Digital+Mentors

= = =Web 2.0 Possible Digital Mentors= Steve has been involved in conversations with the following educators who have expressed interest in serving as Digital Mentors for our grant project. We hope to meet one or more of them via videoconference on Wednesday, 9/17/08, during our training session. Prior to that training, please review their bios, check out the links to some of their resources and e-mail Steve at steve.sokoloski@mansfieldct.org with any questions that come to your mind. We hope to have a lively videoconference Q & A on 9/17.

Click on this link to see a Cover It Live conversation with our Digital Mentors on September 17th.


 * Karen Janowski ** is an Assistive & Educational Technology Consultant, from Reading MA. As she puts it “my passion is to remove the obstacles to learning for all students. It is important to make the curriculum accessible to all learners and provide opportunities for struggling learners to demonstrate what they know using principles of universal design”. Karen is a champion of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and believes that Web 2.0 tools present a unique opportunities to help struggling learners. In collaboration with [|Joyce Valenza] she has constructed a wiki - Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Classrooms. You can read more about her work at her blog, [|EdTech Solutions: Teaching Every Student.]


 * Julia Osteen ** teaches 6th grade Language Arts at the Greater Atlanta Christian School. Probably the one Web 2.0 tool she has used consistently over the past 5 years has been a class blog. She is starting a new year with it, but she has some materials from last year available. It can be found at http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=17192. In addition her students have used voicethread, podcasts, wikis, and google pages for various projects and wikis. An example is http://classroombooktalk.wikispaces.com/Fairy+Tales. A focal point of this year for Julia is a class wiki called a Grammar Gurus Wiki. You can see the initial set-up of this here: http://osteenclass.wikispaces.com/Grammar+Gurus. Julia is launching an online course this fall using a wiki - http://powerofweb20tools.wikispaces.com and blogs professionally at http://reflectionsfromthetrenches.blogspot.com/

Prior to her current position, Lucy worked as a primary grade teacher in the Chicago Public Schools and as a middle computer science teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Lucy's professional interests include the incorporation of Web 2.0 and social media technologies in educational settings, multimedia development, assistive technology and global education. She often covers these topics in her postings to the [|Infinite Thinking Machine], a group weblog sponsored by WestEd and Google. In recent years, she has been appointed an Apple Distinguished Educator and Google Certified Teacher. She blogs at [|High Techspectations].
 * Lucy Gray ** is the Lead Technology Coach at the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute. In her current role, she is responsible for the development of a technology professional development program on four University of Chicago Charter School campuses. Lucy also supports technology integration efforts at the North Kenwood/Oakland Charter School.


 * Alice Barr ** is an Instructional Technology Integrator at Yarmouth High school, a 1:1 laptop school in Yarmouth, Maine. She also teaches several courses at the University of Southern Maine that you can read about in her [|The Digital Classroom] blog. One of the classes she taught last summer, Learning to Use Podcasting and Vodcasting for Teaching and Learning used a wiki to organize resources and for collaboration. Along with [|Bob Sprankle] and [|Cheryl Oakes] she is the founder of [|Seedlings: Bit by Bit] a Ning Social Network for Educators. Cheryl, Bob and Alice have just launched a new live show/podcast called Seedlings Live at [|Edtechtalk.com]. It airs Thursday evenings at 7:30 EST and the podcast is available on iTunes the next day