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 What they don't see is that while they may not think their out-of-date teaching strategies are broken, their students definitely do and they are the ones suffering for their unwillingness to change.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!