Meeting+dates+and+summaries

Meeting #4: January 25th
Topic: Clickers part 2: Summary:

At this meeting we focused on using the clickers and troubleshooting issues. Most people create and tought a lesson without problem. The students were engaged and the lesson was fun. The biggest problem was transferring a file from one computer to another. Often, the images get lost and sometimes the file can’t be found. I emailed Tech Support for e-Instruction and this is what the response was: Hello Donna, Thank you for contacting eInstruction Technical Support. When a CPS lesson is exported (clicking on the Export button under Prepare, Lesson & Assessments) the lesson gets exported in CXM format. You can then save this file in any location that you want. Then you can Import the lesson into any other CPS database by choosing Import (and then selecting this file). Please let me know if you have any other questions or if you need more clarification on this issue. Thank you, **Juan Watson** eInstruction Technical Support For the most part, teachers who are creating a lesson on their laptop, then using the laptop to teach the lesson, will not have a problem. It is only the teachers (or principals) who move to different rooms that will need to do a little extra work so that they can use their lessons on another computer. Brianne mentioned that she downloaded CPS clipart form the website and it looked pretty good. A lot of images that would be useful. I demonstrated a lesson that used CPS for PowerPoint – it allows you to create typical PowerPoint lesson and then insert questions. It is a seamless way to go from a review to a quiz without having to open another problem.

Clickers 1
This meeting focused on how to load the CPS software onto our computers and then how to create a class list. The software is located at: [] The software takes time to load and you must use the teacher login on the laptops – not your own log in. (teacher / teacher/ this computer) Once loaded, you need to create a class roster. You can either add your student’s names or just use numbers. We then reviewed how to create a lesson. This pretty much took up all of our time. Our next meeting will focus on what lesson(s) we created, how they went and troubleshoot any problems people had.

** Summary: **
=== Our second meeting focused on the document camera and how teachers are using it in the classroom. We discussed the pros and cons of using it and also discussed the configuration of the cart that the document camera travels on. It was decided that we would have Paul tweak the current cart to make it more user-friendly and Brianne has also ordered another cart for us to try. === === Overall, the document camera has become quite fun to use for both teachers and students. It gives students a better visual to go with a lesson and allows teachers to present a better visual with little or no extra work involved. Students are more engaged, can see better, and enjoy presenting their own work for the class. ===

Summary:
Our first meeting focused on the wiki and the document camera.
 * We learned how to log into the wiki, why we are using it, how to edit the contents, and how to add files and images. Each club member will be posting their lesson plans to the wiki instead of printing out copies for everyone. Anyone who wants to print out a lesson can do so.
 * Attendance can not be done simultaneously on the wiki, so we will have one computer to sign in on for each meeting.
 * The document camera lesson brought up a lot of discussion and good ideas. We learned how to plug it into an existing laptop cart, how to capture images, and how to video tape a lesson. The drawback is the lack of sound – when recording a lesson; it will only be the movements, not the dialog. The sound component is something that needs to be investigated for the next meeting.
 * Each club member will return to the next meeting with a lesson plan using the document camera. They will share the pros/cons and any other resources they come up with.