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Discussion on Concept

This version was saved 16 years, 8 months ago View current version Page history

Saved by Eric
on August 2, 2007 at 2:09:10 pm

General

In an effort to make this whole thing easy to understand and navigate, I've made some changes. All discussion should take place here. This will allow the front page to not look so cluttered. Additionally, I deleted front page content from this discussion page. This page will only include editorial comments, not actual content.

The way you do this is to make your comment referring back to what you changed on the front page. Any discussion about the change follows under that initial statement and is indented using the "increase indent" button in the menu bar above. Additionally, time stamps along with name may help understand the flow of the conversation. If you have any questions, feel free to comment on them here (below this statement, per this statement) or email me. But please don't quit just because you're having difficulty understanding it. Repairman, if you have any suggestions vis-a-vis that book you're reading and recommending let us know (I'm ordering that book today. I suppose it's not in bookstores). Lastly, I suppose most of you are unfamiliar with the 24-hour (military) time? - Eric, 8:28am CST, Aug 1, 2007

Actually, I'm *very* familiar with military time. It is used in Europe, and, my dad is former military.:) Miss Profe

Ditto that (the Europe part). Military time works for me. - EI

Military time works for me. - Repairman, 11:16 PDT, 02AUG07

The time stamp is something you have to insert yourself manually. I wish there were a plug-in we could use but I haven't found one yet. I was considering using universal time as it would put us all on the same clock. But even after 21 years in the military I hated universal (zulu) time. After your moniker simply place the time (from the 24 hour clock) and your time zone along with the date in this format: HH:MM Time zone, DDMMMYY. - Eric 14:09 CST, 02Aug07

If you're looking for information on the use of a wiki, look no further than wikipedia (not one of my favorite sources but it will give you plenty of information on how to make editorial changes, controlling changes, etc). I have only browsed it, so don't think I'm an expert! - Eric, 8:35am CST, Aug 1, 2007

License

I've gone ahead and placed the license at the top of the front page. This can be changed. Click on the link and see if this is what we want in terms of protection - Eric

--Is everyone okay with this license? Should it be changed? - Eric, 8:22am CST, Aug 1, 2007

I think the license as it stands allows for a free exchange of information and ideas. I have no issue with it. Miss Profe

Welcoming Statement

Welcome Statement will include basic mission statement - Eric

Pages

I added a chat page for us to test out sometime. Thanks for the suggestion Miss Profe! - Eric, 7:57pm CST, Aug 1, 2007

Concept

Changed "actual 'research' papers to "white papers" to reflect a more scholarly(?) effort. - Eric

Perhaps we should define "white papers". It may not be a familiar term to all readers. - EI

Guidelines

b) no political ~~discussions~~ arguments -- Repairman]

My main issue with this is that I don't want to get into the political blame game of who did what to whom and why (i.e., Bushwacking or Clinton-bashing, "dem-controlled congress would do this or republican controlled congress didn't do that." I am so very, very tired of people calling others neocons and moonbats and talking about "kool-aid drinking." This isn't the place for that. However, discussing policy or justifications for legislation is different. Obviously, statements should be supported by evidence. But that should not mean that we use factual statements to incite argument or create a hostile environment where two parties are antagonistic toward each other and would not work together. We have to remember that teamwork is paramount in this endeavor and anything that hinders that should be cast aside!- Eric

I'm on board with that! -- repairman

Well, I think we should put into a discussion protocol what our expectations are for commenting. Which leads to a question: Do we wish to moderate comments, delete comments we don't "like", etc.? Miss Profe

Source Citation

3) Sources will be cited in an ~~abbreviated~~ APA format. (simply put: members will be able to easily find the source) [Let's check what Warlick uses. -- Repairman]

I'm okay with that. I've not read his book yet. Apparently, I should. If he has an easy format then I'm all for it. - Eric.

Okay, here it is: Citation Machine from The Landmark Project (Well, no surprise I guess, David Warlick programmed it.)

http://citationmachine.net/index.php

Here are some samples. I'm citing his web page where we can access SOCM (Son of Citation Machine):

Warlick, David. "Son of Citation Machine." Citation Machine. unk. The Landmark Project. 31 Jul 2007

Warlick, David (unk). APA Web Page. Retrieved July 31, 2007, from Son of Citation Machine Web site: http://citationmachine.net/index.php?source=39&callstyle=2&all=#here Warlick, David. "Chicago." 2006.http://citationmachine.net/index.php?source=148&callstyle=10&all=#here (accessed July 31, 2007).

It's easy to use. Just fill the in the blanks after you've picked a style (MLA, Chicago, et al) and copy what the site formulates. Even if it's not perfect, it's good enough for government work (as my smokejumper climbing partner used to say). ~~We will probably all want~~ Speaking for myself, I'd like to use ~~the same~~ a consistent style in this wiki, so as not to confuse readers. -- repairman (Yellow background is for clarification of preceding strikeout, not for emphasis.)

I was somewhat hoping to not have to deal with MLA, APA, Chicago. I'd like to make it much simplier if possible. If not, than I suppose we can't. That's MLA format if I'm not mistaken. If we're stuck with having to use an established format, then so be it. All we need to do is agree on a format then, whether it's MLA, APA, or Chicago. - Eric

As long as there's Citation Machine I'm cool with it. Especially for website citations, any formal citation is a pain to do from scratch. For the record, APA is the style of choice for education journals, so that would be my vote. My inner language major cringes, but c'est la vie. -Exhausted Intern (EI)

APA eh? Blagh! Okay, then I suppose we should go with APA if we want any hope of having things published in their journals. Additionally, I agree; as long as there is a citation generator for it, I'm okay with it! - Eric, 8:44am CST, Aug 1, 2007

Topic Discussion

Nov - Dec - Jan (???) Some ideas: 1) school/district/classroom culture 2) discipline/classroom management 3) cultural proficiency/competence 4) achievement gap. (Just brainstorming here, I could go on. Take your pick or continue the brainstorm.) - EI

[What about a rolling style for topics? Keep them always open, always developing. We could have cut-offs for final revisions of successive editions of particular "white papers," e.g., on standards-based grading. -- Repairman]

I should explain my rationale behind this quarterly system. Perhaps it doesn't need to be explained as I think it may be obvious, but I wanted to set up a quarterly system so folks could be ready far enough out to discuss chosen topics (e.g. researching, etc), and I was wanting to make it somewhat focus on the topics du jour during those quarters. I'm open to any change in this though. I like your idea, that's fine. Thanks for the use of the term "white paper." That's exactly the term I was looking for but I couldn't remember it! Having final cut-offs for final revisions would work well indeed. -- Eric

Just thinking here...a moderated discussion (say, on Ben Franklin's work ethic) could benefit from prep time, but a consistently controversial topic like SBG might benefit from the rolling model. What do you think? -- repairman

I'm thinking that I'd like to get some input from some of the others I've invited! :) - Eric

Copyright

[I'm thinking that we might want to apply an all rights reserved copyright to the contributing members as far as wiki text goes, but invite readers to make use of the ideas. Eric and I are looking into this. -- Repairman]

Definitely. I went ahead and took a few minutes and set up a draft license. You can click on it and it should take you to a link that will explain the license. If it's not what we want, we can change it. - Eric

Scheduling of Discussions

11) Scheduled Discussions will last no longer than one hour. I'm wondering if there might be some better forum for scheduled discussions than a wiki. I was once involved in a online chat for a political discussion that used some online collaboration suite. It wasn't Yahoo Chat or something like that. But it did use a IRC type format. - Eric