Example of Linking

Check out this great ESL page.

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

This program has helped me both professionally and personally. I know so much more about computers. I had very little experience with Web 2.0 applications and used mostly the applications on my computer. I also just taught the applications that were on the computers at school. I now incorporate many Web 2.0 tools at all grade levels. I am increasing the number of lessons that require collaboration, both online and off. I feel that my students are getting so much more out of my class than they had in previous years. I have been asked to help change the curriculum to make it compliant with the ISTE standards. I'm really excited to do this and can't wait to get started! (Plus they're going to pay me to do it ;) ) If I had to choose a topic that we had delved into deeper, it would have been networking and security. I know very little about either. My husband is the IT Admin for a college, so he know all of that stuff and handles our needs at home. I would have liked to have learned more about this so that when I talk to the techs at school I don't sound like an idiot. They aren't very friendly, they are just like Nick Burns. The most surprising thing about this program to me was that I somehow found time to do all of my work, and do it well, and still work full time and keep all of my other commitments. It was satisfying to be able to complete this degree in only two years and to come out knowing so much more.
So,
Au revoir, uff werrergugge, bai bai, tot straks, hasta luego, and 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01100010 01111001 01100101.

The end is near!

My culminating project is finished and I'm working on adding the final touches to my portfolio. I'm then going to transfer it, and all of my work, to a my personal google account(s). As this program comes to an end, I can't help but be a little sad. It's become such a 'normal' part of my daily life that I don't know what I'm going to do with my time!

I can honestly say that I've put most of what I've learned these past two years to use in my classroom. I am a technology teachers, so I obviously use computers daily with my students, however, I've begun to question the 'status quo' for our technology program. We are teaching to the old standards and they are just not good enough. I've had multiple discussions with our district technology coordinator, who is also one of the vice superintendents, and he is on board with me initiating some major changes. He has asked a peer of mine, as well as myself, to rethink the scope and sequence of our program this summer and find out where we are lacking in the way of 21st Century Skills. It's going to be a daunting task, but I feel, due mainly to this program, I'm up for it!

It's done!

I'm done with my project! It turned out great. I have one lesson for each grade level on Internet safety and all the lessons incorporate the use of technology. I am relieved to have it finished and feel wonderful. I am excited to implement the lessons and see what changes need to be made, because as all teachers know, even the best planned lessons will need to be changed slightly once you try them out with the students. I look forward to seeing everyone's finished projects on May 2nd and to graduation and having my life back :)

Culminating Project Week 2

This past week I have gotten a lot done with my project. I am splitting my time between researching, creating, and collaborating. I have finished my lesson for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. You can view them here. I am having such a fun time researching and looking at activities, videos, and lesson ideas. I am excited that I get to do more work on this over the summer, creating digital citizenship lesson on cyberbullying and copyright and fair use lessons, as well. :) I'm going to keep this brief, as I am working on the research part of my second grade lesson right now.

Here are some great videos I have found that I am using:
http://ikeepsafe.org/assets/videos/?vid=fauxpaw_video







http://www.netsmartzkids.org/rbs/watch_rbs.htm

599 Week One - And We're Off!!!!

I met with Louis yesterday and got some great feedback from him on my project. I was relieved to hear that he thought my goal was too ambitious for the time period, which was a sneaking suspicion I had when I realized the class was only four weeks! I am up and running with my project and am in the research phase. I am just amazed at the abundance of resources for teaching Internet safety. I definitely have my work cut out for me. I think the best tactic will be to focus on my end product (thanks to Louis for this advice) and work backwards. I'm thinking of wiki pages for fourth grade and videos for fifth, but that's all I've got so far. I have had a busy week and am throwing a bridal shower tomorrow, so I'm squeezing school work into all the gaps between work and commitments. Luckily, I have a pretty tame week next week and will get a ton of work done then.

WEMTA Conference 2011

Hi all! I'm at the WEMTA conference today and tomorrow and wanted to share the highlights with you!

I created this google site to track the highlights.

Leadership Final Thoughts

Before this class, I never thought much about the roles of teachers as informal and formal leaders. We all know who those informal leaders we have in our buildings are. But, how did they get there? What makes them successful leaders? Why do people follow their lead? I think that these informal leaders, to some extent, have more clout with their peers than the formal leaders. They stepped up to the plate and took control of some aspect of their building and others followed their lead, without 'having' to do so. That's real power. I believe that teacher leaders can be instrumental in internal changes within a school or organization. They can get buy-in easier than administration can. They 'know' what really goes on in a building. They know where changes to need to be made. They know who the 'rocks' are.

I would like to be a leader, but I sometimes have too strong of opinions for some peoples tastes. I have a hard time getting some of the 'rocks' to buy into my ideas. I feel like I now have the tools to change the way I lead others and that I could take on a leadership role. The biggest problem I face is that I teach a 'specials' class and I switch buildings each year. It's hard to gain any recognition or respect from staff when you are this 'young computer nerd' who just shows up in their building trying to make changes. Also, lots of people, even other teachers, don't view me as a 'real teacher' because I don't have a classroom teaching job. I don't understand this mentality and it frustrates me to no end! I have the same degree as them, know 'a little bit about everything' just as all elementary school teachers do, but I also have a specialized degree. They teach 23 kids, I teach 554. How does that make me less of a teacher? But I digress...






















I think that the only way to improve schools is from within. What is going on in our government in Wisconsin right now is going to destroy education. From all that I have heard from people who don't work in schools, they have *no* idea how they operate. I know that changes need to be made, but why not ask the experts to make those changes? At least to get the process going? We live it every day. We know what needs to change and many of us have great ideas to do it. We make changes every year to improve our students' performance. We work to better ourselves every year to improve student performance.

CEDO565 - Week 5

This week has been very trying on me. I had two after school functions that I had to take part in until 8 pm both last night and tonight. I found out today that all my hard work for this masters degree will not give me the raise as it is stated in our pay scale, because our district will not have the money to pay me for it after the budget cuts take effect. I have been counting on that raise to cover the cost of the tuition I borrowed for this degree.

What I learned this week:
Leadership matters. Good leaders do what is in the best interest of the majority and take the time to really figure out what that is. They don't decide what is best based on their particular beliefs, they take into account all facets of an issue. The Republicans did not do that. They did not take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of public employees that they would be financially devastating with this bill. All they see is the bottom line. There are people attached to this, not just money. And what about the children. Is anyone thinking about what is best for our kids?? People don't understand how much money it takes to run a school.

System-wide changes need to be done in a systematic matter, which careful planning. Had our government worked together, bipartisan, to come up with realistic, effective, and revolutionary ways to save money and generate new income for our state, we would be in a lot better shape and our state would not be literally torn in two. I think the simulation game we played in class made this so much clearer to me.


The change game was somewhat frustrating, but in the end, my team, who was so fabulous, figured out that the key to successful change is communication and collaboration.

Change Game

Wow, that change game is very difficult! I love strategy games, though, so I'm enjoying it very much. I learned a lot this week about systematic changes and how to effectively plan for and start a change. We need to change over our curriculum for K-5 Technology Enrichment and I think following the steps that I have learned this week will help this go much smoother. I've mapped out this surriculum change process in my head:

1. Assess our current curriculum on the basis of aligning to national standards.
2. Locate any gaps in our curriculum.
3. Get the rest of the team on board with the change.
4. Create/locate additional activities/lessons that will fill the gaps.
5. Train staff on new resources.
6. Implement.
7. Assess student progress towards the standards.
8. Adjust.
9. Repeat 7 and 8.

I'm not sure if I need to assess the students in the beginning or not. I'm thinking not, because we're solely looking at changing to meet the standards. We will need to, however, put a few common formative assessments into the curriculum and adjust as needed. I'm hoping by taking these steps, there will be fewer bumps in the road.

I loved the motivational leadership chapter in our book. We do a lot of these things in our school, not led by our administrator, but rather as a team effort to increase morale and support one another. We all have t-shirts that say READ on them, which we wore for our group picture.

Change

This week I have learned a lot about change. Being a Millenial, I don't fear change, I actually embrace it! I have never taught the exact same thing twice. As the times and tech change, so does my curriculum. Now, that's not to say I need to try the "big shiny" (aka the newest thing to flash in front of my face) as Kylie puts it :) , however, I do like to dabble in the newest of the new and see how it fits into my curriculum.

Millenials take this quiz ;) My millenial score is 84!

We are going through massive changes in education right now. The budget "crisis" is forcing our districts to make some tough decisions that will impact all of us. How we handle these changes defines who we are. I, for one, plan to overcome any hardship that may occur in my life due to these circumstances. I will change for the better. I will still make my classroom productive and fun, no matter how many children I have to teach at once. I will still find a way to make a connection to each child and help them succeed.

The leadership in my district has been doing a pretty good job during this change. They have kept us informed and optimistic, but not overly so. They are being honest with us and letting us know the 'what if's'.

I am in the process of creating some change in my district in our curriculum. I am getting resistance from the "senior" members of our team, but the curriculum director and assistant superintendent want me to take this leadership opportunity and make these changes. I am going to need all that I am learning in this course to make this work!

Data, data, data!

This week I have looked at so much school data. I've looked at my school, my district, and the state, as well as taking a little stroll down to visit the the national scores. I am disheartened to see that the achievement gap between Hispanics, African Americans, and whites still prevails. I see it in my district's test scores.

The reading scores of 17 years old's nationally show the startling gap that has prevailed over the years.

The question is, what do we do to close this gap? I know in my district we have interventions in place at all grade levels, but with class sizes increasing, it is hard to make certain that you are meeting the needs of all children. I know that most teachers "catch" the lower scoring student quickly, but it can be hard to get services for the most severe cases ie. special ed referral. There are those "bad" teachers who do nothing and notice nothing, but they are not the norm, at least not in my school.
I enjoyed the chapters that I read in the book this week. They were interesting so they were an easy read and very informative. I don't know if I'll ever be a formal teacher leader, but all of these skills will help me to be a better informal one.

All of this data talk got me thinking about the data we keep in the Technology department of our elementary schools. It's minimal. We formally assess the fourth and fifth graders on their typing skills and technology enrichment projects. I feel as though we should be assessing each grade level based on the national and/or state standards. The issue with this is getting everyone on board and that would be hard because we each have 14-25 different classrooms that we teach. That is a lot of individual assessing. I think it would be worth it, though, to be able to make sure that each student was getting the opportunity to learn the technology that we teach. I also think we need to be doing common formative assessments at fourth and fifth grade so that we can be sure all students are leaving us for the middle schools with a similar skill set. This would be immensely helpful for the middle school computer teachers.

Leadership and Planning Week 1

Where to begin?!

This week I learned a lot about what it takes to be a good leader, theoretically. I learned about the qualities and virtues a good leader must possess, and what leadership qualities I possess. I was happy with the qualities that I was found to have through the assessment that we did. I was not, however, pleased with my virtues placement. I was told that I would not be a good leader because of the Supportive part of Dynamic Supportive. However, in the book, it says that good leaders are supportive, so that was really confusing to me.

I do need to learn to be more impartial. I have very strong opinions, though I am willing to listen to others, I tend to keep my own opinion, at least I see this politically. I constantly get into fights with Republicans :)

I'm not a humble person. It's just the way it is. I don't think I'm the cat's meow or anything, but I'm not submissive by any means. I can laugh at myself and I am vulnerable. I own up to my mistakes [when I make them ;) ] I really enjoyed this blog article about humility. It made me feel better about myself.


So far, I am really liking the book. The first chapter gave me a great overview about what makes a good leader. There is SO much information out on the Internet about leadership and leadership qualities, that I find it hard to discern it all. I found this great post about being a teacher leader at Edutopia :) You might enjoy it as well.

Copying Your ePortfolio to a Different Google Account

Hey gang, follow these directions to copy your eportfolio from Wolfmail to your personal Google account :)

1. Invite your other account as owner
   

   Go to your personal Google Site and use the More Actions button and then Share this site: then add the Google Apps Account e-mail address to the Add people box, choose Is Owner from the drop-down box and use the Share button. For more detailed instructions on how to share a site with other see the Invite people to the site section of Google Sites - Site Sharing and Visibility Options

2. Sign in to your personal Google account
   

   Once you have invited the other account make sure you sign out of your Wolfmail account and sign in to your personal Google account.
   

3. Copy the Site
   

   Use the More Actions button then Manage Site and go to General: use the Copy Site link and complete the form (Site Name, URL and whether you want to keep revisions and sharing) and use the Copy Site button.

Blog 3, CEDO 555

I finished my portfolio!!! I am going to tweak the layout, but other than that, I'm all done. I wish there were more layout options, ones that looked more professional, but I can't complain when the application is free :) I want to change the page layout, but I'm afraid I will lose the page. I guess I will have to be brave and try it out.

I ordered the book for the next class. You can get it from authorized sellers on amazon.com for less than $6.00.

ePortfolio-ing it up

Over winter break I worked on my portfolio just about every day. I figured that it made sense to do a lot of the work and planning when I had free time in large chunks, rather than try to work on it piece-meal throughout the next few weeks. I added my artifacts that cover my standards. I found it difficult, at first, to decide what to use. I wanted quality work that reflected what work I did, but I also wanted to find artifacts that covered more than one standards. For the most part, all of my artifacts do cover one or more standards. I think that is representative of my teaching as, I most projects that my students complete cover multiple standards over multiple disciplines.

I also went ahead in assignments and did the class reflections and linked my artifacts for them. I found it harder to reflect on those classes that we had at the beginning of the program, as we took them so long ago. For some classes, I felt as though I needed to show multiple artifacts either because the artifacts were a small representation of the class or they were really great, in-depth projects.

I need to go through and add a few more artifacts in a few more places, just to add more depth to my portfolio. I stuck between wanting to show a lot of work and knowing that it will be too time consuming for someone to read if there is too much.

This is the second portfolio that I have created in 6 years. My best suggestion to those in the higher ed world who make the decisions is this: Tell the students the gist of portfolio process, maybe giving them some sort of shell, in the beginning or near the beginning of a program. It is so difficult, and I feel less genuine, to have students reflect on work that they did 1 1/2 years ago. Just my two cents ;)