Teachers and Kids Minutes

Teachers and Kids Work Group
November 27, 2001

Present - Joy Bozorgzad, Cathy Watson-Pittman, Paula Whitmer, Becky Stephens, Diane Culbertson, Jane Smith, Barby Hardy, Jan Ross, Susan Brown

Update on KYVL for Kids

The creation of the For Kids area slowed down but may be back on track. There was discussion in KYVL of creating this area with the talent of those that are employed by KYVU and KYVL. If this route were taken, then it would be a longer period of time before it got done. As long as the money exists, it is most expedient to employ outside talent, so that is the direction we are moving.

Drafts of the RFP were shared. We nailed down what we want the portal page to point to - everything currently on the K12 Elementary page (Searchasaurus, Grolier, Magazines in Spanish, Kentuckiana), plus the tutorial and the collection of kids websites.

A small group will help to evaluate the proposals. Diane Culbertson, Barby Hardy and Becky Stevens volunteered.

Discussion of the new K12 pages

These seem to be working for people. There was discussion about making the pages more slick for the elementary and high school students. This would be a good future project. The group would like to add the tutorial to the High School page.

Training

There was also considerable discussion about how to train the K12 community on what KYVL was. Diane told us that David Couch was asking schools if they use KYVL and people did not know what it was. Tanzi Merritt joined the group for this part of the discussion.

We discussed state level presentations at Ky. School Board Administrators meeting, KASA (Ky. Assoc. of School Administrators), KTLC (which has been done in the past) and adding a second day to the Summer refresher.

The audiences that we would like to hit are TRTs, Media Specialists, DTCs (district technology coordinators), principals and administrators, teachers and kids. We must go to a train the trainers model in order to cover all these groups. People who could be trained to train others are TRTs Media Specialists and DTCs. It is also important to educate principles and administrators because they can motivate teachers to learn to use this.

We discussed the idea of an online toolbox for trainers that might include powerpoints for different audiences and purposes, printable handouts, outlines for presentations, etc. Barby Hardy had great idea on a presentation on how to incorporate these resources into the classroom - including coming up with assignments, what sources to use with the different content areas, etc. She would be a good partner in developing the content for the online toolbox. Jeanie Fridell would also be good to talk with since she is out doing training on KYVL already and Wesley Wattell in Hart County.

KYVL for Teachers

We will split the seven core areas by their subcatagories as defined by KDE.

Diane will speak with Susan Lancaster to inquire about using the TRTs (Technology Resource Teachers) to be responsible for specific areas in the Websites. Diane will invite her to the next meeting.

Changes at the semester

Susan announced that the Teachers link will be going away at the semester break and that there would be a new button added to the WebZ interface containing databases geared toward the K-8 group.

Next Meeting

The next meeting is tentatively set for January 30 at 9:30am.

Last updated 11/27/01