A colleague just sent me the link to http://tinyurl.com/36brmw
I’m am completely for promoting iSafety and certainly support that part of the bill, but it sounds much like another iteration of DOPA, although this time, according to the article, “ed-tech advocates say the current legislation seems to make more sense and marks a more level-headed approach to internet safety.” But do we really need this bill?

In order to qualify for e-rates, my district, like most districts has for a long time had CIPA/COPA guidelines in place, and we are already in compliance – happily – with California AB 307:

This bill requires that school technology plans
          include a component to educate pupils and teachers on the
          appropriate and ethical use of information technology in
          the classroom, Internet safety, the manner in which to
          avoid committing plagiarism, the concept, purpose and
          significance of a copyright, and the implications of
          illegal peer-to-peer network file sharing.  Districts would
          not be required to change existing plans until their
          current plan expires or is voluntarily replaced.

How much more legislation do we need?

Technorati Tags: DOPA

National Writing Project and Nat’l Council for Teachers of English hosted their annual conferences last week in New York City. What a treat! I managed to squeeze in some sightseeing coming and going from the hotel to the Crowne Plaza and the Javits Convention Center, and each evening, and all day on Sunday. And even managed a side trip to The Dalton School to visit with Monica Edinger’s 4th graders.

From each NWP and NCTE session, I gained resources and ideas for presenting Web 2.0 tools to teachers and students. Here’s a smattering:

• My kick-0ff Thursday session was an outstanding presentation by NWP Tech Liaisons sharing projects under the umbrella of Writing in a Digital Age. Starting with Kevin’s link to the Pew Internet and American Life Project stats –http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/105/presentation_display.asp and ending with Petter Kittle’s amazing “multimodal” piece on the art of unicycling (note to self: check with Peter to see if he has posted this and samples from his composition class to the web), this session was a great way to start the conference.
• Friday morning started with Nancy Patterson’s NCTE session. This was my first time to meet Carla Beard (http://www.webenglishteacher.com/about.html) and Lisa Rozema. Carla started her session on wikis by playing Lee Lefever’s Wikis in Plain English, which drew the audience right into Carla’s humorous, informative presentation (note to self: ask Carla for links to sample teacher wikis shared). Lisa Rozema ended the session with her original screencast on Google Reader (note to self: ask Lisa if she has posted this clip online).
• Saturday’s Technology Roadshow, organized by Sandy Hayes, was a blast. I wanted to drop in all six table discussions. During the opening presentations, I listened in awe as Sarah Kajder talked briefly about Google Lit Trips. Although I’ve visited the site before, had not considered how dramatic this site is when projected onto a full screen. (Note to self: ask Nancy Patterson if she has posted her student-done “digital narratives” to the web.)
• Monday’s ACE (Assembly on Computers in English) session – well worth the added cost of two more days in NYC!
  • Got to meet Ted Nellens (http://www.tnellen.com/westside/), who hosted the session at his Westside HS campus.
  • Got to hear Lisa Rozema present again – this time joined by her husband Rob Rozema (whose student-done podcasts I share with teachers and students alike). To their Google Reader intro, Rob and Lisa added a piece on having students use RSS both for news feeds and blogs to support students in their research projects (note to self: ask Lisa for student samples of blog posts and responses supported by links to articles and posts from their GR accounts).
  • Got to hear Troy Hicks demonstrate the “frustrating parts of wikis” with his reassurance that the “frustration was reversible.” (Note to self: ask Troy for permission to share the wiki he created for this workshop.)
  • Got to work with Ewa McGrail on Copyright and Fair Use Issues for Educators (note to self: ask Ewa for permission to share her activity sheet, which is a hands-on approach to PD on this important issue).

I’m back home now, fighting a terrible head cold but excited to bring with me such great resources to share with my California colleagues, along with memories of the NYC experience.

Leni Donlan died earlier this week. Leni was my introduction to the Library of Congress. She was a source of inspiration, my mentor, and my friend. In looking through my email, I see that I have kept messages from Leni as recent as last spring and as distant as 1999, when I headed back to the Library of Congress for a week-long summer institute, a week I will never forget.

In my last blog entry, I talked about my Time of Remembrance project, a website that is this month’s focus of both my district’s website and the wonderful SECC’s BESTNet site. What I neglected to mention was that during my first year in the Elk Grove School District, the year I met Marielle Tsukamoto, I also applied and was accepted to the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project. Leni was one of the project directors. The end product of my week at the LOC was the online lesson Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself. Leni was my “thinking partner” and generously gave of her time to share the importance of students having access to primary sources in order to construct their own understandings of history and how it relates to them.

Last spring, Leni again became a thinking partner as I began to draft a NEH (National Endowment for History) RFP for a grant modeled after the Time of Remembrance project. This time I wanted to focus on the women of World War II. Leni helped me, from start to finish, with the Rosie the Riveter: United and Divided on the Home Front proposal. We were not funded, but I never regretted a moment spent on the effort because it was such a privilege to be co-designing and writing with Leni.

I am too sad about her passing right now to go back and read through her emails. But I will keep them, eventually revisit them, and treasure them for a long time to come. How lucky I was to have known and worked with Leni Donlan.

Technorati Tags: Leni_Donlan, Library_of_Congress, LOC, American_Memory_Project, TOR, Time_of_Remembrance