Formative Conference for Janet Walters and Peter Baron

March 29, 2003

Formative conference for Peter Baron and Janet Walters occurred on March 29 in a face-to-face meeting at Region 11.

Peter said, “I am going to teach a class of teachers how to create a web site using Dreamweaver. They will be introduced to file management, the site map, a little Fireworks, tables and templates. Their sites will be accessible on the World Wide Web and will include a picture of themselves, a list of the courses they teach, and links to pages for photos, class rules, assignments and other information as desired. This site will meet the District requirement that each teacher have a home page that is available to the parents.”

Janet shared ideas about the web page requirements at her school: “Teachers are required to have a web page to provide information about assignments to parents and students. Some teachers do a great job, but others depend on the technology director to create it and help make changes. Most create their pages with Word.”

Janet said, “I am going to act as mentor and cognitive coach for a fourth-grade teacher who wants to learn about importing images into documents and making tables and graphs with a computer. I will meet with the teacher to brainstorm for ideas for the project. The students need to be able to read tables and graphs for the TAKS test, so the purpose of the project is to strengthen that skill. After I and the teacher decide on the data that will be used for the table, we will develop specific student outcomes for the project. I will suggest that the students create a word document that will be illustrated with a graphic they import. In addition, they will create a table in the document.”

Peter suggested that the table would be similar to one he has noticed in a math book in which different countries are listed with varying amounts of agricultural production. Janet agreed that such a table would fit the project very well.