CEdO599 Week 4 - My Final Post!!

This is it. My last blog posting for Instructional Technology. I cannot believe all the skills I have learned throughout the last 1 1/2 years. Too many technology skills to name...the many Web 2.0 tools I learned is out of this world! I have applied almost all those tools into my curriculum and also shared them with other teachers in my district. I value all that I have learned in this program, but even more so because Iwas able to share my new knowledge with other staff members!

I believe the Leadership class helped me grow as a person. As the district LMS and Technology Facilitator, I am in a leadership position. However, I've always felt that I'm not as vocal as I should be with my opinions regarding district technology. After taking the Leadership class, I became much more of a vocal advocate and am not afraid of disagreeing with someone on issues that before I would have just gone along with. Also, I am much more aware of what good leadership skills look like and can definitely see that some administrators that I work with could use a leadership refresher course!

Something I wish I knew more about that we didn't really touch on during class is Project-based Learning (PBL). However, this is what my CE project was completely about and now I can say that I have a much better understanding of project-based learning, developing authentic assessments and using technology to integrate PBL skills into curriculum.

Completing this course has been a huge accomplishment for me personally and professionally. I am the only person in my family to obtain at Bachelor's degree, now I can say that about my Master's degree as well! I was afraid that when this class ended, the opportunities for learning new skills would be scarce. But, that is not the case. I have joined many Twitter and RSS feeds that allow me to follow the technology guru's of education and have learned a great deal more digital tools through following these people. The Instruction Technology class may be over, but it has opened to the door to continuous, life-long learning opportunities that I otherwise may have never found. A huge thank-you to Louis Loeffler and all the other professors in the program!!

CEdO599 Weeks 2 & 3

The process of developing my Culminating Project was very challenging. My main goal was too big and I had to shorten it by narrowing my specific objectives, then determining if the objectives would meet the goal. Because I had some pieces already done this summer, I didn't think I would exceed the 30 hour timeframe. Boy, was I wrong! I can definitely say that more than 30 hours was spent in developing the project. Even though I went over my budgeted time, I am happy with the end result and excited to start implementing my project in January.

CEdO599 Week 1

I can't believe it's almost over! I'm going to miss this class...what will I do with my Wednesday nights?? Anyway, my CE project is about developing a coaching program within our district to assist teachers with integrating PBL into their lessons via digital technologies. I started to lay the building blocks last school year, but never got the project up and running, so I decided what better timing than to make this my CE project! Incorporating PBL into our curriculum is part of our district's tech plan and while "PBL" has been buzzing around districts for a while, it's been my experience that many teachers don't know what it is and how to get the essential critical thinking skills into their lessons. I have some experience with PBL and am excited to get other teachers familiar with it and hopefully have more teachers willing to become coaches next year.

CEdO565 Week 6

My definition of leadership has been reinforced by the information learned in the class and the simulation game we participated in. I have a greater understanding for the importance of good leadership skills and how they guide the entire direction of the school. My opinion of leadership potential has not changed as I've experienced first hand how effective good leadership can be in a school atmosphere and how terrible morale and teacher motivation can be as the result of poor leadership. I do agree with the book in regard to "education improving from within". Improvements have to begin at the top in order to filter down to staff and students...only then will change become effective and successful.

CEdO565 Week 5

After analyzing the PDCA model of change, I can definitely see why some of the projects have failed. The committees are excited for the Planning and Doing stages, but need to get a better handle on the Check and Act part of the change. That seems to be where the projects fail...when there are not proper assessments in place for the project or contingency plans when problems arise.

CEdO565 Week 4

This week has really made me take a close look at my leadership skills. I think this is attributed to the fact that I've attended and had to facilitate several meetings since the beginning of the school year. Quite honestly, after reading the book, I can see not only where my leadership skills are lacking, but those of my administrator as well. I can see where poor leadership skills can really affect morale and lead to a negative working environment. As I improve upon my skills, I'm hoping my administrator will as well. Do you think it would be too much of a hint if I put a copy of this book in his mailbox...anonymously of course!

CEDO565 Week 3

What a week of class! I'm really enjoying the board game. It's frustrating, but it really does portray scenarios that we all face in our districts. It took our team a little while to figure out which order to do the activities, but once we got the hang of it, we were really on a roll!

I think the Tune-In article was fantastic. It really identified how many of the new teachers in my district are....and I really liked how the article included ideas on how to work with Millenials. I just wish it would have included ideas on how to work with the Babyboomers! (no offense if you are one!). It's just that many of the babyboomer teachers in my district are extremely hard to work with because they are so resistant to change. They don't take the time to learn new teaching strategies or new technologies because they think "if it's not broken, why fix it". What they don't see is that while they may not think their out-of-date teaching strategies are broken, their students definitely do and they are the ones suffering for their unwillingness to change.

CEDO565 Week 2

I've had some experience using the WINNS database prior to this class. When my summer reading team took 1st place in Wisconsin for minutes read, the local papers wanted to know if having all these students reading over the summer improved our WKCE reading scores. I have to admit, it takes a while to find my way around, the amount of data available on the database is unbelievable. After researching our district, I was pleased to find that we had the highest reading scores of districts in our area as well as our conference.

CEDO565 Week 1

I maintain several lead roles in my district. First, as the LMS, I provide leadership to staff and students on information literacy as well as reading strategies. Second, as the Technology Facilitator, I am responsible for writing the district's technology plan and tracking progress of staff and students on 21st century skills. I meet with the school board to report on our progress of our tech plan goals as well as recommend new technologies for our staff and students. Third, as the first teacher in my district to write a PDP, I have become the "go-to" person for guidance to our new teachers to assist them with writing their PDPs.

CEDO555 Posting #3

Culminating experience proposal finally done. It needs some fine-tuning, but the majority of it is complete. I'm still having problems developing a rubric...as usual. I'm also hoping that my timeframe works out. I think as the project begins, more details with flush out and I'll be able to get my proposal better adjusted. Don't have much time...back to school in a month!

CEDO555 Posting #2

My portfolio is finally finished. It was a very long process and I had to sit down for a few hours many different times to get all the information included. The most difficult part was finding the right artifacts to use. I wish I had named them better when I created them so that I would have had an easier time locating them. Note to self...fine-tune my documentation skills for my next portfolio!

CEdO555 Posting #1

How have I or my district used e-portfolios? This is the first time I have used an online portfolio. Now that I have become familiar with using Google Sites, I think that online portfolios are so much easier than the traditional paper portfolios. Google Sites provides an awesome environment for artifact organization, reflections and other resources I have accumulated during the program. An e-portfolio is also a great way to provide documentation for my PDP. I can definitely see how an e-portfolio could be used in the classroom with my students. Sadly, I am 99% sure that no one in my district uses e-portfolios. That will change with my classes next school year. I can't wait to introduce my staff to the benefits of online portfolios!

CEdO550 Week 6

My students are gaining 21st century skills by learning how to expand their creativity using web 2.0 tools, working collaboratively with students in other countries and excelling in project-based lessons. Currently, my school district does not offer any type of online learning, however, we are in the process of collaborating with 2 other area districts that are our size and may offer online courses through these districts. My concern with the Virtual Schools legislation in Wisconsin is cap of the number of students allowed to enroll in virtual schools, with no more than 5250 students enrolled in a school year. During this module, I was excited to learn the difference between synchronous and asynchronous facilitations. I'm glad to have received the experience in online facilitation and after practicing with my short class on internet safety, I feel much more confident in my abilities to facilitate an online class.

CEdO550 Week 5

In reflecting on my teaching experiences to date, I would say that the proportion of teacher centered vs. student centered lessons has been 50-50. This is my 3rd year teaching, and as a library media specialist, I try to incorporate many 21st century skills into my lessons, including group collaboration, which is a trait of student centered lessons. I was able to identify more than one authentic assessment when I was trained in PBL - project-based learning and authentic assessments go hand-in-hand. The rubric I created for my lesson clearly defined expectations and scoring so that my students would know exactly what was expected from them for the assignment and they would have the rubric to refer back to if they had questions on if they were going down the right path when completing the project. While working with this module, I had success while doing something new involving differentiation. I did incorporate differentiation in my lessons, but it's more on the fly; I do it automatically as the need arises and don't always take the time to document the differentiation strategies in my lesson plans. IN REGARD TO WEEK 5 WEB CONFERENCE - I like Shawn's comment during his presentation that "everyone's equal on cyberspace - everyone looks the same". That is true in so many ways. If a student is taking an online class, I think there's less prejudice because you don't make the judgement based on the typical "first impression" when seeing someone. I noticed this when my students were corresponding/collaborating on a project with New Zealand students. For 4 months, they only knew their New Zealand friends by what they wrote in their emails. But, when they sent photos and noticed that none of them had shoes on, my kids immediately assumed they were poor...which they weren't, they just didn't have their shoes on when the photo was taken!

CEdO Week 4

I have not experienced any problems using Brainhoney. After the first few days, it became very user-friendly to me and I feel that I am navigating through it just fine. In using this week's module, I tried using many of the features in Elluminate during my facilitation of the last week's web conference. I was surprised at how easy it was to facilitate the class using these features. I love how a ppt or other documents can be loaded into Elluminate and also being able to add blank slides in the presentation for taking notes. I can imagine using Elluminate in working with my grant consortium group to meet online when our schedules make it impossible to get away from school. These examples of online learning have provided me with a good foundation for teaching an online class. I teach in a small, rural district and we are thinking of collaborating with two other rural districts to offer AP classes. This class has given me the experience I need to facilitate an online class with these two other districts.

CEdO550 Week 3

I think the greatest challenge I will face on an online instructor (besides getting over my nervousness!) will be making sure the material I am covering with the class is not too boring. Without the convenience of observing class as I would during face-to-face instruction, it makes it difficult to know if the class is nodding off or actually paying attention. To solve this problem, I would make sure that I am changing modes, asking lots of questions and encouraging class participation to keep them on their toes! I think the most important piece of facilitating my online discussions is to be extremely prepared. I can't just wing it when leading the class. As I prepared my asynchronous and synchronous discussions, I found it very helpful to have a written outline to follow. I believe it will make it easier for me to stay on task with my objectives and keep the class flowing at a good pace. I chose Internet Safety as my discussion because as a LMS, it is something I promote during my elementary library skills lessons as well as with my discussions with my middle and high school students. Developing the rubrics was the most difficult part of the assignment; appropriate assessment is never an easy task. I wanted to make it simple, yet still have point value. Basically, I created my rubrics based on student participation, if they did the assignment, and how much they contributed to and extended ideas of their classmates.

CEdO550 Week 2

My experience with online communities has been primarily with this cohort. It was a little rocky at first, but as we got to know each other by working in groups and became more familiar with the online classes, the classes became much easier. Since being a part of this cohort, I've actually taken what I've learned about online colllaboration and use it in my grant consortium meetings. Our district shares a large technology integration grant with six other districts and finding a common meeting time/place is difficult. We've gone to working on "Go To Meeting" and working on our grant through Google Docs. The biggest benefit of online collaboration is just what I previously mentioned, it is very time efficient to work online when we are all pressed for time with our many job responsibilities. I believe the greatest challenge of online collaboration that I've experienced has been technology issues....could be internet being down, or learning how to use some new tool or software (such as Brainhoney). I've always worried about students who chose their schooling strictly in the virtual world because of the lack of socialization and participation in normal school events (music/band concert, sports, prom, etc.). Even after reading the advantages of virtual schooling, I still am somewhat apprehensive promoting it as the sole education a student receives. But, on the flip side, I can definitely see how a student would flourish more in a virtual class if they are shy...getting their opinion online through discussion boards, blogs, etc. will help them enhance their communication skills and perhaps break through the shyness barrier.

CEdO550 Week 1

Identify 2 Asynchonous and 2 Synchonous online learning tools: Voicethread (Asychonous) is a multimedia web 2.0 tools that allows anyone to comment on individual slides within the presentation. Google Docs (Asynchonous) allows anyone with editing rights to the document to put on highlighted comments. Facebook and Twitter (both Synchonous) are real-time, social networking sites. Four types of activities for online learners: Moodle (start a discussion thread asking each student to respond with their opinion on the topic). Wikispaces (each student create a page on the class wiki the introduces themselves to the class). Twitter (during class, I enter a tweet and ask each student to respond to it immediately as part of the classroom discussion). Wallwisher (during class, ask students to go to Wallwisher and enter their responses immediately as part of classroom discussion). Initial contact warm and inviting? Things I liked about it and could improve on: I thought my initial contact letter was inviting. I started it by congratulating them for being selected to participate in the class, so hopefully that helps them feel that their participation in the class is highly valuable. One thing I will change that was brought to my attention by another classmate was that some of my bullet points seemed to be out of order. I will definitely review it before submitting the final copy because it is imperative that directions for online courses be exactly correct. Initial contact clear and concise? Strategies to make it concise: As stated above, it was brought to my attention that some of the information on the contact letter may appear out of order and may be confusing to my students. I will be correcting before submitting the final copy. One strategy that would guarantee that my directions are in accurate order would be for me to go through the directions step-by-step myself as if I am the student taking the class and verify that I am able to do whatever the task is that I'm asking my students to do.

CEdO540 Week 5

Really liked working with Google Trends. Our group trended everything from peanut butter to vacations, to ice cream flavors! It's alot of fun and extremely interesting to see the internet activity. I will be showing this to my Business Ed teacher as I'm sure he will like it for his marketing classes.

Researching the different data table websites was also interesting. I've actually used many of them in other research I've done, so I was pretty familiar with them. The comparison was nice because now I know which ones I will use more regularly with my students.

CEdO540 Week 4

Creating a survey was kind of fun. Outside of surveying my students and teachers on technology use for our technology plan, I've never just surveyed the general public. Our group is still analyzing the data, but I am very pleased with the adversity of the population who took it. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, it was extremely easy to get the survey out to the public. I passed it along to my sister, who passed it along to her co-workers, who passed it along to their friends. It would have been much harder to get these same results if we handed out a paper survey. Plus, I think its easier to keep an online survey anonymous. Howerver, after reading up on Bill Tancer and how he conducts his research based on searches through IP addresses, I have to wonder if the survey results are truly anonymous? Could there be a way to identify by email address who took the survey and identify their individual results?