create digital resources for peers that evolve over time? Next year’s class reads, uses, and adds to the digital resource library that this year’s class (or the last five year’s classes) created.

In addition to sharing over time, a natural next step in the creating and sharing of student projects is linking classes over a distance and comparing local and distant research about any topic – student life, school, local history, culture, climate, geography, geology, etc.

Pen pals, journals, and homework. You can share workBench projects with an individual or a group simply by dragging and dropping them over the individual’s or group’s icon. The recipient of a shared project then sees it in his or her “Shared with me” list.

Everything in the “Shared with me” list is a reference, like a bookmark. Double-click on a project there, and the other person’s project opens (in reader, not editing, mode). If the person adds to or changes the project, that new information is immediately available.

If two people share projects with each other, they each have an open, one-way channel for sharing web screens back and forth, which is good for pen pals, journals, and digital homework.

It’s easy to add a link in a workBench project to a blog. There may be very interesting ways of combining this open-ended sharing of content with a blog for projects that involve visiting digital scholars and artists.

We haven’t mentioned yet possibilities for teacher teams to create and disseminate curriculum and professional development materials online, support for new teachers in the field through a digital community with open lines of communication, linking organizations that aren’t schools but that have an educational mission (museums, intervention programs, etc.) to schools – once again, the options are really unlimited and open-ended.

Let us know how we can help.