How Are We Doing?

Many of us are in our first week of school and the NFTE program for school year 2009-10 is in full swing. Id like to hear some of the things many of you did in class this week. I am not sure if many of you are familiar with the Moodle program but it's a free open source online classroom. With my population of students, it helps when they have the ability to interact with their NFTE class at anytime day or night. If any of you are interested in learning how to take advantage of this great technology tool please let me know.

This year I am taking a different approach. For the first two weeks I am teaching my students how to learn. By helping them understand what type of learner they are (Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, or Kinesthetic)I can adjust my teaching method to better reach them while at the same time giving them an understanding of themselves. This ties into how an entrepreneur has to deal with employee's. Please feel free to login into my online class as a guest by accessing the following link:


http://moodle.k12hsn.org/login/index.php

Once you are at this site click on "log in as guest"

Locate "West Fresno Elementary" school district in the list.

You will see my NFTE class here, click on the title.

Feel free to explore the site, you cannot hurt anything so go through and look at all parts of the course.

I am requiring that students do weekly postings and they will complete replies to case studies that are located in our NFTE materials.

Useful Links

These are some useful links that I have found that has some great resources.

http://www.k12hsn.org/calaxy/ This is a great resource page with a lot of free resources for teachers.

If you have been following the new legislation on state approved online books, you can follow and download approved books at www.clrn.org. The California Learning Resource Network has information and links to State Approved pdf books that can be used in your course at no charge.

If you want to create free interactive voting polls via cell phones that show real time results you can use http://www.polleverywhere.com/ It's really cool and it can be used when soliciting votes on class projects or issues.

I hope that these resources will help you to better your teaching experience this year. Please feel free to email me at vpage@agapecorp.com or call at 559 230-3007 if you have any questions or comments. Thank you.

New School Year

Welcome to the NFTE central valley network of teachers. I apologize for not making the first meeting, but evidently traveling this summer had an affect on my return. I will be back in action Monday. It is my understanding that many of you had the opportunity to take a look at the site and possibly had a chance to view the features of this site. For those that do not know me, my name is Verles Page and I am the Technology Director for Agape Inc. charter schools (W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson). This will be my fourth year with NFTE and it's an amazing program. With this site, we can share best practices, create online meetings and have guest speakers. If you would like anything added to this site, please feel free to let me know. My office number is 559 230-3007 and my email is vpage@agapecorp.com or mrpage1775@gmail.com. You can also contact AJ or Janelle if you need any additional assistance pertaining to the course.

Take a moment to share some best practices from the senior teachers that have taught the course and expectations from the newer teachers who are about to embark on teaching the course. Discuss challenges that you have had and solutions you have found. I will continue to monitor and moderate discussions throughout the year in addition to updating this site with new tools and NFTE information as it comes. I look forward to an outstanding year. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Verles Page
Technology Director
Agape Inc.