ACTEM's popular NoteShare Server is online and open to all.
To access it through NoteShare, the address is: noteshare.actem.org
All public notebooks have the password set to: actem
notebook on ACTEM's Server.
If you are a New England school interested in purchasing academic licenses for either NoteShare or NoteShare Server, email: cdickinson@actem.org for a quote.
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AquaMinds Software co-founder Scott Love with Crystal Priest at the June 2007 Middle Level Institute in Orono.
With the rapidly expanding popularity of ACTEM’s NoteShare online collection and the release of NoteShare Server on February 12, 2008, it seems timely to capture the thoughts of one of NoteShare’s first users and the manager of the ACTEM NoteShare Server, Crystal Priest of MSAD #4, Guilford, Maine.
Question: Crystal, tell us a little bit about your role in your school district and overall with Maine's technology in the classroom programs?
Crystal Priest: I'm the district technology coordinator for SAD #4. SAD #4 is a small district (about 800 students) in the woods of central Maine. As far as my role in SAD #4, I'm sort of a "Jill of all trades" type of character, as are many tech. coordinators. SAD #4 has laptops for all K-12 staff and we are running a 1:1 laptop program for all kids in grades 4 -12. So, I spend a lot of time up to my neck in iBooks! I also deal with all sorts of other technology related projects around the district. It's a very interesting job because what I'm doing changes from day to day and sometimes from one minute to the next. Our middle school - Piscataquis Community Middle School -was the first
school in the state to have a 1:1 program back in 2000, thanks to a generous donation from a local company - Interface Fabrics.
We were the original MLTI pilot school, before the MLTI program actually existed. PCMS was also one of the original MLTI exploration schools and I served on both the MLTI Design Team and as an MLTI Regional Integration Mentor for the first few years of that project. Our high school - Piscataquis Community High School - was the first high school in the state to start a 1:1 laptop program in 2002. I'm still fairly involved in the MLTI program and also occasionally work as an Apple Professional Developer for MLTI to help deliver training around the state.
On the ACTEM side of things, I'm currently serving as ACTEM's vice president and admin of ACTEM's NoteShare server. ACTEM is a great group to be involved with. I know I've found it to be an extremely valuable resource over the years as I was learning the ropes of my job and to keep up to date on what's happening in the world of technology.
Question: How long have you been using NoteShare?
Crystal Priest: Well, that's kind of hard to say. I've been using NoteTaker for several years, ever since it first came out, I think . . . It really has been a lifesaver for me. I keep track of all my techie-type stuff in one notebook and it really helps organize me. Considering that organization generally escapes me, this is a major feat! It is also flexible enough so that it doesn't force me to be organized in any one particular way. My main notebook was created in 2003 and has about 250 pages of totally random stuff shoved into it. It isn't pretty, it isn't anything that anybody else would be able to deal with organizationally, and it is definitely not something I'd showcase as a great
example, but because of the way NoteTaker finds stuff I can get what I need out of it within seconds and I'm so used to using it that I know I've put whatever I need in there. I think I started using NoteShare about a year or two ago, whenever it first became available. In both cases, Doug Snow at Apple was the instigator who introduced me to the products. I really ought to thank him sometime.
Question: What's your experience with NoteShare and classroom use among your teachers and staff?
Crystal Priest: Well, that's been rather hit or miss. Some teachers get the concept and really find uses for NoteShare in their classroom. Others don't seem to be as willing to jump in. One of the really cool things about being involved in MLTI and ACTEM is that I get to see what teachers are doing around the state, not just in my own school district and there are some really interesting notebooks and uses out there. One of the things that really caught on in my district this year is that teachers are using NoteShare to organize their curriculum and many are starting to drive their coursework from a notebook. They have all their resources, lesson plans, activities, handouts, etc. in a notebook, some of
them have sections that they folio out to give to students at various times in the unit. One teacher is using a shared notebook to collect and share podcasts that students are doing in class. Students seem to follow the same pattern; some find it very useful for keeping track of their stuff while others don't seem to get the concept. I think staff development and training are going to be keys to building better understanding of the power in this product.
QUESTION: You were an early user (beta site) for NoteShare Server? What was that like? Was the set-up difficult or complicated? What kind of hardware or software was required?
Crystal Priest: Yes, I started working with the alpha version on the ACTEM server this past summer and then set up my school's server in the early fall with a beta version. The beta program was a really interesting experience. We'd run into problems or have questions about the beta software and I'd send off an email to Scott Love at Aquaminds, a few hours later we'd have an answer or he'd have something to fix or a new feature to add to the software. Great response time and a great company to work with.
The server setup was really easy - it took maybe 15 minutes to set up and half of that was reading the couple of pages of instructions. Both of the servers are Mac Minis with the standard OSX client on them, they have the NoteShare Server program running on them as well as NoteShare Express so that people who don't have NoteShare can read the notebooks. I've also set up the SAD #4 server with Apple Remote Desktop because I don't have a monitor or mouse connected to it and to make accessing it for software updates and troubleshooting easier.
Question: You have been building and managing ACTEM's NoteShare Server site and it's growing almost daily. What kinds of notebooks and resources will ACTEM members find there?
Crystal Priest: A wide variety of notebooks. Currently we have 57 different notebooks being served off the server. Barbara Greenstone and Phil Brookhouse have contributed a wide variety of notebooks which they developed as part of their work with the MLTI project. The notebooks in the Barbara Greenstone Collection tend to be about literacy, and differentiated instruction. She also has a NEASC self-study notebook posted there that has been very popular with high schools. The high schools have to do a whole school study to get their NEASC accreditation and it is a very lengthy process. Several schools have had us set up a private space for them on the ACTEM server just for this particular
notebook. The Phil Brookhouse collection houses primarily math and science related resources. Phil has a couple of notebooks that show off the features of the MLTI image, and a couple of other notebooks that utilize DataStudio, for example. There is also a collection of public notebooks that various teachers have asked us to share out and we have posted a notebook with all of the Project SEED packets. Project SEED was a grant based project that ran in the state for several years. The grant is over, but the curriculum packets developed through that grant remain available to everyone through this notebook. There are currently six different schools with a private space on the ACTEM server. They haven't set up a server of their own yet, but they are taking full advantage of the opportunity to use ACTEM's server to build up support in their schools for investing in their own server. We are always looking for more notebooks to share
with others and try to make it as easy as possible for users to add to our collection. At some point in the near future, I really need to create a notebook that has a brief explanation of all the other notebooks.
Question: How should schools think about NoteShare Server vs NoteShare vs other tools? Is it something they can start using now? What advantages do you see for teachers and staff using a NoteShare Server approach?
Crystal Priest: NoteShare is something they can start using anytime. Basically, all 7-12 teachers in the state have access to NoteShare on their MLTI laptops, so access to the software isn't an issue for them. NoteShare server is really the next step beyond. From what I've seen, with most people it is a two step process - they start building notebooks in NoteShare and then reach a point where they want to share out and the server really steps sharing up to a whole new level. Sharing using NoteShare is great for quick and easy, on the fly, small group types of sharing. But it also tends to be quirky in schools with multiple base stations, different vlans, firewalls, filters, and all other kinds of
configurations that teachers may not understand. Also, teachers quickly want to be able to share out notebooks 24/7 but they also need their laptops for other things. So the server takes care of both of those issues very neatly.
As far as using NoteShare vs NoteShare Server vs other tools, that's another whole ball of wax. It really comes down to understanding what you have for tools and what they are capable of doing well. Like the old saying goes, "if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. . . "People really need to understand what NoteShare does well and what it doesn't do so well before they can make really good decisions between NoteShare and other tools. Once you understand NoteShare, NoteShare Server is a really easy concept to grab onto. I find that we end up using combinations of tools. We have notebooks that are stored in Filemaker databases as part of our curriculum database. We have teachers who will folio out sections of their notebooks and email them to students.
We have a couple of notebooks that are published to the web from the NoteShare Server and will soon be linked to the district website because it is easier to deal with the content and updates in NoteShare then it is to deal with the software on our district webserver. One of the issues that we are going to have to deal with is that our few Windows users in the district can only read notebooks that are hosted on the server through either the web interface or NoteShare Express. As we create more mission-critical notebooks, we will need full Windows access to NoteShare documents.
Question: How can schools and teachers gradually approach the use of NoteShare and NoteShare server in their classrooms? What are some best practices?
Crystal Priest: Well, from what I've observed, teachers tend to start off with notebooks that are centered around some kind of personal use like keeping track of their plans or classroom notes. Then they branch out to using NoteShare as an organizing tool for themselves. It usually takes awhile before they are ready to share notebooks with others and there is another step before they get into full collaboration mode in a shared notebook. It also helps teachers if they can see other people's notebooks to get some idea of what is possible with NoteShare. That's one of the reasons that Barbara Greenstone and Phil Brookhouse have put their notebook collections up on the ACTEM NoteShare Server - to provide
teachers with a collection of possibilities. Starter notebooks or templates also are a way for teachers to begin using NoteShare; supply them with an outline in a notebook and they have to simply add their content into the correct spots. Shared notebooks with resources in them also help teachers ease into using NoteShare. In SAD #4 we have also put information like the updated Maine Learning Results into subject-specific notebooks on the server and then emailed all staff a bookmark from the shared notebook. That forces them to go to the shared notebook to retrieve the information that they need and in the case of that particular notebook, the information is in a much more accessible format than the state's version. Other notebooks that we've done that with include notebooks that contain the resources for a staff development session, even if the topic of the session has nothing to do with NoteShare. Of course, staff development sessions help
tremendously to increase usage of both NoteShare and NoteShare Server. We've introduced NoteShare to staff in a variety of formats: staff meetings, workshop sessions, after school classes, curriculum development sessions and even one-on-one sessions during a teacher's planning time. Once teachers understand the basics and have had a bit of time to experiment, they really appreciate some less structured staff development time where they can work on their own notebooks with somebody around to help support them.
Question: With NoteShare Server, what are you most excited about with respect to your own school's use?
Crystal Priest: I like the idea that NoteShare and NoteShare Server give staff a really easy way to develop repositories of information and share them just as easily. Our elementary principal has taken the teacher's handbook and re-organized it into a NoteShare notebook that is housed on the server. She can make changes and update the forms in the handbook on the fly and be assured that all teachers have the same version of the handbook. This has allowed her to put a wide variety of resources into the handbook that wouldn't have been in the old teacher's handbook. One of our middle school teachers has developed a staff "yearbook" notebook. It contains the pictures, names, assignments and a
short bio of all the staff members in the district so that people can put names and faces together. New teachers really find this useful to figure out who's who around the district. We have a consultant who works with the district, Elaine Bartley, who has developed a variety of notebooks for staff use and she is currently teaching a grad course for U-Maine on site at our high school. Her course is run through notebooks sitting on our server. It is her repository for handouts and assignments and her students all have a page to turn in assignments. I've started using the server to store techie-type cheat sheets, directions for various programs and that sort of information, so people can go to one spot and get help with their laptops, software, printers, etc. Teachers are really just starting to get rolling on the sharing side of things and I expect that this server will see increased use over the next few months.
Question: To what extent can Windows users utilize the power of NoteShare?
Crystal Priest: Right now, Windows users can read the notebooks on the server if the server is running express viewer or if the notebooks are served out as web notebooks. They can't make any changes, but they can at least view the content. Hopefully NoteShare will become a cross-platform piece of software so that the Windows world can join in and use these notebooks.
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