Introductions

Suzanne Alejandre

Dear All,

My goals for the week:

Keep up with everyone! Make connections with people who are committed to using the Internet and its resources. Focus on a project that I can build on when I return and work with students. I know that when you are immersed in a project without the realities of a classroom environment all seems possible -- I want to relate it back to a teaching environment.

I would like to accomplish...

a more complete feeling of what currently is on the Web that is significant for K-12 geometry and what needs are currently not met -- from my experience on the Web this would take more than a week if working alone -- I guess what I really mean is that with guidance and working with a group I will learn and experience much more than if I were alone.

I would like to learn...

how others have used WWW with students in a classroom setting. I already enjoyed reading Steve Means description of his students WWW site. enough html so that I can contribute to improving the Rialto Unified School District web page.

Want to be able to take away.....

feelings of confidence and competence on a level that I can handle. Whenever I work with a group of people the entry levels are so different and yet it is possible to increase everyone's skills if the material is presented using an open-ended approach.

Some background on me:

I am an 8th grade computer/newspaper teacher working in a Macintosh Lab in Rialto, California. Rialto is about an hour and a half east of Los Angeles (near San Bernardino). I have done this for 3 years but previously have taught a variety of junior high or middle school math classes of which my favorite was Math A (It is a manipulative, activity based class for 9th grade students not in Algebra or Geometry).

I have a husband, Richard, who is an eighth grade English/ newspaper teacher at a rival middle school in Rialto. We have two sons, Niko who is 18 and Lee who is 16. They both have been home-schooled. From 1981 to 1984 we lived in Dortmund, Germany and from 1984 until December of 1987 we lived in Barcelona, Spain. During that time I shared a job with my husband at the Berlitz School of Languages teaching conversational English.

What are you coming with already:

As you can see from my background description, I have never been a geometry teacher in the formal sense!...however...geometry is a dominant strand in Math A.

What have you done?

Most recently I have been involved in a planning grant called the California Math Show. It has been an interesting and stretching experience. The idea was to create a traveling, hands-on math show that could go to schools and other public places to popularize mathematics. I was one of the co-directors and the K-12 connection along with two professors from Cal State Univ at San Bernardino. If you are interested the URL is

http://www.math.csusb.edu

This was all the brain-child of Dr. Susan Addington! Unfortunately we did not receive the full implementation grant, so, the project is on hold until we write and receive another grant!

What are your experiences?

My experiences as far as the Internet include using FrEdMail - I continue to keep an interest in this Free Educational Network now run by the Global Schoolhouse Network, because it is FREE and will run on very simple equipment. In Rialto we have 2 high schools, 4 middle schools and 16 elementary schools and they have all kinds of different equipment from Apple Plus computers with 48K up to Power Macs with 32 MB of RAM. Some have ISDN lines (my site just had one installed but won't be operational until the end of July -- great timing!) and others don't even have a phone line available for teacher use. Anyway, my hope is to help the schools that have minimal equipment get on line using FrEdMail. I just became the Asst. SysOp so that I can help maintain the node we have in Rialto.

America Online - for awhile was my only stable email address
CSUNet which is now officially called CORE+ -- It is a service run through the California State University system and it continues to improve. Their URL is

http://www.coreplus.calstate.edu

Because of the CA Math Show I have worked a little on Suns using UNIX at Cal State. I don't feel too proficient but it is less foreign than it had been!

By the way, Rialto has a home page, too, which they just made. It has quite a few rough edges but ...it is at

http://www.rialto.k12.ca.us

--Suzanne -- E-mail me

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